The last book of Fr. Peter Damian Fehlner was published this past year on February 11, the Feast of the Apparitions at Lourdes. This volume contextualized St. Maximilian Kolbe inside the Franciscan Intellectual Tradition, showing how his thought and action is not only enduring valid, but prophetically adapted for the post-Vatican II context in which the Franciscan Order following St. Francis is called to rebuild the Church according to the model of Mary Immaculate.

Get the book here: https://www.lectiopublishing.com/books.php?b=16

Both to honor the memory of Fr. Peter, who passed away 8 May, 2018, and to facilitate the study of this volume, the Franciscans of the Immaculate are sponsoring a year-long seminar on the book The Theologian of Auschwitz with Dr. J. Isaac Goff. Dr. Goff was a friend of Fr. Peter’s and spent the past ten years working with and under him in his own studies, leading up to being named his literary executor and overseeing the editing of this present volume on the theology and life of St. Maximilian Kolbe.

Ave Maria!

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In this second lesson over Fr. Peter Damian Fehlner’s book The Theologian of Auschwitz, Dr. J. Isaac Goff speaks about what is theology, specifically, what is dogmatic theology, its presuppositions, and its methods. This will provide the foundation for speaking of St. Maximilian Kolbe’s theology about the Immaculate Virgin Mary and the Franciscan Order place in the Church according to the plan of God.

Get the book here: https://www.lectiopublishing.com/books.php?b=16

Ave Maria!

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The post What is Dogmatic Theology? – KBGF 2 first appeared on AirMaria.com.

In this third class of the seminar with Dr. J. Isaac Goff over the book of Fr. Peter Damian Fehlner The Theologian of Auschwitz, we look at what it means to do dogmatic theology. We particularly look three figures through the history of theology to help us understand what dogmatic theology is based off of and how it is pursued.

Find the book here: https://www.lectiopublishing.com/book…

Dr. Goff refers to an article in this book: https://academyoftheimmaculate.com/co…

First we look at Vincent of Lerins, a Church Father from the early 400’s, who gives an early example of how to determine what indeed is the Church’s doctrine and how it can develop in continuity. Second we look at Melchior Cano, a Dominican theologian who listed out the sources of good dogmatic theology in the context of the Protestant Reformation’s attach on Church teaching, and individuated 9 different sources used for theology, while Dr. Goff also explains how the Liturgy is in a unique relation to theology as it sums up Scripture and Tradition in the now of the Church’s worship and preaching, which is Christ himself worshiping the Father and preaching to us. Third, we look at St. John Cardinal Newman’s notes (characteristics) of true doctrinal development.

Then we look particularly at the theological method of Fr. Peter Damian Fehlner in order to make the final preparation to engage the book The Theologian of Auschwitz. Following the very first systematic theologian, St. Iraneaus of Lyon, Fr. Peter uses a method of typology. This is based off of a metaphysic of exemplarism, which sees the created world in relation to the exemplary (or creative) ideas eternally present in the mind of God as his goodness reflected in finite ways, and in relation to the divine will freely and wisely choosing to created some of these. So from understanding the truth about creation in relation to the goodness and wisdom of God, we use the same method of comparison for revelation itself, seeing how through concrete individual persons in history (starting from Adam and Eve, going up to Jesus and Mary), the goodness and wisdom of God is manifested and communicated to us. In theology, this method looks for how everything fits together into a harmonious and beautiful whole, called the analogy of faith.

Within this are two different spirals heading in a distinct direction.

The first spiral is called capitulation and recapitulation. Capitulation means some principle or head (caput in Latin), and recapitulation is to bring that whole under a new head. The greatest example is how Jesus Christ recapitulates or re-establishes humanity in himself (Ephesians 1:10), and the closest example is our conversion where we bring our whole self under and into Christ.

The second spiral is circulation and recirculation. While the first refers primarily to the progressive elevation of creation into God, this speaks to the actual historical working out of God’s plan in rhyme. Adam and Eve are created and fall, God resets with Noah and the flood, but Noah falls too, and the same themes are presented time and time again throughout the Old Testament. Fr. Peter takes these two outstandingly Scriptural and Patristic interpretations of God’s action, based in wisdom or, philosophically, a metaphysic, but only manifested through history in concrete persons. When we put this together, we see God’s plan of lifting up humanity to himself in the Church through the New Adam and New Eve.

