Book Reviews by Albert Robertson, OP
Papers by Albert Robertson, OP
New Blackfriars, 2025
The English Dominican friar Cornelius Ernst OP left an enduring mark on the intellectual life of ... more The English Dominican friar Cornelius Ernst OP left an enduring mark on the intellectual life of the English province. Although some of his lectures and articles were published in the volume Multiple Echo, there are a number of different avenues of Cornelius’ work that remain as seeds. Building on Cornelius’ paper ‘A Preface to Theology’, this article investigates the relationship between Cornelius and Edward Evans-Pritchard and Godfrey Lienhardt. Although Evans-Pritchard is most frequently cited in Cornelius’ works, I argue that it is to Godfrey Lienhardt that we should look for the anthropological roots of Cornelius’ ontology of meaning. This paper also interrogates the question of whether there is such a thing as ‘Oxford anthropology’, and whether this has a particular Catholic character. Although I argue that there is no sign of a Catholic anthropology in Oxford, we have to be able to give some account of an anthropologically engaged Catholic theology in the work of Cornelius Ernst. Building on the idea of Cornelius’ work offering seeds for future development, I conclude with a short exploration of how anthropology could act as a preface to theology today, especially in bolstering fundamental theology.
New Blackfriars, 2025
While various parts of St Thomas' work have been suggested as places to discern a Thomistic eccle... more While various parts of St Thomas' work have been suggested as places to discern a Thomistic ecclesiology, this article tries to situate the Church in a discussion of creation and the communication of divine goodness that is at the heart of the mystery of providence and predestination. Despite the assurance that God works for good with those who love him, our understanding of divine providence must begin with the frank admission of a tension between our intuition that creation must be ordered, and our experience of contingency. By understanding the Church's place within creation, in a hidden and shadowy way from Abel until its manifestation in the Lord's Paschal Mystery, we can see how God's loving purposes are worked out both in the implicit faith in a Mediator, which finds its expression in a belief in God's providential care of creation, and in the life of the visible Church where the mystery of predestination is worked out in the lives of the faithful until all is at last made manifest at the end of time. Such an ecclesiology allows us to see the fundamental importance, and mystical meaning, of the visible hierarchical Church.
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Book Reviews by Albert Robertson, OP
Papers by Albert Robertson, OP