Against the Titans: Theology and the Martyrdom of Alfred Delp [Hardcover]

Modern history has been marked by the emergence of the figure of the titan, who yearns for self-mastery in the face of death and who denounces modernitys tendency to reduce the individual to the lockstep of need and gratification. But what of those few who rejected the impulses of the titan, those militant desires to exert supremacy over all? The story recounted in Against the Titans: The Theology of the Martyrdom of Alfred Delp examines one martyrs rejection of the titans perversion of heroism and sacrifice. The life of Delp, a Jesuit priest, embodied a Christian theology of martyrdom, articulated over against a virile fundamentalism that rejected divine sovereignty. As Peter Nguyen, S.J., shows, Delp opposed Ernst J?ngers active nihilism by revealing a more authentic and no less demanding existence, one 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.Peter Nguyen, S.J., is assistant professor of theology at Creighton University.

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 Delps 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 Delps 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 Delps 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,lSC