There Is No Rose: The Mariology of the Catholic Church

199 Pages·2015·5.78 MB·English

by  Aidan Nichols

Retrieving a doctrine of Mary— N
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C
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There Is No Rose contributes to the revival of a more full-blooded Marian teaching and attempts O
to take the path set by ressourcement theology in recovering the robust voice of witness to Mary. L
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Aidan Nichols, OP, works through the biblical, patristic, and medieval sources and introduces
readers to the robust scriptural and theological bases for the Church’s celebration of Mary. He
argues for the crucial relevance of Mary in the theological articulation of the gospel, the cele-
bration and practice of the liturgy, and the sacramental life of the Church.

Praise for There Is No Rose
“Crystal clear, compendious, and compact, this book is a brilliant and useful

introduction to Mariology. In it we see a master craftsman at work in Christian
theology.”
Francesca Murphy, University of Notre Dame

“Those who have been paying attention recognize that Aidan Nichols, not least
through his pellucid writings over the past decade, has emerged as the greatest
t
English-speaking dogmatic theologian of our era. Only Father Nichols could h
e
have written this book, which amiably unites voices from all periods of the
r
church’s theology and unfolds with winsome precision Mary’s place in the his- e

tory of salvation and the communion of saints. This book is a dogmatic, histor- i
s
ical, and symphonic masterpiece.”
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Matthew Levering, Mundelein Seminary
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r
“In a book that is brief and seeker-friendly, Father Nichols offers a clear and
o
succinct introduction to the shape of Marian doctrine. Drawing from sacred s
e
Scripture, the early Fathers, the church’s living tradition, and liturgy, Nichols
summarizes the theological development of the Marian dogmas in a way that
is Christocentric and ecumenical. This Rose is a marvel of economy, tracing the
divine logic of love and fittingness, demonstrating that Mary is the one who
exemplifies the perfection of Christ’s redeeming work. There are few books of
such virtue.”
Scott Hahn, Franciscan University of Steubenville
and Mundelein Seminary
Fr. Aidan Nichols, OP is Prior of Blackfriars, Cambridge. He previously served as John Paul II
Memorial Visiting Lecturer at the University of Oxford and as a Fellow of Greyfriars, Oxford.
He has written over fifty books on various aspects of Christian theology.
Religion / Systematic Theology / Ecclesiology
There Is No Rose

There Is No Rose
The Mariology of the Catholic Church
Aidan Nichols, OP
Fortress Press
Minneapolis
THERE IS NO ROSE
The Mariology of the Catholic Church
Copyright © 2015 Fortress Press. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations
in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any
manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Visit
http://www.augsburgfortress.org/copyrights/ or write to Permissions, Augsburg
Fortress, Box 1209, Minneapolis, MN 55440.
The author and publisher are grateful to the Eparchy of Saskatoon and the
Liturgical Commission of the Synod of the Hierarchy of the Ukrainian Catholic
Church for permission to cite from their approved translations of respectively,
‘Acathistos in honor of Christ the Lover of Mankind and Blessed Virgin Mary’
(Saskatoon, 1981)and ‘The Sacred and Divine Liturgy of our Holy Father John
Chrsyostom (Philadelphia, 1987)
Cover image: Our Lady of Korsum by Russian icon/17th century/Super Stock
Cover design: Laurie Ingram
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Print ISBN: 978-1-4514-8446-5
eBook ISBN: 978-1-4514-9416-7
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z329.48-1984.
Manufactured in the U.S.A.
This book was produced using PressBooks.com, and PDF rendering was done by
PrinceXML.
There is no rose of such virtue
As is the Rose that bare Jesu
—Medieval English carol

Contents
Preface ix
1. The Blessed Virgin Mary in the New Testament 1
2. The Divine Motherhood 23
3. The Immaculate Conception 45
4. The Co-redemptrix 67
5. The Assumption 89
6. Mediatrix of Graces 111
7. Our Lady and the Church 131
8. An Excursus on Eastern Orthodox Theology and 151
Marian Art
Select Bibliography 173
Index of Names 183

Preface
In the course of the last century, the ideas of Catholic theologians
about Mary shifted startlingly. Neo-Scholastic Mariology, with its
robust metaphysics, sought chiefly to describe the unique status of
the woman who was the Mother of the Word of God incarnate,
equipped for her role, and her wider destiny, by special supernatural
“privileges.” The biblically oriented Mariological writing which
prepared the way for, and followed on, the Second Vatican Council
(1962–1965) was more concerned with Mary’s exemplary status as
a woman of faith. This approach, in itself perfectly legitimate (not
least, it was a common theme of the ancient Fathers of the church),
could morph into something rather more ideological at the hands of
some writers for whom the claims for the Mother of God typical of
classicalCatholicdoctrineandtraditionaldevotionwerethrowninto
the shade—to put it kindly. Somewhere between these two sharply
contrasted approaches (and midway between them in time) lay the
path of a ressourcement theology which, in “returning to sources” not
only scriptural but also liturgical and patristic, sought to enrich the
inheritance of Latin theology by adding an emphasis that was more
cordial—addressing the “existential” dimension proper to persons and
prosecuting its task not only in the categories of ontology but in the
language of the heart.
ix