Reddit mentions: The best books on theology

I definitely recommend these whenever I get the opportunity. Since you beat me to the punch, I'll add a few others.

The perennial state of the question for the relationship between history, reason, biblical studies, and theology is Ratzinger's Erasmus Lecture (the third of three essays in this book). His Verbum Domini is also quite important. Additionally, Dei Verbum, Divino Afflante Spiritu, and Providentisimus Deus are all must reads.

You may already have Fundamental Theology down, since you're familiar with Systematics; however Laurence Feingold's Faith Comes From What is Heard is a good intro and provides a good foundation for how to do Biblical Theology.

Its helpful to think of nearly all theology as biblical theology (see Dei Verbum 24). And its helpful to look at biblical theology as the study of public revelation, rather than merely the study of the bible (remember Sola Scriptura is protestant ;) ). To that end, I'd like to recommend DeLubac's Scripture in the Tradition and especially Congar's The Meaning of Tradition.

I highly recommend anything that comes out of the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology. They are authentically Catholic and focused specifically on Biblical Theology. I'll especially recommend their Journal of Biblical Theology called Letter & Spirit.

/u/NovaThrowaway333, I have a Masters degree in Biblical Theology. If you'd like any more recommendations I'll be more than happy to oblige.


[EDIT]: I know that you said you're looking for explicitly Catholic stuff, but if I may, I'd like to recommend that after you've gotten your feet wet, you keep an open mind to some protestant sources. Some of them are very good; and often, it can be difficult to find Catholic resources on certain topics (depending on how in-depth you want to go). In fact, sometimes just because the author is Catholic does not mean their material is worth while. Richard Gallardez is Catholic, but some of his work (at least what I read) seems to be undercutting the Church's teachings. I like Fr. Raymond Brown (one of the premiere Catholic scripture experts of the 20th century) a lot, but he also had some wonky ideas.

Also, Scriptural commentaries are a good resource as well. Brown's two volume commentary on John is quite good. Fr. Pablo Gadenz just authored a commentary on Luke which I hear is pretty stellar.

> Did they discover Noah's ark again

Theology is a discipline far more like philosophy than archeology. We usually don't seek to excavate or to try to find artifacts, though admittedly sometimes it is useful to do so (in order to better understand the cultural milieu of the ancient Israelites, for example). Rather, like philosophers, we spend most of our time taking a look at a body of knowledge that can be thought of as "settled" in a certain respect, and then extrapolating from that knowledge to new conclusions.

In recent decades, for example, we have seen theological progress made:

-In relation to the being of God itself. Drawing upon Heidegger, Jean-Luc Marion, a French theologian and member of the Académie française, challenges the concept of God "being" before loving in God Without Being.

-In the understanding of Ancient Israel's relationship to YHWH, with the application of the notion of "suzerainty" to the two parties' covenental relationship.

-We have witnessed the development of a new theology rooted in the experience of the poor peoples of Latin America, liberation theology. This theology seeks to promote what is called the "preferential option for the poor," which is the notion that God favors the poor above all others and takes a special interest in them.

-Then, of course, there is all of Vatican II.

Theology is not a stagnant discipline. We do not just sit around and discuss Augustine or Aquinas all day. We dialogue with other intellectual movements from various different disciplines (we dialogue, for example, with scientists, Kantians, Marxists, positivists, etc.) and take what we can from them, applying them to theology today.

I've not dug into Von Balthasar very much, since the little I've encountered him in coursework has been rather unfulfilling, unlike Ratzinger who I adore.

If you're all in on Balthasar, go for it. But if you're at all open to other Communio scholars, take a look at Henri de Lubac! He's a personal favorite of mine, even though the debate over grace and nature he's most famous for I think he got wrong. His stuff on patristic and medieval exegesis almost makes the Fathers of the Church live again, and he was a major contributor to Dei Verbum (along with Yves Congar, who is the one member of Concilium that you absolutely should read, especially if you enjoy de Lubac, as they pair well together).

