Recent Catholic theology has tended to prize theological anthropology (the study of human societies and cultures) and fundamental theology as the basis for renewal in the decades after Vatican II.
The center of theology — and the basis for any authentic renewal — however, is always first and foremost the mystery of God and the revelation of God in Christ. As an attempt to turn the theological gaze back to these central mysteries, Fr. Austin Litke takes up the “Anthropological Paradigm” for the Incarnation as inaugurated by the Fathers of the Church and then given a definitive development in St. Thomas Aquinas.
In this, we see how the study of theological anthropology and the mode of God’s revelation are not ends in themselves, but rather direct the mind back to the central mystery of Christian Faith: the Word made flesh.
About Fr. Litke
Fr. Austin Dominic Litke, OP, is a native of Western Kentucky. As an undergraduate, he attended the University of St. Thomas and St. John Vianney College Seminary, graduating with a degree in Classical Languages and Catholic Studies. After a year at St. Meinrad Seminary and School of Theology in Indiana, he entered the Order of Preachers, also known as the Dominicans. He completed his theological studies and received a Licentiate in Sacred Theology at the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C., and was ordained a priest in 2011. After assignments as chaplain at Sloan-Kettering Memorial Cancer Hospital and New York University, Litke was assigned to Rome, where he pursued a Doctorate in Sacred Theology and Patristic Sciences at the Pontifical Patristics Institute, the “Augustinianum,” of the Lateran University. For the last two academic years, Litke taught at the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C., and this academic year is an adjunct professor and spiritual director at The Saint Paul Seminary and a visiting professor of Catholic Studies at the University of St. Thomas.