Essays and Addresses on the Philosophy of Religion

This book shaped two of the twentieth century's most beloved Christian writers: C.S. Lewis and Flannery O'Connor turned to von Hügel's essays for intellectual grounding in their own explorations of faith. That alone should tell you something about what awaits inside. Baron Friedrich von Hügel was a lay Catholic theologian writing during the turbulent rise of modernist thought, and he brought to his work a rare combination of philosophical rigor and spiritual depth. The essays collected here move from foundational questions about religion and theism, through examinations of Christ's teachings and the Christian life, to nuanced reflections on the Catholic Church. What emerges is a sustained meditation on how modern minds might authentically hold religious belief: not by abandoning reason, but by bringing thought to bear on the deepest questions of human longing. Von Hügel writes for anyone who has felt the tension between intellectual honesty and spiritual desire, who refuses to choose between the life of the mind and the life of faith. These are essays written in a different era, but they speak directly to our own age of doubt and questioning.