Person, Grace, and God

Book excerpt: This volume offers a robust theological investigation of the concept of the person. Philip Rolnick calls us to think about personhood not just psychologically -- understanding it as a set of traits or behaviors or as a level of social adroitness -- but theologically. He believes that person represents our highest understanding of our lives with regard to each other, the world, and God. Some understanding of person underlies virtually every significant Christian doctrine and points to what is most at stake in it. A philosophically astute, historically informed, scientifically minded theologian, Rolnick here highlights the centrality of person for Christian thought by tracing its development from pre-Christian anticipations through the early church councils to Augustine, Boethius, Richard of St. Victor, and Aquinas. Examining contemporary challenges to the concept of the person from evolutionary biology and postmodern thought, Rolnick demonstrates the impressive accomplishment of neo-Darwinian research and then shows ways to interpret the biological data that are consonant with Jesus' love commands. Rolnick's Person, Grace, and God is a wide-ranging, deeply informed study of a topic of no small importance in a world in which science, postmodern thought, and Christian theology continuously engage each other.