Against the Titans: Theology and the Martyrdom of Alfred Delp

(Hardback)

---

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

Recent history has been marked by titans, those yearning for self-mastery in the face of death and denouncing modernitys tendency to reduce the individual to the lockstep of need and gratification. But what of those few who rejected these militant desires to exert supremacy over all The story recounted in Against the Titans: The Theology of the Martyrdom of Alfred Delp examines a martyrs rejection of the perversion of heroism and sacrifice. The life of Delp, a Jesuit priest, embodied a Christian theology of martyrdom articulated against a virile fundamentalisms rejection of divine sovereignty. Against Ernst Jngers active nihilism, Delp revealed a more authentic and no less demanding existence that came not from acquiring self-mastery but rather from an emptying out of self an indiferencia, an unselving through a radical dependence upon God.

Reviews

In this significant study Father Peter Nguyen presents a fine introduction to the life and thought of the twentieth-century Jesuit martyr Alfred Delp. Even more, he offers a moving and insightful analysis of Delp's own painful spiritual maturation as he confronts anxiety and fear in a Nazi prison. Hence the book is not merely an historical exploration, but a penetrating theological discernment that makes Delp's witness newly available to us as we seek, as disciples, to journey from darkness into the full light of Christ.

--Fr. Robert P. Imbelli, author of Rekindling the Christic Imagination

This fascinating book presents the witness of the German Jesuit and martyr Alfred Delp. Peter Nguyen provides an invaluable overview of Delp's life and theology, making use of his sermons, essays, plays, journal entries and prison letters. Furthermore, Nguyen carefully locates Delp in his early twentieth-century intellectual context, convincingly contrasting him with the Promethean philosophy of Ernst Jnger. Nguyen also clarifies Delp's rich, kenotic Christology with close reference to his contemporary Hans urs von Bathasar. This important book is an invitation to learn from Delp's extraordinary witness and theology.

--Michael Mawson, Charles Sturt University

Author Bio

Peter Nguyen, S.J., is assistant professor of theology at Creighton University.