Reading list recommendations:
De Lubac's most readable work, impossible not to recommend: https://www.amazon.com/Catholicism-Christ-Common-Destiny-Man/dp/0898702038/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1525705139&sr=8-1&keywords=de+lubac+catholicism

De Lubac on spiritual exegesis, the topic where I think he's most brilliant: https://www.amazon.com/Scripture-Tradition-Milestones-Catholic-Theology/dp/0824518713
If you like the first chapter of that one, there's a big ol' study of Origen by him that is pretty important to the last 100 years of patristics scholarship.

Congar is important because of his research into the nature of Tradition. Be sure to check out: https://www.amazon.com/Meaning-Tradition-Yves-Congar/dp/158617021X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1525705236&sr=8-1&keywords=congar+tradition
That is a shortened, better organized version of his much longer research work, "Tradition and Traditions", which he was working on when consulting on Dei Verbum.

As part of my never-ending quest to get more people to read Romano Guardini, I would recommend:

• The Lord
  The Lord is Guardini's primary work of Christology, essentially walking through the life of Christ as presented by the Gospels and providing his own reflections throughout. Similar in style to Ratzinger's Jesus of Nazareth books.
  
• The Church and the Catholic
  Here is where you'll get most of his ecclesiology. The richest content comes in his understanding of the relationship between the individual and the community in terms of "the Kingdom of God". I'm pretty firmly convinced that this work had a heavy influence on Ratzinger's relational ontology and thus his eschatology.
  
• The Spirit of the Liturgy
  A wonderful work that helped me understand the beauty and mystery of the liturgy. Another massive influence on Ratzinger here, who named his own book after this one.
  
• Meditations Before Mass
  Another one focused on the liturgy, Guardini's main goal here is to equip people to fully participate in and fully experience the mass. It's a series of "meditations" on how to prepare oneself for the mass, and really helpful for those who might find the mass boring or struggle with distractions.
  
  Or there's a great anthology put together by Heinz Kuehn called The Essential Guardini

These are some of the better books I've accumulated in school:

• An Introduction to the New Testament - Raymond Brown. Exactly what the title says.
  
  
• The Early Church - Henry Chadwick. This is more of a historical overview of the development of the Church, etc.
  
  
• The Shape of Catholic Theology - Aiden Nichols. This book is kind of a dense read. Not gonna lie.
  
  
• At the Origin of the Christian Claim - Luigi Giussani.
  
  
• The Craft of Theology - Avery Dulles.
  
  
• The Theology of the Church - Charles Jornet. - This one is about ecclesiology, or the structure of the Church.
  
  
• Early Christian Fathers -Cyril Richardson. Includes primary sources like letters and homilies.
  
  
• The Trinitarian Crontroversy - William Rusch. Very good history of early heresies, like Arianism and Nestorianism, and how they pushed the Church to develop the Creed.
  
  
• Called to Communion - Joseph Ratzinger.
  
  
• Catholicism: Christ and the Common Destiny of Man - Henri de Lubac. This book is fantastic!
  
  
• The Meaning of Tradition - Yves Congar.
  
  
• Introduction to Moral Theology - Romanus Cessario.
  
  
• The Major Works -Anselm of Canterbury. Nice collection, see especially: Cur Deus Homo.
  
  
• On the Incarnation - Ignatius of Antioch. I LOVED this one!
  
  
• Credo for Today - Joseph Ratzinger. Basically anything by Ratzinger.

I'll give you my answers, since they're definitely going to be considerably different, at the very least, from the ones you'll get from anyone else around here.

>Mainly, I'm interested in hearing the Protestant criticisms of Catholicism, and Catholic criticism of Protestantism.

I can't really speak to this one, as I'm not really either of those. There are Catholics that I would deem to be "true Christians" (e.g. Gustavo Gutiérrez, Óscar Romero, John Dominic Crossan) and there are Protestants that I'd refer to as the same (e.g. Jürgen Moltmann, Reinhold Neibhur, Martin Luther King, Jr.). Heck, I'd even call people who don't profess to follow Jesus yet act in a Christlike manner to be "true Christians" (e.g. Mohandas Gandhi, Ernst Bloch, Slavoj Žižek). I'm much less concerned about one's theology than I am about one's praxis.

>How do you view the "lukewarm" Christians mentioned in the Bible?

You're talking about the ekklesia in Laodicea in Revelation 3:15-16, right?:

>I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth.