This leads into our final point, is theology about thinking or doing? The Franciscan answer is that it is about doing, but doing wisely. Therefore, it requires the sanctification both of our intellects and our wills. This starts in the act of faith in the teaching of the Church and in living that faith within the Church by the sacraments, this is called symbolic theology by Bonaventure, or to speak in English instead of Greek, speaking correctly about all divine things put together in the one whole of the faith believed, celebrated, and lived. We then apply our intellects to understand better, and this is theology proper. This is the domain of the academic theologian. Finally is the movement into God, to go from knowing God to touching and “tasting” him in the full flowering of the Christian life in mystical theology.

Ave Maria!

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In this fourth lesson in our seminar, Dr. Goff address the title, the intent, and the structure of The Theologian of Auschwitz by Fr. Peter Fehlner.
Buy the book here: https://www.lectiopublishing.com/books.php?b=16

At the beginning of the lesson, we touch again on typology in Scripture with circulation and recirculation as the historical manifestation of capitulation and recapitulation. This means that as history rolls, it rhymes, and each time this rhyme rolls around, there is summing up of everything that went before under a new heading. Thus, there is no contradiction between a meaningful and metaphysical hierarchy and history, but it is through history that hierarchy, or sacred order, is built up and established. This hierarchy at the same times gives history its meaning: neither endless cycles nor unending progression, but a spiral that builds up towards towards the decisive moment when this world ends and eternity with or without God begins.

Maximilian Kolbe: Who is he?
This Polish Franciscan as a boy had Mary appear to him and offer him two crowns, purity or martyrdom. He choose both. As a seminarian in Rome, he founds an organization called the Militia of the Immaculate, and then started to work in the press and missionary work in a Marian key. He sealed his teaching with testimony in the death camp of Auschwitz where he volunteered to take another man’s place in a starvation bunker, and lead the other men perishing with him in prayer and praise until he himself, the last alive, was killed by the Nazi’s.

Theologian, Saint, Martyr
To say who is a theologian, we need to ask what theology is.
Bonaventure says there are three types of theology:
Symbolic: this is the together of things believed in faith by all
Proper: this is the academic discipline of thinking about what is believed
Mystical: this is the fruition of belief and study into union with the persons believed in and studies.
Saint Maximilian is all three. As a saint canonized by Church, we know he held to the true faith, he was capable as a theologian, but he is also someone who lived what he taught all the way to the end. Saints are the true theologians, and true theologians are saints.

Intent of the book
Saint Maximilian mentioned the need to write a book on Our Lady as early as 1919, but mostly works on this book from 1939-1941, up until the day of his arrest. He left behind the first sketches of this book, and in the present volume, Fr. Peter Fehlner puts together what Koble had started, having started on this work in 2007 and working on it until his recent death.

Kolbe shows us the way forwards to true renewal, but why renewal? Fehlner says because charity is being profaned by twin forms of materialism:
–One is unlimited indulgence in the sensuality of the body and of the emotions.
–The other are furious political ideologies, puritanical and prosecutorial, which redirect good initiatives to evil purposes.
These two point have only become all the more serious even before the book reaches its first birthday, and so we need to know what is charity and how it works out through time.

The critics of Kolbe, whether they accuse him of being a bad theologian or an obsolete one, that Saint Maximilian was canonized and praised both by Paul VI and John Paul II. Fr Peter points out the link between the sanctify and theologians, and how only a theology that ends in sanctity is a good theology.

Finally, we look at the structure of the book.
It is in 5 parts: The first gives the foundations for St Maximilian’s theology, the second follows as it was put into practice. The third argues for a development in the Franciscan Order as centered around the Cause of the Immaculate Conception, first its definition and then its incorporation in the Church, called by Kolbe the Two Pages. If Kolbe can be shown to be in continuity with Scotus, then there is a basis for his reading of history and so part four examines the metaphysics of the will and charity in Scotus and Kolbe both to show the continuity but also to respond to the contemporary profanation of Charity. Finally, in part five we move into the question of putting this all into practice by a Marian and Pnuematological renewal of the Church, a renew Fr Peter maintains is the one called for by Vatican II. where we ask “Who is Mary?” and “What does she ask of us today?”

Ave Maria!

