Engaging the Doctrine of Marriage: Human Marriage as the Image and Sacrament of the Marriage of God and Creation
Digital Logos Edition
Overview
This book is the next volume in Levering’s Engaging Doctrine series. The prior volume of the series examined the doctrine of creation. The present volume examines the purpose of creation: the marriage of God and humans. God created the cosmos for the purpose of the marriage of God and his people—and through his people, the marriage of God and the entire creation. Given that the central meaning or “prime analogate” of marriage is the marriage of God and humankind, the study of human marriage needs to be shaped by this eschatological goal and foregrounded as a dogmatic theme. After a first chapter defending and explaining the biblical witness to the marriage of God and his people, the book explores various themes: marriage as an image of God, original sin as the fall of the primordial marriage, the cross of Jesus Christ and marital self-sacrificial love, the procreative and unitive ends of marriage, marriage as a sacrament, and marriage’s importance for social justice and for the upbuilding of the kingdom of God. Along the way, the book provides an introduction to the key biblical, patristic, medieval, modern, and contemporary thinkers and controversies regarding the doctrine of marriage.
- Argues that the purpose of creation is the marriage between God and his people
- Explores the eschathological marriage of the triune God to his people, as well as the ways in which Christian sacramental marriage continues to be a mistery, in reference to Christ and the Church
- Exposes how marriage is not solely about sacramental and moral matters, but also fundamentally related to the doctrines of the Trinity, original sin, and the Cross, as part of God’s larger program for humankind
This book, animated by a spirit of warmth, offers a vision of sacramental marriage that is both traditional and creative. Levering allows the beauty of the sacramental way of life to shine through the technical distinctions that have sometimes seemed to obscure it. This is a learned and inspiring book.
John Cavadini, University of Notre Dame
Levering’s Engaging the Doctrine of Marriage provides a breath of fresh air on an issue around which swirls profound, large-scale confusion and disagreement, as the theological and secular literature will attest. Engaging an impressive array of authors that span the gamut of perspectives, Levering restores biblical sobriety and fidelity to a proper understanding of the meaning and purpose of marriage. A welcome read, a must read.
Paul Gondreau, Providence College
All too often, theologies of marriage are biblically questionable, doctrinally thin, and overly focused on a handful of controversial moral issues. In this beautifully written and challenging study, Matthew Levering takes the theology of marriage to a whole new level by situating it within the context of the ultimate purpose for the cosmos: the ‘mystical marriage’ of God and creation. The end result is a book that weaves the biblical mystery of marriage into the nexus mysteriorum of the Trinity, creation, the fall, the cross, redemption, and even deification.
Brant Pitre, Augustine Institute Graduate School of Theology
- Title: Engaging the Doctrine of Marriage: Human Marriage as the Image and Sacrament of the Marriage of God and Creation
- Author: Matthew Levering
- Series: Engaging Doctrine Series
- Publisher: Wipf and Stock
- Print Publication Date: 08/12/20
- Logos Release Date: 08/12/20
- Pages: 316
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
- Resource ID: LLS:NGGNGDCTRNGCRTN
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2020-09-23T17:33:08Z
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.