Search Results
Great Christian Thinkers - 23 St. Ephrem
Great Christian Thinkers - 23 St. Ephrem
by SPCK - Pope Benedict XVI
St. Ephrem Common opinion today supposes Christianity to be a European religion that subsequently exported the culture of this continent to other countries. But the reality is far more complex, since the roots of the Christian religion are found in the Old Testament, hence, in Je…
Great Christian Thinkers - 22 Aphraates, “The Sage”
Great Christian Thinkers - 22 Aphraates, “The Sage”
by SPCK - Pope Benedict XVI
Aphraates, “The Sage” In our excursion into the world of the Fathers of the Church, I guide you today to a little-known part of this universe of faith, in the territories where the Semitic-language churches flourished, still uninfluenced by Greek thought… Taken from Great Christi…
Great Christian Thinkers - 36 Bede the Venerable
Great Christian Thinkers - 36 Bede the Venerable
by SPCK - Pope Benedict XVI
Bede the Venerable The saint we are approaching now is called Bede and was born in the northeast of England; to be exact, Northumbria, in the year 672 or 673. He himself recounts that when he was seven years old his parents entrusted him to the abbot of the neighbouring Benedicti…
Great Christian Thinkers - 17 St. Hilary of Poitiers
Great Christian Thinkers - 17 St. Hilary of Poitiers
by SPCK - Pope Benedict XVI
St. Hilary of Poitiers I reflect now on a great Father of the Church of the West, St. Hilary of Poitiers, one of the important episcopal figures of the fourth century. In the controversy with the Arians, who considered Jesus the Son of God to be an excellent human creature but on…
Great Christian Thinkers - 27 Boethius and Cassiodorus
Great Christian Thinkers - 27 Boethius and Cassiodorus
by SPCK - Pope Benedict XVI
Boethius and Cassiodorus I now discuss two ecclesiastical writers, Boethius and Cassiodorus, who lived in some of the most turbulent years in the Christian West and in the Italian peninsula in particular. Odoacer, King of the Rugians, a Germanic race, had rebelled, putting an end…
Great Christian Thinkers - 32 St. Columban
Great Christian Thinkers - 32 St. Columban
by SPCK - Pope Benedict XVI
St. Columban The holy Abbot Columban was the best-known Irishman of the early Middle Ages. Since he worked as a monk, missionary, and writer in various countries of western Europe with good reason he can be called a “European” saint. With the Irish of his time, he had a sense of …
Great Christian Thinkers - 29 Pseudo-Dionysius The Areopagite
Great Christian Thinkers - 29 Pseudo-Dionysius The Areopagite
by SPCK - Pope Benedict XVI
Pseudo-Dionysius The Areopagite In the course of my catechesis on the Fathers of the Church, I speak next of a rather mysterious figure: a sixth-century theologian whose name is unknown and who wrote under the pseudonym of Dionysius the Areopagite. With this pseudonym, he was all…
Meeting God in Paul - 2 The universal welcome: Paul’s disturbing idea
Meeting God in Paul - 2 The universal welcome: Paul’s disturbing idea
by SPCK - Rowan Williams
The universal welcome: Paul’s disturbing idea The words just quoted form one of the most familiar texts from St Paul’s letters – a text which, as you can immediately see, sets Paul in opposition to some of the most powerful and dominant trends of his day…
Great Christian Thinkers - 10 St. Athanasius of Alexandria