Donald Wallenfang 
Human and Divine Being [EPUB ebook] 
A Study on the Theological Anthropology of Edith Stein

Nothing is more dangerous to be misunderstood than the question, ‘What is the human being?’ In an era when this question is not only being misunderstood but even forgotten, wisdom delivered by the great thinkers and mystics of the past must be recovered. Edith Stein (1891-1942), a Jewish Carmelite mystical philosopher, offers great promise to resume asking the question of the human being. In Human and Divine Being, Donald Wallenfang offers a comprehensive summary of the theological anthropology of this heroic martyr to truth. Beginning with the theme of human vocation, Wallenfang leads the reader through a labyrinth of philosophical and theological vignettes: spiritual being, the human soul, material being, empathy, the logic of the cross, and the meaning of suffering. The question of the human being is asked in light of divine being by harnessing the fertile tension between the methods of phenomenology and metaphysics. Stein spurs us on to a rendezvous with the stream of ‘perennial philosophy’ that has watered the landscape of thought since conscious time began. In the end, the meaning of human being is thrown into sharp relief against the darkness of all that is not authentically human.

About the author

John C. Cavadini is the Mc Grath-Cavadini Director of the Institute for Church Life and Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. He is the author and editor of several books, including Gift to the Church and World (Pickwick, 2021), Visioning Augustine (Wiley-Blackwell, 2019), Pope Francis and the Event of Encounter (Pickwick, 2018), Mary on the Eve of the Second Vatican Council (Notre Dame, 2017), and Explorations in the Theology of Benedict XVI (Notre Dame, 2012).