The Betrayal of Charity: The Sins that Sabotage Divine Love
Digital Logos Edition
Overview
Love was at one time a powerfully unifying force among Christians. In his letters, Paul consistently evokes charity as the avenue to both human and divine communion. If the magnitude of charity was of the utmost importance to early Christians, so were those sins that aimed to distract Christians from acting based on love. Taking seriously the efforts of Paul, and later Thomas Aquinas, to expose and root out the sins against charity, Matthew Levering reclaims the centrality of love for moral, and in fact all, theology. Levering argues that the practice of charity leads to inner joy and peace as well as outward mercy, good will, and unity with God and neighbor. The sins against charity—hatred, sloth, envy, discord and contention, schism, war and strife, and sedition and scandal—threaten love’s concrete effects by rebelling against dependence on God and undermining interdependence on others. The Betrayal of Charity seriously considers the consequences of each of the sins against love, compelling individuals and communities to recognize their own loss of charity. In doing so, Levering fosters a spirit of restoration and reminds readers that love—not the sins against it—will have the last word.
- Title: The Betrayal of Charity: The Sins that Sabotage Divine Love
- Author: Matthew Levering
- Publisher: Baylor University Press
- Print Publication Date: 2011
- Logos Release Date: 2013
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
- Subjects: Charity; Sin › Christianity; Love › Religious aspects--Catholic Church; Thomas Aquinas, Saint, 1225?-1274
- ISBNs: 9781602583559, 9781602587120, 1602583552, 1602587124
- Resource ID: LLS:BTRYLCHRTYSNSTH
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-29T22:23:08Z
Dr. Matthew Levering is James N. Jr. and Mary D. Perry Chair of Theology at Mundelein Seminary, and Co-Director of the Chicago Theological Initiative. He holds a B.A. from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; M.T.S. from Duke University; and a Ph.D. from Boston College. He is the author or co-author of over thirty-five books including such works as Scripture and Metaphysics, Participatory Biblical Exegesis, Biblical Natural Law, Proofs of God, Aquinas’s Eschatological Ethics and the Virtue of Temperance, Did Jesus Rise from the Dead?, The Abuse of Conscience, and Reconfiguring Thomistic Christology. He is currently at work on a multi-volume dogmatics, whose first five volumes have appeared (most recently Engaging the Doctrine of Israel). He is the editor or co-editor of over twenty books including such works as The Oxford Handbook of Sacramental Theology, Aristotle in Aquinas’s Theology, and The Reception of Vatican II. He is the translator of Gilles Emery, O.P.’’s The Trinity. He co-edits two quarterly journals, Nova et Vetera and the International Journal of Systematic Theology. He is the past president (2021-22) of the Academy of Catholic Theology, and served as its founding Chair of the Board from 2007-2016. He has been a member of Evangelicals and Catholics Together since 2004. With Thomas Joseph White, O.P., he co-edits the Thomistic Ressourcement series for Catholic University of America Press. He is a Distinguished Fellow of the St. Paul Center, and he edits the Renewal within Tradition series for Emmaus Academic Press.