Cornelius Ernst

Cornelius Ernst OP (1924–1977) was a Sri Lankan Dominican theologian.

Biography

Ernst was born in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in 1924 to an ethnically Dutch Anglican father and Sinhalese Buddhist mother. For a period he was a member of the Communist Party of Sri Lanka. He shared the Anglicanism of his father, but later converted to Catholicism after reading John Henry Newman's Apologia Pro Vita Sua.[1] He was ordained in 1954, following this he taught at Hawkesyard Priory in Staffordshire, England from 1957 until 1966 when he moved to Oxford Priory.[2]

Work

While at Cambridge (1946–7) he attended lectures by Ludwig Wittgenstein,[3] which had a lasting impression on him, leading him to attempt a synthesis of the ideas of Wittgenstein and Aquinas.[4]

Ernst was significantly influenced by Karl Rahner and acknowledged "my profound debt" to him.[5] He produced the first English translation of Rahner's Schriften zur Theologie which he penned the foreword to and named Theological Investigations.[6] This title choice was influenced by Wittgenstein's book Philosophical Investigations.[7] Ernst edited a series of volumes entitled Sacramentum Mundi: an Encyclopedia of Theology alongside Rahner and Kevin Smyth,[8] and also Rahner and Herbert Vorgrimler's Theological Dictionary.[9]

A major focus of Ernst's work was on grace. He edited and wrote the introduction to a Latin-English bilingual translation of the section on grace in Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologiae, which he published in 1972.[7][10] In 1974 he published a book, The Theology of Grace.[11]

He was a long time contributor to the New Blackfriars journal.[12]

In 1979 many of his essays were posthumously published as a book, Multiple Echo,[13] featuring a foreword by Donald M. MacKinnon.[14] Ernst work influenced theologians Nicholas Lash,[15] Fergus Kerr,[16] and Timothy Radcliffe.[17]

Bibliography

See also

References

  1. ^ Kerr, Fergus (December 1978). "CORNELIUS ERNST: SERMON PREACHED at the REQUIEM MASS at Blackfriars, OXFORD, on 26th January 1978". New Blackfriars. 59 (703): 549–54.
  2. ^ Kopack, Austin C. (2024). "Nothing is hidden: nonsense and the revelation of limits". International Journal of Philosophy and Theology. 85 (1–2): 80–94.
  3. ^ Aquinas as Authority. Peeters Publishers. 2002. p. 175.
  4. ^ Keenan, Oliver James (July 2013). "'Sacrament of the Dynamic Transcendence of Christianity': Cornelius Ernst on the Church". New Blackfriars. 94 (1052): 396–414.
  5. ^ Rahner, Karl (1961). "Translator's Introduction". Theological Investigations Volume 1: God, Christ, Mary and Grace. Translated by Cornelius Ernst. Helicon Press. p. xix.
  6. ^ Fritz, Peter Joseph (2014). Karl Rahner's Theological Aesthetics. Catholic University Press of America. p. 112.
  7. ^ a b Kerr, Fergus (April 2022). "Anscombe, Ernst And McCabe". Divus Thomas. 125 (1): 42–70.
  8. ^ Clark Lee, Howard (September 1969). "Sacramentum Mundi: An Encyclopedia of Theology by Karl Rahner, Cornelius Ernst, Kevin Smyth". Journal of Biblical Literature. 88 (3): 339-41.
  9. ^ Rahner, Karl; Vorggrimmler, Herbert (1965). Theological Dictionary. Herder and Herder.
  10. ^ Anderson, Justin M. (2020). Virtue and Grace in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas. Cambridge University Press. p. 312.
  11. ^ Hill, Edmund (October 1982). "Multiple Echo by Cornelius Ernst, O.P. (review)". The Thomist: A Speculative Quarterly Review. 46 (4): 631–6.
  12. ^ See bibliography section below
  13. ^ Roy, Louis (July 2004). "Cornelius Ernst's Theological Seeds". New Blackfriars. 85 (998): 459–70.
  14. ^ Bowyer, Andrew (2019). Donald MacKinnon's Theology: To Perceive Tragedy Without the Loss of Hope. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 149.
  15. ^ Plested, Marcus; Levering, Matthew, eds. (2021). The Oxford Handbook of the Reception of Aquinas. Oxford University Press. p. 512.
  16. ^ Kerr, Fergus (1997). Theology After Wittgenstein. SPCK. p. VIII.
  17. ^ Radcliffe, Timothy (2019). Alive in God: A Christian Imagination. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 19.
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