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What are the central terms used by Franciscan Theology and, more exactly, by St. Maximilian Kolbe and by Fr. Peter Damian Fehlner in his book The Theologian of Auschwitz? With Dr. J. Isaac Goff, we look though the Glossary of Terms Used by St. Maximilian at the end of The Theologian of Auschwitz, focusing on some particular terms both from Franciscan Philosophy and Franciscan Theology.

Philosophical Terms

Affectus justitiae and Affectus commodi
These describe the “weighting” of the will both to what is useful for myself but also to what is good in itself.

Disjuntive Transcendentals
These are transcendent above any lower classification, but are not categories themselves. Rather they describe how all being fall into one mode or another of being: infinite/finite, eternal/temporal, rational/irrational. Form This has two meanings. One, the more commonly known, is the interior reality making something what it is. The other, less known, is some reality within a being giving a particular perfection, such as will or an idea.

Haecceitas
Aristotle and Aquinas thought that individual beings are distinguished within a community of similar being by having their own chunk of matter. Scotus saw instead there is a deeper reality to individuality coming from God’s willing to create it, he, not very helpfully, called it “this-ness” (haecceitas in Latin).

Freedom, necessity and contingent
Is freedom in the choice or in the choosing? Many think I only have freedom in choosing between options, but my freedom is really that I am the one who chooses. In heaven, one necessary loves the God one sees (such is divine beauty), but freely. Infinite/Finite God being infinite does not just mean “always bigger”, but unlimited in spiritual power. Infinity in God is a perfection, but infinity is not a perfecting in a finite being, for a finite being is perfected in its finitude, that is, by being something specific.

Simply simple perfections (perfectio simpliciter simplex)
These are perfections, such as will and intellect, that do not imply finitude in themselves, but can be found in God in an infinite mode or in personal beings in finite modes (human/angelic). This is unlike, for example, having four legs is a perfection for a dog since four legs already implies finitude. While these are and act according to the being who possesses them, a higher power can elevate them to act at in a higher mode, such as the intellect acting beyond human capacities by the gift of Faith.

Univocity of Being
We spoke about the controversial point of Scotus, but you need to listen to find out!

Theological Terms (listen to learn!)
Age
Evolution and the Two Pages of History in Kolbe
Fixation
Golden Thread
Self-Annihilation
Transubstantiation into the Holy Spirit, Transubstantiation into Mary Immaculate
Unlimited Consecration

Ave Maria!

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This week Dr. J. Isaac Goff walks us through Chapter One of The Theologian of Auschwitz.
The book is available here: https://www.lectiopublishing.com/books.php?b=16

In this chapter, Father Peter Damian Fehlner point out that we must see someone’s actions in the context of their final goal or intention. Therefore, he first lays out testimonies of St. Maximilian’s intellectual capabilities and signs that he was working within a Bonaventurian methodology (intellectual theology leading from basic faith to wisdom) and a Scotistic finality (Absolute Primacy of Christ and the Immaculate Conception of Mary). These point to St Maximilian’s final goals, and then Fr. Peter Fehlner lays out various pieces of evidence attesting to St. Maximilian having a well-thought out theology, but one that only too late started to be written down.

The three primacy concerns of St. Maximilian were the rereading of theology as framed by the Immaculate Conception, a deepening of Mariology, and the mission of Franciscans in the Church of today. We see how while he was doing this almost a hundred years ago, his work is still very relevant, perhaps even more so.

While St. Maximilian never gave us a full work, Fr. Peter claims he gave us enough (this present volume is merely supplying the background and connecting the dots). His defense of the primacy and the nature of charity or divine love as manifested in the Word Incarnate, Jesus, and the Immaculate Virgin-Mother, Mary, is squarely in line with Vatican II and the emphasis on the coming of the Son and the Spirit to the Church and pushing the Church to mission. Indeed, paying attention to how the Immaculate Conception, the synergy between the divine and the created person. radicalizes and integrates all of theology is sorely needed today.

Ave Maria!

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Is St. Maximilian Kolbe a real theologian, or just a zealous and holy priest, but with a mistaken and even dangerous theology? Dr. J. Isaac Goff start to guide us through Chapter 2 of The Theologian of Auschwitz by Father Peter Damian Fehlner.

