English Dominican Research Articles

The Position of Selected English Dominicans Towards the Immaculate Conception in the Pre-tridentine Era

The Immaculate Conception of the Mother of Christ is a truth of the Catholic faith that was only dogmatised by Pius IX in 1854. Until then, there had been debate among theologians regarding this Marian privilege. By means of selected examples the article shows the attitude of English Dominicans to the Immaculate Conception of Mary between the 13th and 16th centuries. It transpires that the members of the Order of Preachers in the British Isles presented an extremely diverse positions. One can find both strongly dissenting positions and those manifestly in favour of the Immaculate Conception. It is extremely interesting to note that in their arguments for the Immaculate Conception, some Dominicans distanced themselves from the continental theology represented by Aquinas. The way the Dominicans conceptualised the Immaculate Conception was closer to that represented by the twelfth-century theologian and historian Eadmer.

Nothing is hidden: nonsense and the revelation of limits

ABSTRACT In this article, I aim to raise questions for natural theology by casting doubt on the intelligibility of absolute limit concepts, like ‘reality’, through comparing the reception of Wittgenstein by two English Dominicans, Cornelius Ernst and Herbert McCabe. First, I briefly examine the evolution of the Tractarian conception of a limit that demarcates sense from nonsense as it morphs in Wittgenstein’s middle period before being abandoned entirely. Ernst is consciously aware of this shift and concerned about its implications for theology. After establishing Ernst’s more wary reading of Wittgenstein, I then consider McCabe’s approach to the question of God as a question regarding absolute limits. Ultimately, I suggest that the sheer nonsense of such terms fails to provide a basis for natural theology, but that divine revelation can legitimise this talk of limits by revealing the absolute contingency of all ‘created’ things as an eschatological limit placed upon history from within history. Ironically, though, McCabe’s eschatological vision is not the crossing of this limit, but its inevitable erasure when we find that God is not ‘other’ but ‘all in all’.

The Oxford Handbook of Elizabeth Anscombe edited by Roger Teichmann, (Oxford; Oxford University Press, 2022); pp. 520, £ 97.00, hbk

The Oxford Handbook of Elizabeth Anscombe edited by Roger Teichmann, (Oxford; Oxford University Press, 2022); pp. 520, £ 97.00, hbk

A Companion to the English Dominican Province from Its Beginnings to the Reformation. Edited by Eleanor J. Giraud and J. Cornelia Linde. Brill's Companions to the Christian Tradition 97. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2021. xii + 431 pp. $195.00 cloth.

A Companion to the English Dominican Province from Its Beginnings to the Reformation. Edited by Eleanor J. Giraud and J. Cornelia Linde. Brill's Companions to the Christian Tradition 97. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2021. xii + 431 pp. $195.00 cloth.

An Inspired Alias? J.R.R. Tolkien’s Frodo Baggins ‘Underhill’ and Fr Gerard Albert Plunket ‘Underhill’, O.P. (1744–1814)

One of the most significant instances of renaming in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, Frodo’s use of Underhill as a traveling name, has not been the subject of scholarly analysis. This article argues that Tolkien may have chosen the name Underhill for his central protagonist due to the specific inspiration of Fr Albert Plunket ‘Underhill’ (1744–1814), the English Dominican priest who founded the eighteenth-century Catholic mission at Leeds and who, alone, prevented the abandonment of the English province by the Dominican moment. Like Frodo, in his quest to destroy the Ring, it was Fr Albert alone who refused to give up hope and persevere whatever the odds. Moreover, like Frodo, Fr Albert and his wider family adopted the use of Underhill as an alias to avoid danger and persecution. This article analyses these and other parallels between the life of Fr Albert ‘Underhill’ in the primary world and Frodo ‘Underhill’ in the secondary, situates Fr Albert’s life in its wider historical contexts, and demonstrates the occasions and routes by which Tolkien could have been made aware of Fr Albert and his pivotal role in the re-evangelization of Protestant England in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

On Restoring the Centrality of Prudentia (Phronēsis) for Living Well: Pathways and Contemporary Relevance

The aftermath of the Second World War saw some radical rethinking in both theology and philosophy on what it is to live well as a human being. In philosophy two of the key thinkers were Elizabeth Anscombe and Philippa Foot. In theology two key thinkers were Thomas Deman, a French Dominican, and somewhat later an English Dominican, Herbert McCabe. A key feature in all four thinkers was a recovery of the work of Aristotle and Aquinas, in particular the concept of phronēsis (prudentia). The paper’s close analysis of the virtue of prudentia demonstrates the insufficiency of modern moral philosophies that are committed to portraying morality as a moral code. A correlative argument is made within theology: the virtue of prudentia fortified by the gift of counsel is central for good Christian living.

