Christ the Logos of Creation: An Essay in Analogical Metaphysics

By John R. Betz

Product Code: A0159

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The Gospel of John's Prologue describes Jesus Christ as the eternal Word or Logos of the Father, who became human for the redemption of the world. However, the world that Christ rescues is his world from the start, since he is the Logos of creation, the one "through whom all things were made" (John 1:3). This divinely revealed claim has profound implications not only for theology but also for metaphysics, whose relationship to Christian doctrine has been undermined over the course of the twentieth century, to the point where the Christian faith has become an increasingly private affair rather than a credible account of reality and an invitation to participate more fully in it.

John Betz's Christ, the Logos of Creation strives to reclaim a Christ-centered, analogical metaphysics and to prove the need of such a metaphysics for Christian theology and the Christian perspective of reality. Part I clears the air concerning analogical metaphysics and discusses the ecumenical concerns raised by Karl Barth's renowned rejection of the analogia entis. Part II explains how analogical metaphysics aids in the explanation of Christian doctrine and gives fresh insight on the connection of various concepts such as Trinitarian theology, Christology and soteriology, and theological anthropology. Part III examines how this analogical approach might help to resolve a variety of theological issues, such as the metaphysical link between nature and grace and the dilemma of divine humility. Part IV concludes by outlining other paths towards a truly Christological metaphysics that is appropriate to both the problems of contemporary theology and the reality of our existence in Christ the Logos.

Hardcover. 592 pages.

Size: 6" x 9"

AUTHOR:

John R. Betz (Ph.D., University of Virginia) is associate professor of systematic theology at the University of Notre Dame. In addition to a number of articles, which have appeared in Modern Theology and other scholarly journals, he is the author of After Enlightenment: The Post-Secular Vision of J. G. Hamann (Wiley, 2009), and the translator, with David B. Hart, of Erich Przywara’s Analogia Entis: Metaphysics, Original Structure, and Universal Rhythm (Eerdmans, 2014).

PRAISE:

“John Betz’s new book cements his stature as the leading expert on twentieth-century German philosophical theology. With immense learning, clarity of presentation, and unfailingly balanced judgment, Betz traces the conceptual and theological underpinnings of an analogical metaphysics as altogether central to the Christian faith. One stands in awe of Betz’s comprehensive and profound grasp of philosophical and theological questions and debates, from Plato and Aristotle all the way to Przywara, Barth, de Lubac, von Balthasar, and into the present. For anyone committed to an integrative view of faith and reason, Christ, the Logos of Creation will be obligatory reading and an inexhaustible font of insight.”

Thomas Pfau

Duke University and Divinity School

“John Betz has written an extraordinary book on an extremely important topic. As the title suggests, Christ, the Logos of Creation: An Essay in Analogical Metaphysics, Betz wants to demonstrate that the Logos is not only the eternal Word of the Father but also the Word of creation. The Logos is the ground, pattern, goal, and the source of all being. The Logos is the beginning of all creation, and as the Logos incarnate, he is the end of all creation. Primacy belongs to the Logos alone. However, how is one to conceive and express this truth? Barth denied that analogical language was capable of doing so—metaphysics could not rightly speak of God. Betz, creatively and insightfully, with the aid of the Polish philosopher-theologian, Erich Przywara, offers a valuable and constructive way forward. Metaphysical concepts and the analogical language that expresses such metaphysics can rightly be applied to the divine Word such that he can, indeed, be proclaimed Logos of creation and redemption—and so all glory, honor, and praise belongs to him.”

Thomas G. Weinandy, O.F.M., Capuchin

Former member of the Vatican’s International Theological Commission

“The work of John Betz is a gift, on the one hand to Erich Przywara, whose genius requires a unique mind and heart to be able to receive and communicate its fecund treasures, and on the other hand to us, who would otherwise have had little access to this giant of the twentieth century. But this book does more than just communicate Przywara; it develops an analogical metaphysics that is profoundly original in its own right and promises to bear fruit that will last.”

C. Schindler

Pontifical John Paul II Institute, The Catholic University of America

“John Betz has presented us with a masterly and comprehensive argument as to why the analogy of being, updated to take account of linguistic mediation of knowledge and fully understood as including articulations of the Trinity and Incarnation, allows a mediation of current debates concerning the relation of grace to nature and faith to reason. Agree or disagree, in part or in whole, his case must now be reckoned with.”

John Milbank

University of Nottingham

“Betz elucidates a central riddle of Christian theology with an unmatched gift for resolving dark complexity into generative lucidity.”

Judith Wolfe

School of Divinity, St Mary’s College, University of St Andrews