Bound for Beatitude

"Building on Aquinas's profound theological anthropology, Hütter develops a rich account of the beatitudes within an Aristotelian-Thomist grammar of proximate and ultimate ends. He also makes a compelling case for why a retreat from these metaphysical questions into a purely immanent frame dominated by 'practical' concerns would greatly impoverish theology and, indeed, the faith itself. Immensely learned and unfailingly probing, the arguments presented will establish Bound for Beatitude as the benchmark for all future exploration of Christian soteriology and eschatology."—Thomas Pfau, Duke Divinity School

"Like Ariadne's thread, this richly documented and clear-sighted work guides the reader through a maze of newer and older controversies clustered around the manifold ties connecting the first-and-last things to the search for the best approaches to them in our earthly Christian existence. It locates the concerns where intra-Thomistic debates intersect and interact with the wider theological and philosophical spectrum of quaestiones disputatae et disputandae."—Richard Schenk, OP, University of Freiburg

"We are called to eternal happiness. As the Gospel spirituals proclaim, we are bound for glory and the joys of Canaan Land. Reinhard Hütter, nourished by an evangelical love of Scripture and trained in the best of Catholic tradition, employs the insights of Thomas Aquinas to present the implications for the Christian life (and for moral theology) of the universal call to beatitude. Hütter illustrates the difference that beatitude makes. We are pilgrims on the way (viatores), sustained by the sacraments and fortified by the virtues. By restoring to moral theology the eschatological urgency of St. Thomas's understanding of beatitude, Hütter has done theology a tremendous service."—Michael Sherwin, OP, author of On Love and Virtues: Theological Essays.

"Aquinas's theology is at once intricately analytical and authentically mystical. These dual elements are captured wonderfully in this major work. Bound for Beatitude is an extensive and coordinated study of the moral teaching and virtue theory of Aquinas, always with an orientation toward eschatology. Reinhard Hütter is one of the leading voices in Thomistic studies today, and this book marks a milestone in his articulation of a living Thomistic theology, one simultaneously rooted in historical principles and engaged with contemporary questions."—Thomas Joseph White, OP, Director, Thomistic Institute, Angelicum, Rome

"An important exercise in retrieving Thomas Aquinas's theology of beatitude in today's postmodern context...a rich volume of considerable learning, mature theological insight, and promise for the future of theology."—Thomist

"In this volume Hütter confidently engages a bewildering number of philosophical and theological viewpoints, both modern and contemporary. In so doing, the doctrine of Saint Thomas not only emerges all the more numinous, but Reinhard Hütter further solidifies his place as one of Saint Thomas's most reliable contemporary expositors."—Nova et Vetera

"Constitutes a stellar addition to the field of Thomistic ethics...Hütter is a careful and thorough expositor of Aquinas's thought, and his book rewards a careful and thorough reading."—Reviews in Religion and Theology

"Throughout, Htter demonstrates a sophisticated mastery of the unavoidable complexity of Aquinas's many distinctions, together with a clear explanation of each that grants easy access to the reader. More relevantly, Htter also shows the crucial parallel between Aquinas's synchronic presentation of topics with a diachronic projection, à la Dante's Divine Comedy, of the various stages of the pilgrim's journey out of the 'dark woods' through awakening and return toward maturity and beatitude."—Heythrop Journal