These are Christians that refuse to take a side. James Cone has a good quote that I tend to go back to for those "Christians" that refuse to take a side:
>"Either God is identified with the oppressed to the point that their experience becomes God's experience, or God is a God of racism."

One could substitute any form of hierarchy for Cone's "racism" in that quote; race for him is an ontological symbol of oppression. For God to be a god of liberation (as Jesus' God was/ is) He/She must have an alignment with the oppressed. He cannot be neutral, for neutrality to injustices privileges the status quo. And just as God must take a side, so must Her/His followers. That's what the lukewarm Christians in Laodicea were doing - refusing to take a side. They were unwilling, perhaps afraid to be "hot," and thus were no better than the "cold" rest of the world. Revelation's God is saddened by Her/His followers refusing to take a stand - lukewarm is equivalent to cold, neutrality is equivalent to oppression, but it is much easier to judge active agents of oppression than its passive agents.

> How do you feel about the divide on social and scientific issues - where it seems Catholics are generally more progressive, and Protestants are generally more conservative?

I don't really have a great answer for the science one. If you believe in a Creator (I don't ), and you believe that that Creator is "good," then you should believe that everything that that Creator endowed you with, including the ability to reason, is likewise "good." Thus, denying scientific discoveries and theories because they go against a literal reading of a 2500+ year-old book is spitting on your Creator's gifts to you.

As far as "social issues" go, it should be noted that the metanarrative of the Bible is inherently a political story, one of liberation. Whether God is guaranteeing a "promised land" to slaves in Egypt or guaranteeing that He/She will bring Her/His people home from exile, the authors are making statements against empires. When Mark opens his Gospel with "The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God," he's making a direct statement against Caesar Augustus, who was said to be the bringer of evangelion ("good news") and whose full imperial name included the phrase Divi Filius ("Son of the Divine/ Son of God.") The anointed (Christos) son of god that brings the good news was not the Emperor of the known world, but a Jewish peasant bastard from rebellious Galilee. He went on a mission preaching a "Kingdom of God" (as opposed to an "Empire of Rome?") where "the last will be first and the first will be last." He attacked the center of social/political/religious/economic power of Judea, the Temple of Jerusalem, and was promptly executed by Rome with a method saved for political radicals. But then, the scandal! He was resurrected, denying the ultimacy of Rome's power and Rome's ideology, ensuring via promise that the "Kingdom of God" was something that can be achieved.

Liberation is the heart of Jesus' evangelion. Thus, as far as social (and economic. Especially economic!) issues are concerned, the God that Jesus professed will always be on the side of the oppressed, not that of the oppressors, for that would be the demesne of the God that named Caesar "Augustus." I hesitate to even affirm "progressivism" as the Christian God's ideology de jure; it's more radical than that. Jesus completely subverts what the Romans considered to be "reality" by presenting a Kingdom of God free of death (oppression). He revealed society's constructed nature, denied the invalid claims to ultimacy (because nothing man-made can truly be "ultimate"), and presented an alternative. Whereas Empire causes oh so many to fall into non-being, Jesus instilled his followers with the courage to be.
>And lastly, why do you think you've found the most correct version of Christianity?

Most correct? I hesitate to ever claim superlatives, but I am confident that my understanding of Christianity is much closer to Jesus' religious beliefs than the abomination of "mainstream" Christianity is. Why, though? Because I make every effort to read the Gospel with the eyes of a first-century Jewish peasant - Jesus' original followers and original audience. Or, failing that, I read it through the eyes of oppressed classes, after all, they certainly have a hermeneutical privilege. I read the Bible unpolluted by Plato's doctrine of the eternal soul or by the obscenity that is Constantine's in hoc signo vinces. I divorce myself from the assumptions of "nature" that our society makes, just as Jesus himself did. I reject the inherently flawed assumptions about a "just world" and those that affirm the powers-that-be as infallible.

What does that leave me with? Hope. Energization against an unjust world because Christ's gospel screams that there shall be a real, just world that we can bring about. Not just can, but must, for
>"Those who hope in Christ can no longer put up with reality as it is, but begin to suffer under it, to contradict it. Peace with God means conflict with the world, for the goad of the promised future stabs inexorably into the flesh of every unfulfilled present.".