Herbert McCabe on God and Humanity

AbstractOver the eight hundred years of the English Dominican province, few of its members have matched the rigour and depth of thought of Herbert McCabe. This paper presents a brief overview of McCabe's thought, focusing first on his understanding of God and then on his conception of human beings. Like Thomas before him, McCabe thought it vital to think clearly and correctly about both God and humanity, an effort which in the case of God involves recognising the many ways in which we cannot think of God.

The Gilby Summa

AbstractThe Blackfriars Summa Theologiae, 60 volumes between 1964 and 1976, the greatest collective scholarly achievement of the English Dominican Province, was conceived and orchestrated by Fr Thomas Gilby. To what school of 20th century Thomism did he and his collaborators owe allegiance, if any? This paper considers that question while documenting some of the significant influences on Gilby and his collaborators on his translation of Aquinas's Summa.

Through American Eyes: A View of the English Dominican Province

AbstractReviewing a half-century of personal experience of the English Dominican Province by an American friar provides a rich gallery of unforgettable people, places, and events. But the following account is more a story than a history, which is better left to historians.

‘To Do For Our Own Age What Thomas Did For His’: Victor White OP

AbstractWhen thinking about the life and theology of the English Dominican, Victor White OP (1902-1960), it is his formation at Hawkesyard which holds the key to understanding the direction of his life and work. This brief introduction sets White in the context of his day, showing how his formation created the conditions which drew him to the analytical psychologist, C.G. Jung (1875-1961), at the same time prompting his identification as a modern Thomist, an identification which gave him the framework to engage Jung's thought, and to influence the direction of theology at Blackfriars Oxford. In other words, I hope to show that White's formation at Hawkesyard is the turning point from which all else follows.

‘Verbal Pictures’ in Seventeenth-Century Orthodox Sermons: Predmova svjaščenničeskaja pri šljube malžen’skom in Trebniks, L’viv 1644 and 1645

This paper puts forward some hypotheses on the sources of a ‘verbal picture’, that is to say allegorical love poetry, in a prosta mova marriage sample sermon addressed to laity and found in two Orthodox Ritual (Trebnik) editions: the first is by the publisher Michail Slezka (L’viv 1644) and the second by the bishop Arsenij Želiborskij (L’viv 1645). I shall argue that that the very combination of vernacular homiletic material and traditional ecclesiastical rites therein found goes back to sixteenth-century Polish Catholic Rituals; in the Orthodox Church of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, this model was introduced for the first time in the Ritual of the Orthodox Brotherhood of Vilnius (1621). The verbal picture analysed in this paper draws on Pictura amoris sive amicitiae, a short moralistic text written by the English Dominican Robert Holсot (ca. 1290-1349) which appears in his exegetical voluminous work In Librum Sapientiae Regis Salomonis Praelectiones ccxiii (ca. 1333-1342). Popular among late thirteenth-early fourteenth century English Dominicans, verbal pictures did not rely on earlier samples and were a literary product, a sort of exemplum or mnemonic tool for preachers to memorize abstract concepts. Since the sixteenth century, works of different genre reproduced Holcot’s verbal picture, without any attribution to its author, as emblem to create the so-called emblemata nuda (‘naked emblems’), which describe images but lack illustrations. The article suggests that the author(-s) of the Orthodox marriage sample sermon used a textbook on rhetoric Orator extemporaneus, seu artis oratoriae breviarium bipartitum by Michael Radau (1617-1687) as his main source, of which several manuscripts had started circulating by 1644. The article also presents some concluding remarks about the authorship of the marriage sample sermon.

