This eighth and final volume of the Collected Essays of Peter Damian Fehlner entitled, in the spirit of Fehlner’s hero John Henry Newman, Studies Systematic and Critical, includes published and previously unpublished studies, spanning a wide range of years and topics. In his critical studies, Fehlner with his Scotistic subtlety wrestles with Karl Rahner over Trinitarian theology and the Kantian inflections within transcendental Thomism. Fehlner unmasks Hegelian undercurrents of Neopatripassianism. And he unravels sophistries in situational and sentimental ethics. Fehlner’s systematic essays unpack Scotus’s teaching on the person, grace, and justification. Seeing created personal perfection in the Immaculate Mother of God, Fehlner explores how Mary can be exemplar, mother, and teacher of Christians precisely as the most perfectly redeemed beneficiary of her Son’s redemptive and salvific work. In a monumental and original study, Fehlner demonstrates the deep contours of thought between the two greatest Oxford theologians: John Duns Scotus and John Henry Newman. The essays in this volume give clear witness to the range and depth of Fehlner’s theological and philosophical contributions as a critic and, more importantly, as the greatest Franciscan voice in constructive theology since the seventeenth-century “Golden Age” of Scotism.

The Spirit and the Church celebrates the life and legacy of Peter Damian Fehlner, OFM Conv., who for the past six decades has carried the torch of the Franciscan theological and philosophical vision in the fields of ecclesiology, pneumatology, Mariology, and anthropology. Articles by colleagues, former students, and associates fall into three broad categories, corresponding with several of the main areas in which Fehlner has made a longstanding scholarly contribution: the Church’s Magisterium and development of doctrine, anthropology,comma and creation; the relation between Mariology, pneumatology, and ecclesiology; and scholarly seeds planted by Fehlner now being cultivated and harvested by younger scholars. All of the essays in this volume engage with Fehlner, evaluate his contributions, and build upon and expand in new directions the contributions of our honoree. The essays in this volume manifest the contemporary relevance of Fehlner’s Franciscan vision in terms of his invitation to renew the theology of the Church in a Marian mode in the light of Vatican II.

This first volume of Collected Essays presents Peter Damian Fehlner’s later reflections on the unique role of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the place of God’s eternal design for creation. These essays explore personhood, the divine missions, and ecclesiology. Framed within a Trinitarian vision and flowing out of fifty years of prayerful study of Scripture and the Tradition, Fehlner deepens and extends the wisdom of his Franciscan theological forebears, St. Bonaventure, Bl. John Duns Scotus, and St. Maximilian Kolbe, along with John Henry Newman, in Trinitarian theology, Christology, Mariology, and ecclesiology. This vision is particularly relevant in today’s theological and philosophical contexts, shedding light on the joint work of the Son and Holy Spirit as they constitute and build up the body of Christ through salvation history. The intimate relationship between Jesus and Mary in the Holy Spirit is clarified in these essays, unveiling the true face of the church as mother, teacher, and bride. Mary is exemplar and active associate with her Son as a member of his body. Within this volume, we discover our true nature and calling in Christ. Fehlner shows us how salvation history and metaphysical theology meet in the church, our mother, a true Marian Metaphysics.

In this third volume of Collected Essays, Peter Damian Fehlner traces the Franciscan Marian-ecclesiological vision and mission back to its sources in Francis and Clare of Assisi. Fehlner shows how the quintessentially Franciscan theological themes and their elaboration down the centuries find their roots in the Poverello, the “Man totally Catholic and Apostolic,” as well as in Clare, the “imprint of the Mother of God.” In thoroughly Trinitarian fashion, Fehlner unveils Francis’s understanding of Mary—type and exemplar, mother and member of the church—as the firstborn daughter of the Father, Mother of the Son, and Spouse of the Holy Spirit. Mary is, therefore, primordially the Virgin-made-Church. Flowering out into the Franciscan theological tradition, this volume features two studies where Fehlner unpacks this Franciscan, Marian-ecclesiological tradition in systematic and mystical theology. Fehlner takes St. Francis Anthony Fasani, his Conventual predecessor, as his guide in the spiritual exegesis of Scripture and Catholic devotion, unveiling the ecclesiological and Marian implications of the Song of Songs. In systematics, Fehlner analyzes the love song of the Son for his church in his definitive study of Bonaventure’s understanding of charity and the divine missions in the church.

