This is a blog post from Robin Baird-Smith, Publishing Director at Continuum.
Herbert McCabe, the Dominican friar who died in 2001, was arguably the most important English Catholic theologian of the post war years. Not however `arguably` to us, as we believe he was indeed just that. In his lifetime he published only three or four books but his influence was enormous. This is confirmed by people as diverse as the philosopher Sir Anthony Kenny, the poet P.J. Kavanagh and the literary critic Terry Eagleton.
McCabe was a Thomist through and through but in his Thomistic explorations he was also profoundly influenced by Wittgenstein. Since his death, Continuum has published more McCabe books than were ever published during his own life time.- seven in all. We have also reissued two of his earlier books Law, Love and Language and The New Creation.
To our enormous satisfaction all these books reprint regularly and Mc Cabe`s influence seems to grow accordingly. On March 5th, there will be a one day symposium held at Blackfriars, Oxford entirely devoted to McCabe`s work and thought. The impressive line up of speakers include Fergus Kerr op and Sarah Coakley, the Norris Hulse Professor in the University of Cambridge. The title of the symposium is Faith Within Reason, which is the title of one of the McCabe books we publish.
In a sentence, of McCabe one could say this: `It is only through the disclosure of God`s hidden life to our human minds that we can know of the one primary truth from which all his theology derives and to which it always returns:not that we ought to love God but that we are only able to do so because from eternity, God has loved us first`. That is the only gospel that MCabe ever preached.
For a complete list of McCabe titles in print please refer to the Continuum website.
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