A Testimonial to Grace: and Reflections on a Theological Journey [Hardcover]

Avery Dulles (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1996 | ISBN-10: 1556129041 | ISBN-13: 978-1556129049 | Edition: Anniversary

DullesO account, written in 1946, of his conversion to the Catholic Church. This special 50th Anniversary Edition contains a newly penned OafterwordO in which the author details his fifty-year journey from conversion to priesthood to theologian. Dulles describes the mentors and the experiences that shaped his perspective as a theologian.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 144 pages
• Publisher: Sheed & Ward; Anniversary edition (September 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1556129041
• ISBN-13: 978-1556129049
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #201,276 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

61 of 63 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Esteemed Jesuit Theologian Dulles's Autobiography a Goldmine, December 16, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: A Testimonial to Grace: and Reflections on a Theological Journey (Hardcover)

Father Avery Dulles,S.J., has once again demonstrated his intellectual acuity and literary talent with the augmentation of his autobiographical account, "A Testimonial to Grace," which, in its updated form, with its 47 supplementary post-conversion account pages, has been subtitled "Reflections on a Theological Journey." Originally penned in 1946, Fr. Dulles's impressive autobiography,imbued with his trademark erudition, traces the evolution of his philosophy from his early days at Harvard University, where he encountered many thinkers to whose influence he acknowledges a debt, through his Jesuit training years and,ultimately, his work in fields such as ecclesiology and ecumenism in the wake of the Second Vatican Council.Interspersed throughout are unique anecdotes of episodes in Fr. Dulles's illustrious academic and professorial careers involving such luminaries as John Courtney Murray,S.J., and Gustave Weigel,S.J. Fr. Avery Dulles's autobiography will serve as an inspiration to Catholics and non-Catholics alike,interested in the reality of God's ineffable grace and its operation in the human soul by the will of God.It is to this mysterious reality that Dulles wisely attributes his conversion to Christ and His Church, reminding us once again that grace must be freely accepted by everyone who would come into union with God, be he extraordinarily learned or not. Fr. Dulles has indeed performed a great service to us laymen in reminding us of the eternally precious gift of grace, to which his life has indeed been a testimonial.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Anarchy is not what the Catholic Church is all about., October 16, 2008

By 

T. Patrick Killough "All about Patrick" (Black Mountain, NC United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Testimonial to Grace: and Reflections on a Theological Journey (Hardcover)

Grandson of a Presbyterian minister, Avery Dulles (1918 - ) followed neither his father John Foster (Secretary of State) nor his uncle Allen Welsh (Director of Central Intelligence) into undergraduate study at Princeton. In 1936, fresh from Choate, Avery enrolled instead at Harvard.

Young Avery left Choate a confessed atheist and esthete. During a freshman year spent by preference in Boston and Cambridge bars more than in classrooms, Dulles and some friends engaged in a prank which saw all but himself expelled from Harvard. Sobered, he settled into serious study and as a sophomore and junior absorbed first Aristotle, then Plato.

Professor Paul Rice Doolin, a convert to Roman Catholicism, was Dulles's tutor for eight months, immersing him in 17th and 18th Century French thinkers and bringing him to the brink of his first religious conversion, not to revealed Christianity but to philosophical theism: that is, belief that behind the order in nature there is an intelligence, a will, in short, a person. Two years later Avery Dulles became a Roman Catholic.

Dulles's philosophical journey from atheism to theism is the subject of the first ("The Human Search") of three chapters in the 50th Anniversary Edition of A TESTIMONIAL TO GRACE (1946), fleshed out in 1996 with AND REFLECTIONS ON A THEOLOGICAL JOURNEY.

Chapter Two is "The Divine Answer," in portions an uncharacteristically passionate and even poetic paean to Roman Catholicism. Thanks to God's mysterious providence and grace, Avery Dulles had stumbled into the treasures of Ali Baba's cave. His spiritual wandering was over. The rest of his life would go to unwrapping and cataloging the treasures within Catholicism.

Chapter Three, "Reflections on a Theological Journey," first briefly reviews Avery Dulles's searching life till 1946. But most of this later text is about the intervening 50 years. Be it noted in passing that five years after the 50th Anniversary Edition, Pope John Paul II named Avery Dulles a Cardinal in 2001.

In Chapter One, Dulles had identified classical liberalism as the only serious temptress wooing him not to become either philosophical theist or believing Roman Catholic. In Chapter Three, a Dulles, always a centrist moderate, like his early model Aristotle, shows himself moving decisively center right. The state is a necessary divinely intended organism whose purpose is the temporal good of man -- not a voluntary association of anarchist libertarians. Authority is a good thing. The Roman Catholic Church has its authority from God and is not afraid to use it.

"The Catholic Church, according to Vatican II, was a 'necessary' society in the sense that all are bound to adhere to its teachings. Only inculpable ignorance can excuse one from these obligations" (p. 132) This is a moderate version of the ancient dogma "no salvation outside the church" preached with passionate rigidity every Sunday for 7 1/2 years on Boston Common by Dulles's onetime hero Father Leonard Feeney, S. J. Feeney's base of operations in the turbulent late 1940s was the Saint Benedict Center in Cambridge, co-founded by newly converted Catholic layman Avery Dulles in 1941. "The rigid positions attributed to Father Feeney and his disciples were not a part of my experience, though I did observe, and support, his efforts to confront non-Catholics with the full challenge of the faith" (p. 99).

This is a powerful, quietly stated spiritual autobiography. Read it once and, I predict, you will read it at least twice. -OOO-