"You are beautiful as Tirzah, my love, lovely like Jerusalem." --Song of Songs

The highly regarded spiritual writer and theologian Fr. Aidan Nichols, O.P. presents an overview of the Old Testament by showing what it is and its relationship to the New Testament. He explains that it is essential for one to be familiar with the Old Testament in order to understand properly, and in a deeper way, the richness and message of the New. In particular, Fr. Nichols shows how important it is to grasp that connection in order to understand better and to believe in the message and the person of Christ.

Ignorance of the Old Testament makes it impossible to comprehend the entire divine plan that stretches between the two Testaments. Nichols maintains that we are ill-equipped to read and understand the great theologians, saints, and Scripture commentators of the Christian era without a deep familiarity with the Old Testament. Even understanding and appreciating the art of the Church remains limited if the Old Testament is a closed book for us.

Nichols made use of studies by biblical experts from various Christian denominations--notably Evangelicals and Anglicans--in writing this widely appealing work. He also drew on the Fathers and Doctors of the Church to help illuminate the beauty of the relationship between the two Testaments.

"In this marvelous work of biblical theology and patristic ressourcement, Aidan Nichols illumines the pattern of God's promises in salvation history in a manner that will be accessible and informative to students, pastors, and scholars. Other than Pope Benedict XVI, no theologian writing today has mastered so well the approach to Scripture set forth by such giants as Jean Danielou, Louis Bouyer, and Henri de Lubac. This book should be read by everyone who seeks an understanding of Scripture and of the early Christian Fathers."
--Matthew Levering, Associate Professor of Theology, Ave Maria University...

Aidan Nichols' timely book is the first full-scale investigation of Joseph Ratzinger's theology in its development from the 1950s to the present day.

It presents a chronological account of the development of Ratzinger's writing which reflects a wide range of historical and theoretical interests such as: Augustine's ecclesiology; early Franciscanism and the idea of salvation history; Christian brotherhood; the unfolding of the Second Vatican Council; commenting on the Apostles' Creed; explorations of the concept of the Church; preaching, liturgy and Church music; eschatology; the foundations of dogmatic and moral theology; the Church and politics; ecumenism, and the problem of pluralism. This book is a comprehensive introduction to a figure who is in his own right, quite apart from his significance in the politics of the Church, a major German Catholic theologian of the twentieth century.

This new edition provides an amplification of the existing chapters by reference to books and articles produced by Joseph Ratzinger between 1986/1987 and his election as Pope in 2005. This is especially important in the area of the Liturgy, where his 1999 study 'The Spirit of the Liturgy' takes further his critique of contemporary Western Catholic worship and his call for a new liturgical movement which would aim to 'reform the Reform'.

Nichols also includes two wholly new chapters devoted to (a) Ratzinger's writings on Judaism, Islam and other religions, as well as (b) secularization and the future of Europe....