The Mystery of Jesus Christ: A Christology and Soteriology Textbook (Theology Textbook)

Rating:
Summary: Christology for our times
Review: This is really a beautiful and comprehensive study of the most pure Christology and Soteriology (Theology of Christ and of Salvation). It was originally edited by the faculty of Theology of Navarra University in Pamplona, Spain.

This theological initiative joins three authors that represent, at the same time, three frames of reference in expertise and experience in undertaking a complete and neverending treatise on Jesus Christ.

Dr. F. Ocariz is theologist of the Divine Filiation reality of men in Grace, revealed and studied as the trascendental participation in the Natural Filiation through the Son of God (in sense of St. Thomas Aquinas' Metaphysics of Participation).

I perceive, in fact, that the contribution and influence of Dr. F. Ocariz in this book has to do with considering Jesus under the prospective of this Filiation: the Human Nature of the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity is the efficient and exemplary cause (the model) of our particular participated filiation to the Father that not changes our being but enhances and elevates our being to God Father, God Son and God Holy Spirit (relation of origin) instead of only our being to God straightly and affects in real the singular human being in grace state.

Dr. L.F. Mateo Seco, is mainly theologist of the Most Holy Trinity (he wrote a book specially dedicated to this matter), and his contribution in this book, having known his other work, is just to deepen in the Verb as Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity and His Life within the Trinity in God and presents the exactness of the phylosophical concept of Person in regard to God (Subsistence within the Divine Nature) and concreted into the Verb.

I think Mateo Seco's contribution also helps, throughout the book, to explain straightforwardly (recognizing the Mistery, though) the Self of Jesus and His two Wills. This has deep implications in the ordinary life of the christians, in special when the common man or woman understands that whatever happens in the most ordinary situations and activities is because God wants it (that is the reason of why the situations and things are real and this is because things are good since God wants them) and accepting them is the way as our human will works understanding and assuming them as goods, without, obviously, being detriment of our fight and strenght to overcome any situation or hurdles in order to human Salvation.

In Jesus, the Union of His Divine Nature with His Human Nature in the Person of Verb allows us to explain the reason of the existence in Him of the Divine Will and of a Human Will and both are consistent in their object.

Dr. J.A. Riestra must have contributed essentially to the theology of Salvation in Christ, and, a fortiori has to do with the Grace. In this arena is where contributions of Dr. Ocariz and Riestra converges since, naturally extending the methaphysics of trascendental participation in Divine Filiation toward the theology of Grace, comes up consistently the participation of human being in Grace in the Capital Grace of the Human Nature of Christ.

The book makes use of, without solution of continuity, the Philosophy and Theology employed within the works of Saint Thomas Aquinas and Saint Augustine of Hipona, together with the documents after Vatican II and the very recent contributions of the Magister of His Holiness John Paul II and obviously the Holy Scriptures.

The book is really easy to read even though requires to pay attention on the philosophical concepts and terms involved in.