Twentieth-Century Catholic Theologians

This book reports on the lives and works of the most influential Catholic theologians of the twentieth century, including: Chenu, who renewed Thomism by returning Aquinas to historical context; Congar who made ecumenism possible for Catholics; de Lubac who specialised in rehabilitating forgotten doctrines and marginalized theologians; and Kung who was deprived of his right to teach as a Catholic theologian and became the most widely read Catholic theologian of modern times. Fergus Kerr - one of the foremost Roman Catholic theologians currently writing in English - discusses the theological development of each figure and their relationship to Church teaching. He highlights how each one contributed to the reform and renewal of the Church at the Second Vatican Council. The study of Thomas Aquinas was mandatory in their student years, yet each found his own distinctive way of dealing with this requirement. In the work of Hans Urs von Balthasar and the late Pope John Paul II, the neoscholastic metaphysics that dominated in the first half of the century gave way in the second half to a theology of the body, gender difference and nuptiality.

Fergus Kerr, a member of the Order of Preachers and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, holds an honorary fellowship in the School of Divinity at the University of Edinburgh. He is the editor of New Blackfriars, the periodical of the English Dominicans. His previous publications include After Aquinas: Versions of Thomism (Blackwell, 2002).