What is Truth?
From the Academy to the Vatican

Rist sets out a vision of constantly developing truth that incorporates all that is good.

John M. Rist (Author)

9780521889018, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 26 June 2008

376 pages
23.4 x 15.8 x 2.7 cm, 0.72 kg

'… learned and provocative …' The Heythrop Journal

This book studies the nature, growth and prospects of Roman Catholic culture, viewed as capable of appropriating all that is noble both from internal and external sources. John Rist tests his argument via a number of avenues: man's creation in the image of God and historical difficulties about incorporating women into that vision; the relationship between God's mercy and justice; the possibility of Christian aesthetics; the early development of the see of Rome as the source of an indispensable doctrinal unity for Christian culture; the search for the proper role of the Church in politics. He also argues that such an understanding of Catholic culture is necessary if contemporary assumptions about inalienable rights and the value of the human person are to be defended. The alternatives are a value-free, individualist universe on the one hand, and a fundamentalist denial of human nature and of history on the other.

Introduction: partial and universal truth
1. The human race: or, how could women be created in the image and likeness of God?
2. Divine justice and man's 'genetic' flaw
3. Divine beauty: nature, art and humanity
4. The origin and early development of episcopacy at Rome
5. Caesaropapism, theocracy or neo-Augustinian politics?
6. The Catholic Church in 'modern' and 'post-modern' culture
7. Looking at hopes and fears in the rear mirror.

Subject Areas: Political science & theory [JPA], History of ideas [JFCX], Church history [HRCC2], History of religion [HRAX], Religious ethics [HRAM1], Philosophy of religion [HRAB], Philosophy [HP]