So, am I confident that I've "found the most correct version of Christianity?" No, and I don't think that that's possible. But I have been to the mountaintop, I have seen the Promised Land, and I know the Kingdom of God. Exegesis, coupled with the hermeneutic of the oppressed, offers no reasonable alternative "Christianity" to the gospel of liberation. Sadly, instead of this "bottom-up" model, Christianity has long been co-opted by "top-downers" more interested in either explicitly imposing their will further upon the downtrodden or simply pushing their legitimate grievances aside in favor of otherworldliness. But again, God cannot be neutral, and what use is a God on the side of the powerful? Why let them continue to stack the deck, to stack their team? The only God worth believing in is the God who evens the score, who stands on the side of true (distributive, not retributive) justice, the God who killed all oppression and bought us liberation at Calvary.

Traditional Catholicism, (read: Catholicism), is your birthright and the will of God.

Since you likely need to brush up on the basics to understand certain things, I highly recommend this book:

https://www.amazon.com/My-Catholic-Faith-Louis-LaRavoire/dp/0963903268/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1541519912&sr=8-2&keywords=my+catholic+faith

It's what the SSPX and FSSP use to teach adult catechism (generally).

If you can, find a good Traditional parish/chapel, and explain to Fr. your situation.

A fight for the Faith is a fight for your soul.

God will guide you where you need to go, in order to do His will. Trust in Him, and do what you can.

The author understands absolutely nothing about what Tradition is, knows he knows nothing about it, but still feels compelled to talk about it.

Instead of condemning it, he might try learning what it is first.

I'd suggest this as a start.

But, anyway, case-in-point:

>How does any of that trump what those same people would understand as their God-given ability to think, to be rational, to use logic?

On the one hand, most of the time the people most loudly asking this are the ones who are using their rationality the least. But, more importantly, this completely misunderstands the very nature of revelation and doctrine and Truth. They are not something ANYONE can just figure out with logic and reason. We have to be told. Which Christ did, to the Apostles, and that has been handed down - guarded by the Holy Spirit. To contradict it because you think you know better is not only contradicting God, but is contradicting God because you think you are so smart that you simply know better. That's arrogance on a suicidal level.

Any of the approved Catechisms should be fine.

In my experience the "Catechism of the Catholic Church" is detailed but dry. The Baltimore Catechism may seem a bit simple, but the St Joseph edition has really cool pictures.

I like My Catholic Faith based on the Baltimore Catechism - not quite for children, more for teenagers, it is quite detailed.

Here is a book he has written that, while not one of his most dense, shows how smart he is.

https://www.amazon.com/Theology-Liberation-Salvation-Anniversary-Introduction/dp/0883445425

You might be interested in checking out Liberation Theology.

Starting with a definition of theology as "critical reflection on praxis in the light of the word of God", the Peruvian Dominican priest Gustavo Gutierrez sought to clarify the role and purpose of Church in a Marxian world of exploitation and class struggle. Gutierrez framed oppressive social structures as systemic, or institutional sins and identified emancipatory activity with fulfilling God's purposes, while condemning inaction and acquiescence as sinful instead.

This is the founding text on Amazon, you can also find a bunch of newer material here, probably of varying quality.

I looked up your photo, and it made me smile. I'm happy you were so touched, but I can understand why others would not be impressed. For example, the left one is not a clear crossbar, but instead has curved stems, and too slender to be properly called a crossbar.

I think your point is better made with a different example: After Jesus' Crucifixion, the Gospel reports numerous dead people being raised to life. Why did this not get more attention? One hypothesis is that few were credulous to believe that it had actually happened. For example, here in Japan, a wooden Marian statue (carved for some Christian sisters by a Buddhist) wept 101 times with other happenings (e.g. a deaf sister received full healing of her deafness), and the bishop declared it worthy of belief, but most Japanese I have asked don't care or know nothing, because the idea of a statue weeping is too incredible for them to seriously consider. "Why a weeping statue?" and "Why rural Akita [where only dozens were], instead of Tokyo [where millions are]?" were two objections I was given to seriously considering the matter.