Theology of Freedom, The: The Legacy of Jacques Maritain and Reinhold Niebuhr
| By author: | Cooper |
Product Code:
H162
ISBN:
9780865541726
Product Format:
Hardback
Not currently available.
(Backorder policy) |
Price:
$35.00
Recent controversy about the relationship between religion and politics has only magnified the general confusion that has always attended reflection and discussion about the “two realms.” The current welter of divergent, even contradictory, ideological positions is frustrating. For Christians the disagreements of style and substance between Roman Catholics and Protestants lie at the heart of the problem. Yet as John W. Cooper argues in The Theology of Freedom, clarity amid the confusion is possible. Dr. Cooper identifies “two great beacons of clarity-one a child of Rome, the other a child of the Reformation.”
Jacques Maritain and Reinhold Niebuhr are generally acknowledged as two of the most influential political theologians of the twentieth century. The French Roman Catholic philosopher and the German-American Protestant theologian faithfully represented their divergent backgrounds and religious traditions. Yet Maritain and Niebuhr elaborated a similar political ideal: a democratic pluralistic society maintaining social and legal safeguards for a full range of human rights. Dr. Cooper finds in the practical sophistication and philosophical depth of Maritain and Niebuhr a common ground for an ecumenical political theology. In their “practical wisdom” and “realism” and in their careful historical analysis and interpretation Maritain and Niebuhr offer the basis for a broadly conceived ecumenical consensus in political theology.