Catholic Dogmatic Theology: A Synthesis: Book 3, on the Church and the Sacraments

Every discipline, including theology, requires a synthetic overview of its acquisitions and open questions, a kind of ＂topography＂ to guide the new student and refresh the gaze of specialists. In his Synthèse dogmatique, Fr. Jean-Hervé Nicolas, OP (1910-2001) presents just such a map of Thomistic theology, focusing on the central topics of Dogmatic Theology: The One and Triune God, Christology, Mariology, Ecclesiology, the Sacraments, and the Last Things. Drawing on decades of research and teaching, Fr. Nicolas synthetically presents these topics from a faithfully Thomistic perspective. While broadly and genially engaging the theological literature of the 20th century, he nonetheless remains deeply indebted to the Thomistic school that would have formed him in his youth as a theologian. This provides the reader with an unparalleled theological vision, masterfully bringing forth, at once, what is new and what is classical.

Catholic Theology: A Dogmatic Synthesis is being published in English as a multi-volume work. In this volume, Fr. Nicolas takes up the raison d’être for the mission of the Holy Spirit: the work of sanctification in and through the Church, the mystical body of Christ and sacrament of salvation. In the ecclesiology articulated in this volume, he presents a theology of the Church that is at once wholly Thomistic and also faithful to the great themes of the Second Vatican Council, drawing especially from the works of Journet, Congar, and Bouyer, in critical dialogue with other theologians of his day. He then presents a complete and detailed sacramental theology, both concerning the nature of the sacraments in general, as well as concerning each sacrament in particular, carefully striving to balance positive and scholastic theology.

Serving as a professor for decades, including at the University of Fribourg, Fr. Nicolas was at once a profound scholar and a masterful pedagogue. Gathering the work of a lifetime into a single pedagogical narrative, Fr. Nicolas’s Catholic Theology: A Dogmatic Synthesis provides a resource for students and scholars alike. In view of the hyper-specialization of theology today, this series of volumes provides readers with a synthetic and sapiential overview of the fundamentals of dogmatic theology from a robust and profound Thomistic perspective.

Jean-Herve Nicolas, OP, (1910-2001) was professor of dogmatics at the University of Fribourg. Matthew K. Minerd is professor of philosophy and moral theology at Byzantine Catholic Seminary.