Bonaventure, John Duns Scotus, and the Franciscan Tradition

In this fourth volume of Collected Essays, Bonaventure, John Duns Scotus, and the Franciscan Tradition, Peter Damian Fehlner traces the development of the Franciscan theologies of redemption, co-redemption, and the Immaculate Conception as they both flow from and return to a very concrete spirituality rooted in devotion to the persons of Jesus and Mary. The main protagonists in these studies are the towering figures of Bonaventure and John Duns Scotus. Framed within an ecclesiological and sacramental worldview, shaped by the correlative and markedly Franciscan doctrines of the Absolute Primacy of Jesus and the Immaculate Conception, Fehlner outlines the theological background and rationale for affirming Mary's co-redemptive role in creation and salvation history. In articulating this great vision of the church, Fehlner discloses the Catholic and Franciscan understanding of Tradition and its progressive penetration and integration of doctrinal and devotional development into the life of the church. For Fehlner, Mary's co-redemptive association with her Son and her union in charity with the Holy Spirit provides both the primary instance of and the hermeneutical key for prayerfully receiving and living the mysteries of our salvation.


About the Author
Peter Damian Fehlner, OFM Conv. (1931-2018), was a Franciscan priest and theologian. For nearly forty years he taught theology in Franciscan schools and seminaries in Italy and the United States. He is the author of several books and countless articles in theological and pastoral journals. His final work was published posthumously as The Theologian of Auschwitz: St. Maximilian Kolbe on the Immaculate Conception in the Life of the Church (2019).



J. Isaac Goff is an instructor of dogmatic theology at Saints Cyril and Methodius Byzantine Catholic Seminary. He is coeditor of A Companion to Bonaventure (2014) and author of Caritas in Primo: A Study of Bonaventure's Disputed Questions on the Mystery of the Trinity (2015).