In 1954, the Polish theologian Fr. George Domanski broached the idea that St. Maximilian was an important theologian for the future of the Church, and was quickly criticized. Thirty years later, at a conference on St. Maximilian’s Mariology, the two positions were stronger and more developed, for some, St. Maximilian is a great theological authority, for others, a holy man, quite inspirational, but no theological authority either in his time or ours.

In this chapter, we look deeper, and see different ideas of what theology is and how it is done. From an approach that emphasizes the intellectual and scientific nature of theology, we have Thomistic and contemporary critical theology. In a Thomistic approach there is a strong focus on deduction from principles given by revelation as a subordinate science that is a real science (STh., I q.1 a.2 resp.). There is then the approach of contemporary theology with its emphasis on careful historical-critical analysis of sources and the study of interpretation and method in an academic environment with long bibliographies and fat footnotes. Both these look at St. Maximilian as “a-critical, radically anti-intellectual, and therefore prone to foster ‘unsound’ spirituality” (p 27).

But the problem at heart is that St. Maximilian is a Franciscan theologian, but the Franciscan approach to theology is almost forgotten by many. Intellectual, academic work is only one part of life, and needs to be integrated into a whole life well-lived. Franciscan theology realizes this, and says the purpose of theology is not to know, but to love and to live in love. The will and the mind are deeply connected and are sanctified together or not at all. Theological study helps this process along when joined to prayer and service, and St Maximilian excelled in all three of these. As Fr. Peter tells us:

“Critics of Kolbe subordinate the spiritual to the exigencies of the scientific, conceived as the only legitimate form of critical discernment. Kolbe, like Scotus, prioritizes charity (and so the decuit over debet in our theology) and further insists on the mediation of the Immaculate Mediatrix—as it were, the Magistra theologorum—as indispensable to the successful cultivation of theology” (p 35).

Is St. Maximilian a real theologian? Eminently so, but you must understand the Bonaventurian concept of theology as he did.

“The theological character of Kolbe’s work for the cause of our Lady of the Immaculate Conception can be explained only with difficulty on the basis of theology as this is commonly understood in Thomistic [or Kantian] circles. But in the Bonaventurian-Scotistic notion of academic theology, that theological character is ‘obvious’ in a very true sense” (p 22).

Ave Maria!

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In this seminar, we look St. Maximilian Kolbe vs Thomism. To review, last time we looked at The Theologian of Auschwitz by Dr. Peter Damian Fehlner (buy it here) with Dr. J. Isaac Goff, we saw Fehlner’s two theses:

• One’s theological orientation will influence one’s interpretation of the theological character of Maximilian Kolbe’s project.
• Maximilian Kolbe is working within a Bonaventurian-Scotistic system, and must be understood within that tradition.

Thus, in this seminar we start to enter into this theological tradition, particularly in comparison and contrast to a Thomistic-Aristotelian approach to theology. In order to do this, we have to look at how the two traditions understand the human person with different accents that lead to very different understandings of theology and the purpose of theology.

Thomistic theology stresses knowing truth as being that which fulfills man, Franciscans emphasize the lived-out love of the truly good, called wisdom.

Thomism stresses the contemplation of truth as the purpose of knowing, Franciscans say that truth is only fully known when knowledge passes to a loving response.

For the Thomist, ones knows and then loves what is known. For the Franciscan, knowing is only fully realized in loving.

This means that for the Thomist, one can know holy things but not be holy, or one can be holy but rely on another to point out the holy thing to be loved. For the Franciscan, only the lover fully knows and knowing is for the purpose of loving, the moment of conceiving a love for what is known is the purpose of knowing. This is because the Franciscan conception of intellect and will sees each as a power with an act of its own, but circulating within each other, while Thomism sees a linear development where I know a truth, see it is good, and desire it. For them, knowing is important, and then love follows more or less automatically.

Thomism stresses that freedom is the choice between limited goods, Franciscans that freedom is the free embrace of the good as good. Thus, for the Thomist there is no freedom in heaven since the vision of God’s goodness automatically triggers the will to choose, but for the Franciscan, even if divine beauty is so compelling it necessary enraptures, the act of “Yes, Lord, it is Good” is still free since it comes from my own heart.

These and many more topics are treated in order to lay down the foundation for Saint Maximilian Kolbe’s theological work as eminently faithful, intellectual, and real.

Ave Maria!