A Companion to the English Dominican Province From its Beginnings to the Reformation edited by Eleanor J. Giraud and J. Cornelia Linde, Brill, Leiden, 2021, pp. xii + 431, €195.00, hbk

New BlackfriarsVolume 102, Issue 1100 p. 581-583 Reviews A COMPANION TO THE ENGLISH DOMINICAN PROVINCE FROM ITS BEGINNINGS TO THE REFORMATION edited by Eleanor J. Giraud and J. Cornelia Linde, Brill, Leiden, 2021, pp. xii + 431, €195.00, hbk RICHARD FINN OP, Corresponding Author RICHARD FINN OP richard.finn@bfriars.ox.ac.uk orcid.org/0000-0003-1118-1372 Blackfriars, Oxford Email: richard.finn@bfriars.ox.ac.ukSearch for more papers by this author RICHARD FINN OP, Corresponding Author RICHARD FINN OP richard.finn@bfriars.ox.ac.uk orcid.org/0000-0003-1118-1372 Blackfriars, Oxford Email: richard.finn@bfriars.ox.ac.ukSearch for more papers by this author First published: 21 June 2021 https://doi.org/10.1111/nbfr.12653Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume102, Issue1100July 2021Pages 581-583 RelatedInformation

Robert Kilwardby by José Filipe Silva

Reviewed by: Robert Kilwardby by José Filipe Silva R. James Long Robert Kilwardby. By José Filipe Silva. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2020. Pp. xvi + 304. $99.00 (hardcover). ISBN 978-0-19-067475-5. There is little question that the Dominican Robert Kilwardby deserves a place in Oxford University Press's "Great Medieval Thinkers" sesries under the editorship of Brian Davies. Following the tragically early death of the gifted Osmund Lewry, O.P., there have been few scholars devoting attention to the only member of the Order of Preachers to have assumed the archbishopric of Canterbury. It is appropriate, therefore, to acknowledge the contribution of José Silva. The book presents a comprehensive view of the current state of knowledge respecting the life and impressive range of works of the English Dominican, [End Page 507] including his metaphysics, logic, epistemology, ethics, theology and (more specifically) the Incarnation, focusing on the third book of Peter Lombard's Sentences. In the first chapter, entitled (curiously; all the chapter titles are active participles) "Living," Silva sketches what several decades of scholarship have revealed of the life and works of Kilwardby, but there remain unresolved questions respecting chronology as well as patrimony. He belongs to a school, or perhaps better a movement, that falls under the title of "Augustinianism," the central teaching of which was a quite non-Augustinian title of "universal hylomorphism," the view that all beings—including spiritual substances such as angels—are composed of the principles of matter and form. This view was common among the Dominicans, at least until the triumph of Thomism. It is for this reason, moreover, that the early Dominican masters such as Roland of Cremona (†1236), Robert Bacon (†1248), and Richard Fishacre (†1248) are so difficult to place vis-à-vis Kilwardby. To claim, however, that the aforementioned thinkers may have been "among other figures who were critical of Aquinas" (48) is to ignore the fact that all three had departed the scene before Aquinas had even begun his theological studies, never mind his not yet having written anything. Kilwardby's most popular and influential work, at least judging by the number of extant manuscripts (eighteen complete and two partial) is De ortu scientiarum, composed circa 1250 and probably at Oxford, according to the work's editor, Albert Judy. This treatise would seem to demarcate the end of Kilwardby's career as Arts master and the launch of his career as Master of the Sacred Page, thus virtually ruling out inception under Richard Fishacre. Chief among his theological writings is the Quaestiones in libros Sententiarum. Thanks to the sponsorship of the Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, we now have a critical edition of this impressive work, and according to the most recent editor of the five volumes, Richard Schenk, O.P., we can date the work between 1256 and 1260. Crucial to this dating is the fact that it shows influences from both the Sentences commentary of Bonaventure (ca. 1250-52) and the abbreviatio of Richard Rufus, O.F.M., on the same work. Silva does not weigh in on the issue, but the fact is that Kilwardby's "commentary" has at best a distant relationship to Lombard's work, the latter serving only to call to mind various disputable issues in the original Books of Sentences. In addition, not every distinction in the Lombard text is represented. Lastly, according to Russell Friedman, Kilwardby's "commentary" does not seem to have any particular connection to his attainment of the magisterium in theology, for which such a commentary was a requirement at both Paris and Oxford. From the small number of manuscripts—only two complete copies and two partial—one is led to the conclusion that there was no longer much demand for the work of a Dominican unwilling to follow the via Thomistica. By way of contrast, Fishacre's commentary, composed approximately a decade earlier, boasts sixteen copies, four of them complete. [End Page 508] The chapter that struck this reader as the most lucid and fully developed is entitled "Behaving," and rests in large measure on the scholarship of Anthony Celano, who has devoted most of his career to the editing and study of Kilwardby...