Theology of Creation, volume seven of the Collected Essays of Peter Damian Fehlner,presents Fehlner’s writings on creation, spanning forty years of reflection. Emphasizing the dogmatic, Fehlner presents an accessible, yet rigorous, analysis of the key assumptions, missteps, ambiguities, and plain equivocations that have given rise to so much controversy since the appearance of Darwin’s 1859 On the Origin of Species. Basing himself firmly on theological and metaphysical foundations that must be maintained and clarified in order to provide a coherent and faithfully Catholic account of the origins and purposes of the created order, Fehlner clarifies the concept of creation, addresses the distinction between scientific, theological, and metaphysical taxonomies, and points to the Marian mode of the Incarnation as the key for disentangling valid from invalid or ambiguous conceptions of creation and evolution. Throughout these essays, Fehlner strives to present scientific claims in a clear and concise manner, while adhering closely to the method and metaphysical insights of Augustine, Bonaventure, John Duns Scotus, and Maximilian Kolbe. These essays present a fascinating window into the evolution of the thinking of an outstanding theologian and metaphysician wrestling with profoundly impactful questions, both within and beyond the borders of the church.

A comprehensive study on the Holy Spirit A scholarly study of St. Maximilian's teaching on the Holy Spirit and Our Lady, focus of contemporary criticism of the Saint and of his Marian program of life and thought, both by conservatives as well as by liberals. The author, being a prominent Kolbe scholar, shows how Kolbe's perspectives are in full continuity with those of St. Francis and the great Franciscan doctors. Thoroughly documented with extensive bibliography. Some chapter titles from the book: Methodology of Kolbean Study The Immaculate: Complement of the Holy Trinity Mariology-Pneumatology and Christology Marian Pneumatology and Ecclesiology Mary Immaculate, The Trinity and Gender And much more...

Volume six of the Collected Essays of Peter Damian Fehlner, entitled simply, St. Maximilian Kolbe, gathers together Fehlner's essays on the great Conventual Franciscan saint and martyr. These works come mainly from the journal founded by Kolbe, Miles Immaculatae, and were composed in the 1980s when Fehlner was editor of said journal. Readers of this volume will note the close connection to the themes of ecclesiological renewal and the Conventual Franciscan charism treated in volume five, as Fehlner worked to integrate and synthesize Kolbe's Mariological and pneumatological insights in a context of ecclesial mission and evangelization. The essays in this volume form a mosaic of Kolbean theology and spirituality, mapping out the geography of Fehlner's own theological itinerary that will reach, in terms of scholarly output, its final destination in his posthumous Theologian of Auschwitz (2019). Themes addressed, among others, in this volume include Kolbe's understanding of the history and unity of the Franciscan Order, the Trinity in relation to Immaculate Conception, creation and evolution, consecration, Kolbe's vision for Niepokalanow, Kolbe and the contemporary magisterium, and Kolbe's relevance for a contemporary retrieval of Bonaventure's theology of history.

This book grew out of an international symposium, organized in September 1986 by the Austrian Cultural Institute in Warsaw in cooperation with the Polish Philosophical Society. The topic was: The Vienna Circle and the Lvov-Warsaw School. Since the two phil osophical trends existed in roughly the same time and were close ly related, it was one of the purposes of the symposium to investigate both similarities and thp differences. Some thirty people took part in the symposium, nearly twenty contributions were presented and extensively discussed. The sym posium owed much to the excellent organization and warm hospital ity shown by Dr Georg Jankovic, the Director of the Austrian In stitute. As the person in charge of the scientific programme of the symposium, I take pleasure to acknowledge this debt. It so happened that a month later another symposium of a similar character was held. It took place in the University of Manchester, on the occasion of the centenary of the births of Stanislaw Lesniewski, Tadeusz Kotarbiflski and Wladyslaw Tatarkie wicz. Some papers read at the Manchester symposium form a part of the present volume. It was not possible, for technical reasons (the time factor was one of them), to include in this book all the material from the two symposia. Certain contributions have appeared elsewhere (for instance, K. Szaniawski's 'Ajdukiewicz on Non-Deductive Inference' was published in Danish Yearbook of Philosophy, Vol. 23). On the other hand, certain papers have been written special ly for this volume.

There have been several biographies of George Eliot but this is the first study to focus on her intellectual development. The book provides an analysis of the biographical and intellectual factors which encouraged George Eliot to decide upon fiction as her chosen mode of expression, and demonstrates how that decision was influenced by, and an echoing of, J.S.Mill's and Carlyle's critiques of philosophy.

This second volume of Collected Essays, Systematic Mariology, contains Peter Damian Fehlner’s essays on several central Marian topics and disputes. Written over the span of more than twenty years, these essays represent Fehlner’s most complete studies on the question of Mary’s participation with Christ in the redemption, her role with the Holy Spirit in the mediation of grace, and her place in the sacramental economy, flowing from the Eucharist. Fehlner provides theological resolutions to these inquiries by establishing Mary’s predestination as the Immaculate Mother of God and Spouse of the Holy Spirit in the eternal plan of the Father. This flowers into a theological vision of the divine missions that is Trinitarian, christological, and pneumatological. This triple viewpoint opens upon a theological account of divine action and perfect creaturely re-action because it is framed within an ecclesiology that decodes Mary’s virginal and divine maternity as the “Great Sign” of the perfection and promise of the church through Christ her spouse in the love of the Holy Spirit.