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We look at the critical question (and thus “critical theology”) in this 9th seminar of Mary in the teachings of St Maximilian Kolbe, lead by Dr. J. Isaac Goff and following the book of Fr. Peter Damian Fehlner: The Theologian of Auschwitz: https://www.lectiopublishing.com/books.php?b=16

The critical question that relation between limited knowledge and certainty in personal action. This was formulated in a secular/agnostic way by Descartes and Kant, the Thomistic denial of the problem, and the approach of Bonaventure, Scotus, and Maximilian Kolbe for whom the question was not the “How do I get out of my head” but “How do I move from knowledge to certain wisdom.” I am finite but desire Infinite Truth, I am changeable but desire Uncreated Goodness.

Their answer is through love, for love knows what knowledge cannot. Stopping at knowledge alone does not give certainty nor rest. You must embrace the truth in love, but not love of an idea, but love of persons.

Above all the persons of Jesus, “the light come into the world” and Mary, fully Immaculate and Mediatrix of grace. We must bring forth, birth, Christ in our own lives, and She teaches us how to do this, how to live in the truth.

This Primacy of Christ and conjoined predestination of Mary stabilizes the life of the mind, of the person, and of society as the central point of created reality. This is the fixed idea of St. Francis and St. Maximilian, and making this known is the contemporary duty of the Franciscan order. And this is by the Total Consecration to Mary Immaculate, which is to realize that by baptism we are made adopted sons of the Father, but also of Mary, who brought forth Christ, head and body.

In Total Consecration, we personally embrace the reality of her maternal care and allow her to teach us in the depth of our hearts how to unite ourselves to the will of God: we learn babble our Fiat by listening to our Mother’s voice. (Luke 1:38?).

Ave Maria!

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In the 10th encounter of our seminar with Dr. J. Isaac Goff on the book of Fr. Peter Damian Fehlner, “Kolbe, The Theologian of Auschwitz” we pause a moment to do some questions and answers, particularly looking at the similarities between Palamas and Franciscanism and St. Maximilian Kolbe, then at Mary and secularism, and finally at the Conventual Franciscan and friend of St. Maximilian, Leone Veuthey, who recently recognized by the Vatican as having lived a life of heroic sanctity and now a candidate for sainthood.

There are some similarities, historical and theological, between the Franciscan Order and the Hesychasm defended by Palamas. Both were radically incarnational, practical, and invocatory: calling on the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary. For both, the saints are not just theologians, but lived theologies. Like Bonaventure, Palamas saw the need for a scientific and syllogistic theology that gives a form to intellectual reflection within the greater whole of being in the Church and seeking union with God. St. Maximilian also sees the need for methodical reasoning while calling on the name of Mary in the face of the social evils gripping our century. This is licit because she works in a conjoined and coordinated way with and under her Son and God, Jesus Christ, in the destruction of satanic influence in our hearts and in society.

This is needed because we have a created independence, but if we make that independence absolute, we systematically exclude God and slavishly idolize our feelings and desires. But in Mary we see a person free and obedient, who in choosing the will of God brings forth the Savior in the world, and continues to do so in our hearts as our spiritual mother. If you deny this Marian principle of loving obedience to God as the path to blessedness and perfection, you destabilize man by abandoning him to disordered desires and you seek to perfect him according to some type of ideology. Only in choosing God do we find the final goal of all longing and the true perfection of man.

So we call upon her and seek to imitate her, for while the symbolic structure of the world points towards Her and Her Son, she is not a symbol but a real human woman that I enter into a filial relationship with. By knowing her fullness of genuine love, I know what it means to love God and love others. But to do this, I not only need to will to love, but to know it, to have a holy mind as well as a holy heart, for compassion without clarity of mind is a very dangerous thing. I need to be able to go from what I know to how to act through a middle which guides my actions from origin to end, from identity to love.

We need a Christian Philosophy, and Fr. Peter himself was very influenced by Leone Veuthey, a friar recently proclaimed venerable and so a candidate for becoming canonized a Saint. This all grows within relationships with real persons through invoking the holy names of Jesus and Mary (and not invoking unholy names!) and through meeting Jesus personally in the sacraments. The “profanation of charity” in our day is the domination of sensuality and social ideologies that destroy in the name of love and equity. But how Mary shows us what true love is.

Ave Maria!

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