The Lord Jesus is the way, and he blazes the way. His way is not easy, but the view at the top will be stupendous! He told his apostles to make disciples, baptize them, and teach them “to observe all that I have commanded you” (Mt 28.20). As hikers are guided by the steel cables, Jesus’ disciples are guided by his commandments, which are taught best by the Catholic Church. The first volume of The Way of the Lord Jesus explores the foundations of the Church’s moral teaching; volume two explains it, and volume three shows how to apply it in daily life.
The Way of the Lord Jesus by Germain Grizez. The full text of these volumes is now available online.
The three volumes of The Way of the Lord Jesus were written primarily for use as textbooks in Catholic seminaries and as handbooks for Catholic priests. Many others, nevertheless, have taken advantage of the books’ well-organized and clearly written treatment of topics and the many study helps—highlighting essentials, putting secondary points in appendices and notes, and providing plentiful references to sources along with crisp summaries.
3 comments:
I bought volume one many years ago and paid $70. So the price now is half that. I'm glad I bought it for an odd reason: in his footnotes, he gives a running account of the position of various theologians on this issue and that and that itself was interesting to me though one tires of his ego as he usually is saying how others are wrong and he is right whilst they in fact have no recourse since he is writing the book not debating them in public which would be more convincing.
It suffers from paternalism in that he gives hardly a thing on epikeia and when he does, he issues warnings all around it's use. One would never guess that the disciples as to the Sabbath observance had frequently to use it in order to follow Christ on Sabbath questions as to those times when Christ opposed the pharisees and required the disciples to follow Him not them even though he told them to obey all that they say since they sit on the chair of Moses. In short Catholic writers are very weak due to the Counter Reformation on those topics which speak of actual freedom vis a vis the literal law.
And Grisez continues that narrow path. On page 854 he goes into the right to withhold assent as to the non infallible but again, it turns into a warning fest as though Grisez alone would not abuse it but all others might. Ironically in that very volume one, he holds out the possibility of polygenism being acceptable which would drive some conservatives up the wall....yet on epikeia and dissent to the non infallible, he comes across as Mr. Strict.
I still love the book though because it is a chronicle of theological controversies from the Council and after with most of the names involved.
I see that epikeia is your issue. I've never studied it as ethics is not something I've studied much...
On second thought, it seems to me that epikeia is not radical enough for what the disciples faced. For example, the fatality of touching or seeing holy objects from Numbers is a logical consequence of contact with the divine, and yet Jesus allows whores to touch him and Gentiles to kill him. I'm reminded also of what Ratzinger says in Gospel, Catechesis, Catechism about Paul's gospel: "I do not need to submit to the mass of prescriptions contained in the Torah. It suffices to live in communion with him" (53). It's an attitude similar to the one expressed in Psalm 123: "like the eyes of a servant on the hand of his master, Like the eyes of a maid on the hand of her mistress, So our eyes are on the LORD our God, till we are shown favor."
Or, as Fr. Giussani says in his article, "Recognizing Christ": "it was very easy to maintain, to live the relationship with that man, all one had to do was adhere to the sympathy that He aroused, a profound sympathy, similar to that dizzying, visceral relationship between a baby and its mother, which is sympathy in the intense meaning of the word. It was enough to adhere to the sympathy that He aroused." Morality, for us as well as the disciples, is to adhere to Christ.
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