[Fr.] Edward T. Oakes, S.J.: An Appreciation [Ecumenical]

First Things ^ | December 7, 2013 | Thomas G. Guarino

[sitetest]

Father Edward T. Oakes, S.J., professor of dogmatic theology at Mundelein Seminary and University of St. Mary of the Lake, has gone to God, dying on December 6, 2013. Readers of First Things know Fr. Oakes well. Over the course of two decades he has been intimately linked with the journal, publishing essay after essay on subjects that extended from Shakespeare to original sin, from the latest movie, to the nature of evolution.

Oakes wrote well on many themes, but he will surely be remembered as one of the earliest and most insightful interpreters of the extraordinary thinker, Hans Urs von Balthasar. His 1997 book, Pattern of Redemption, was one of the first volumes in English to outline the theological architecture of the Balthasarian corpus in an accessible manner. Oakes was an accomplished cicerone, guiding readers through the notoriously difficult thicket of Balthasar’s thought, showing how his massive trilogy—encompassing Glory of the Lord, Theo-Drama and Theo-Logic—was stitched into an intelligible whole. While the Swiss theologian precipitously dropped readers into a welter of ideas and personages, with dense excurses on Goethe, Hegel, Nietzsche and Péguy, Oakes masterfully explained how these thinkers, and many others, were woven into Balthasar’s capacious Christian vision.

Oakes did the theological world a further service by translating into English the unabridged text of Balthasar’s magisterial study, The Theology of Karl Barth, a book warmly praised by the great Reformed thinker himself...

[sitetest]

For folks unfamiliar with Fr. Oakes, here is a short appreciation of him and his work that was published on-line today in First Things.