THE PRIEST, THE PSYCHIATRIST AND THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

This paper clusters around the problem of evil within the framework of depth psychology. The first part briefly introduces the narrative of the Book of Job as an example to contextualise how the ultimate question of God’s relation to evil remained unanswered and was left open-ended in Christian theology. The second part offers a historical reconstruction of the unresolved polemic over the nature of evil between Carl Jung and the English Dominican scholar and theologian Victor White (1902-1960). It explores their different speculations and formulations concerning evil and its psychological implications, until their final fall-out following White’s harshly critical review of Jung’s most controversial work on religion, Answer to Job. The final section of this paper introduces further reflections on a challenging theme that is no less resonant and relevant in today’s world of terrorism in the name of religion than it was in a post-war Europe struggling to recover from totalitarianism and genocide.

Ethics, Indigenous Ethics, and the Contemporary Challenge: Attempt at a Report on Ethics for the Filipino Today

Ethics, Indigenous Ethics, and the Contemporary Challenge: Attempt at a Report on Ethics for the Filipino Today

The Biographical Fashioning of the Americas' First Saint: Santa Rosa de Lima (1586–1617)

This article studies the disjunctions between the narratives created around the first saint of the Americas, Santa Rosa de Lima (1586–1617). According to the Peruvian popular version, Rosa could speak to mosquitoes, whereas the Vatican version eschews mention of the insects. The fact that the first official biography, Vita mirabilis et mors pretiosa (1664), was written not by a German Dominican called Leonardus Hansen but by an elusive English Dominican, Vincent Torre, suggests that this text was part of the Popish Plot and constitutes a coded attempt to bring England back to the True Faith.

Martial Law And Religion

The Martial Law years as among the darkest in our history, accounting still for most of the ills that we continue to suffertoday. That darkness explains the immediate and spontaneous response of the people who poured into EDSA on those four glorious days of September in 1986. It is no accident that the EDSA Revolution was saturated, among others, with religious motifs. It was a cleric, the much loved Cardinal Sin, who used the lone Catholic radio station to call for the people to congregate at the great highway, and a sea of humanity then made history as they flooded the long street not with guns but with roses and rosaries, a bloodless revolution indeed that filled the air with patriotic songs and prayers, a virtual potluck picnic for all members of the family, which included priests and nuns and seminarians in their recognizable garbs, a true People Power Revolution which is simultaneously a religious event. Thus, the revolution became a fight between good and evil, where Religion stood as the polar opposite of Martial Law.
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‘To Whom Say You Your Pater Noster?’: Prayer on the Eve of the Scottish Reformation

ABSTRACTIn 1551, a resident English Dominican, Richard Marshall, sparked a fierce controversy in St Andrews, Scotland, by arguing in a sermon that the Lord’s Prayer, the ‘Our Father’, should be prayed to God only and not to the saints. According to John Foxe, the dispute led to much cursing, a regional synod, and one Franciscan fleeing the city in disgrace. The St Andrews quarrel was one of many controversies about prayer in sixteenth-century Europe. Why was prayer such a contentious topic? Scottish prayer controversies revealed a fundamental struggle between traditional and reformist views over the value of ritual in relating to God. Protestants like George Wishart, Catholic reformers like Marshall and Archbishop John Hamilton, and more radical ‘devotional humanists’ like the poet, Sir David Lindsay, proclaimed new understandings of prayer that undermined the structures of traditional devotion by pitting the personal and vernacular aspect of prayer against priestly Latin ritual.

