Contemplation and Kingdom: What relation is there between Jesus’s preaching of the Kingdom and the contemplation of God?

October 06, 2020
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Labels: aquinas, Contemplation and Kingdom (book), featured books, kevin hart, Kingdom of God, richard of st. victor
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St. Augustine’s Press’ 2020 book, Contemplation and Kingdom by Kevin Hart, seeks to extend the work of Richard of St. Victor in important ways. Kevin Hart is the Edwin B. Kyle Professor of Christian Studies in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia. 

From the publisher’s description of Contemplation and Kingdom: 

Contemplation and Kingdom seeks to retrieve aspects of Richard of St. Victor’s treatment of contemplation, principally in De arca mystica, and does so by weighing Thomas Aquinas’s reservations about this treatment in the Summa theologiæ. Is Aquinas right to object, as Augustine does in De Doctrina Christiana, that our contemplation should go directly to God and not be stalled in the consideration of the natural world? What relation is there between Jesus’s preaching of the Kingdom and the contemplation of God? Is the contemplative life consistent with Jesus’s injunction to love both God and neighbor? These are the principal questions considered in the book.

Readers may also find interesting Kevin Hart’s 2014 book, Kingdoms of God.