Restoring the imagination: the contribution of Conrad Pepler, OP, and Gerald Vann, OP

Various definitions have been employed to describe or interpret the Catholic Imagination. The contributions of English Dominican Fathers Conrad Pepler (1908–1993) and Gerald Vann (1906–1963) may assist in furthering this discussion by using a Thomistic framework to define the imagination, identify threats to its formation and promote its restoration and the renewal of culture.

Basic Works by Thomas Aquinas (review)

Reviewed by: Basic Works by Thomas Aquinas Thomas M. Ward Thomas Aquinas, Basic Works, ed.Jeffrey Hause and Robert Pasnau (Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett 2014) 688 pp. Basic Works (BW) incorporates new and previously published translations of Aquinas’s works to present an excellent anthology well-suited for university courses on Aquinas’ philosophy. The translations are clear and tend to be fairly literal. Scholars who appreciate the old pre-Vatican II translation of Summa Theologiae by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province for its accuracy but not its archaisms will find this anthology refreshing. In addition to its translations, BW includes a short Introduction (four pages), a very good bibliography of Aquinas’s works and the works of those authors Aquinas cites, and a decent index. BW is divided into three parts. Part I, Philosophical Foundations, includes new translations of the two seminal works of Aquinas’s natural philosophy and metaphysics: On the Principles of Nature, translated by Eleonore Stump and Stephen Chanderbahm; and On Being and Essence, translated by Peter King. Part II, God and Human Nature, includes previously published selections from Summa Theologiae (ST): The Treatise on the Divine Nature (ST I.1–13), translated by Brian J. Shanley, OP; and The Treatise on Human Nature (ST I.75–86), translated by Robert Pasnau. Part III, Ethics and Human Action, includes two newly translated selections from ST, both translated by Thomas Williams: The Treatise on Happiness (ST I–II.1–5) and The Treatise on Human Acts (ST I–II.6–21). It also includes previously [End Page 305] published translations, by Jeffrey Hause and Claudia Eisen Murphy, of Disputed Questions on Virtue, and by Richard J. Regan, of The Treatise on Law (ST I–II.90–97). Notably absent from BW are introductions to individual selections or a glossary of scholastic technical terms. These omissions suggest the book is designed for classroom use, where the neophyte’s readings are carefully contextualized and interpreted by the master, and not for the autodidact’s library. The selections here anthologized closely track those aspects of Aquinas’s thought which have secured his contemporary relevance to academic Anglophone philosophy. The student will not find here anything on the Trinity, the Incarnation, or the sacraments—topics on which the Angelic Doctor spilled gallons of ink. This narrowness of scope is practically unavoidable in a typical modern college or university, given the sharp distinction customarily drawn between philosophy and theology, and given that we have long ceased to view philosophy as theology’s “handmaiden.” For Aquinas to have a place in philosophy curricula, he needs to be sanitized of the weirder aspects of his religious views. This is not to say that Hause and Pasnau have done to Aquinas what Thomas Jefferson did to the Bible; there is still plenty of God and even of Christian mysticism in the anthologized texts. But the selections seem designed, in part, to present an Aquinas who divided up the labor of philosophy more or less as we do and whose intellectual output was devoted to addressing the questions we continue to find important. As I said, this is probably unavoidable, but given the choice to present texts of Aquinas which present him as more philosopher than theologian, the editors might have used their Introduction to say something about the full scope of Aquinas’s oeuvre or about his conception of philosophy’s relationship to theology. A recent book with a similar aim is Timothy McDermott’s anthology, Selected Philosophical Writings. McDermott’s effort includes a much wider range of works by Aquinas, and a slightly wider range of topics addressed by Aquinas, along with a short reflection on the relationship between theology and philosophy, but, in my opinion, the book as a whole suffers from McDermott’s colloquial translation style. BW is, for this reason, on the whole, a definite improvement on McDermott’s effort. Readers who are looking for an Aquinas anthology of wider scope would do well to consider the Penguin Classics’ Selected Writings of Aquinas, edited and translated by Ralph McInerny, which, while not quite comprehensive, covers a wider range of topics than any anthology I know of except for Anton Pegis...