Books by Fr. Aidan Nichols

The horror presented by the increasing institutionalisation of abortion in contemporary society poses some of the strongest moral and theological questions of our time. Moral reason convinces the Catholic Church of the intrinsic evil of abortion, but so too do the witness of the Scriptures and the divine revelation of redemption.The innocent suffering of children killed in the womb raises fundamental questions. Here are the reflections of a group of distinguished theologians who met at the Ab...

Novelist Sigrid Undset (1882-1949) left a mark on twentieth-century literature, not only in her homeland of Norway, but across the West. Her painterly eye for the Scandinavian countryside, her uncompromising emotional realism, her concrete sense of history, her bold vision of woman and man--these won her such acclaim that she received the 1928 Nobel Prize for Literature, not long after the publication of her epic historical novel, Kristin Lavransdatter. During World War II, she loudly opposed...

This Homiliary provides a comprehensive guide to doctrinally based preaching for the entire Church year, presented in the Dominican tradition: a preaching of Scripture which takes doctrine as guide to the clarification of the Bible's main themes. Doctrine is necessary to preachers because in its absence the Scriptural claims and themes do not easily hang together. The grace the Word imparts always has a reference to the Mystical Body which mediates all the grace that is given by Christ as the...

This Homiliary provides a comprehensive guide to doctrinally based preaching for the entire Church year, presented in the Dominican tradition: a preaching of Scripture which takes doctrine as guide to the clarification of the Bible's main themes. Doctrine is necessary to preachers because in its absence the Scriptural claims and themes do not easily hang together. The grace the Word imparts always has a reference to the Mystical Body which mediates all the grace that is given by Christ as the...

This Homiliary provides a comprehensive guide to doctrinally based preaching for the entire Church year, presented in the Dominican tradition: a preaching of Scripture which takes doctrine as guide to the clarification of the Bible's main themes. Doctrine is necessary to preachers because in its absence the Scriptural claims and themes do not easily hang together. The grace the Word imparts always has a reference to the Mystical Body which mediates all the grace that is given by Christ as the...

This Homiliary provides a comprehensive guide to doctrinally based preaching for the entire Church year, presented in the Dominican tradition: a preaching of Scripture which takes doctrine as guide to the clarification of the Bible's main themes. Doctrine is necessary to preachers because in its absence the Scriptural claims and themes do not easily hang together. The grace the Word imparts always has a reference to the Mystical Body which mediates all the grace that is given by Christ as the...

The Art of God Incarnate proposes that visual art is a good way to think of how the incarnation--the central truth-claim of Christianity--can be said to reveal the divine. In the book of Genesis, the human being, fresh from the hands of the Creator, is the image of God in the temple of the world. In an environment of distorted images the prophets sought to make visible by symbolic gestures the divine attitude toward Israel, as well as looking forward to a new divine intervention to redeem his...

Drawing on Evangelical and Catholic exegetes, the Church Fathers, ancient liturgies, and later theological masters, Deep Mysteries explores how the events of Christ’s life possess real causal power to transform human existence today. Uniting history, metaphysics, and contemplative meditation, the book reveals how the mysteries of Jesus are not merely past events but living realities that shape the believer’s present journey.

Thomas Aquinas stands among the greatest thinkers of the Western tradition, a towering figure whose influence continues to shape theology, philosophy, and contemporary intellectual debate. This accessible and engaging introduction presents both the life and the thought of Aquinas, showing how his synthesis of faith and reason remains profoundly relevant for modern discussions about the future of Christianity. The book highlights Aquinas’s major contributions, the development of his ideas, and...

What sacred images should surround the faithful at worship, and which images should be made available for instruction, meditation, and prayer? This historical study is driven by questions of genuine catechetical, doctrinal, and liturgical urgency. In this volume, Aidan Nichols examines the relationship between Christianity and the visual arts, focusing in particular on the development of spiritual art in Europe during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Building on his wider body of work ...

This book examines the Christian liturgy as a visible manifestation of divine revelation, expressed through ritual signs, sacred space, imagery, sound, and poetic form. Treating the liturgy not merely as a set of texts or actions but as a total environment, it considers how architecture, iconography, and music shape the Church’s encounter with revealed truth. Aidan Nichols explores how the liturgy communicates meaning through beauty and symbol, and how this revelation invites a creative human...

This is the first comprehensive study of the theological significance of Paul Claudel, a poet frequently cited by literary-minded theologians in Europe and theologically-minded poets (such as von Balthasar, de Lubac and Eliot). His writing combines cosmology and history, Bible and metaphysics, liturgy and the drama of human personality. His work, which continues to arouse discussion in France, was acclaimed in his lifetime as the 'summa poetica' of a new Dante. Aidan Nichols' study demonstrat...

Nikolai Nikolaevich Afanas’ev (1893–1966), one of the most important priest-theologians of the Russian Orthodox tradition, stands at the center of this study by Aidan Nichols. Widely regarded as the most influential modern Russian thinker on the nature of the Church, Afanas’ev played a decisive role in shaping the contemporary rapprochement between East and West—especially the Orthodox and Catholic churches. Nichols highlights two major pillars of Afanas’ev’s thought. First is his conviction ...

This concise and insightful study examines Aidan Nichols’s vision for an Anglican Uniate Church, a community united with Rome yet not absorbed into it. In 1993, Nichols argued that full corporate reunion of the entire Anglican Communion was unrealistic, given the Protestant and Liberal elements within Anglican history. Instead, he proposed the reconciliation of a smaller body that was sufficiently Catholic in identity while retaining authentically Anglican patrimony. His prediction proved pro...

An exemplary summary of the state of Catholic theology—and a clear indication of its future—this work offers a historical and methodological introduction to Catholic theology that focuses not on doctrinal content alone, but on the form in which that content is received, ordered, and articulated. Rather than surveying individual teachings, Fr. Aidan Nichols, O.P., examines the sources, principles, and intellectual habits that shape Catholic theology as a living discipline. He explores how Scri...

Following his acclaimed The Word Has Been Abroad: A Guide Through Balthasar’s Aesthetics, No Bloodless Myth by Aidan Nichols offers a lucid and accessible guide to the five-volume Theo-Drama of Hans Urs von Balthasar, one of the most ambitious theological projects of the twentieth century. In Theo-Drama, Balthasar presents the Christian revelation as a divine drama in which God and humanity are real actors, not abstract principles. Nichols carefully summarizes and interprets this vast work, s...

The Word Has Been Abroad serves as a clear and reliable guide to the theological aesthetics of Hans Urs von Balthasar, one of the most original and demanding theologians of the twentieth century. In this volume, Aidan Nichols introduces readers to Balthasar’s conviction that beauty is not an optional ornament of theology but an essential dimension of divine revelation. Nichols carefully explains the central themes of Balthasar’s theological aesthetics, showing how the “form” (Gestalt) of Chri...

Hans Urs von Balthasar is widely regarded as one of the greatest Catholic theologians of the twentieth century. Few writers have so powerfully revealed the spiritual grandeur of divine revelation or shown how the Church’s art and historic liturgies bear witness to its beauty and depth. Yet for many students and nonspecialist readers, Balthasar’s vast body of work can appear daunting and inaccessible. This volume offers an ideal introduction to Balthasar’s theology. Written by Aidan Nichols, i...

Maximus the Confessor (580–662), one of the towering figures of early Byzantine theology, occupies a place in the Greek patristic tradition comparable to that of Thomas Aquinas in the Latin West. His profound influence as a spiritual and theological master is evident in the vast space dedicated to him in the Philokalia. For Maximus, dogma and prayer were inseparable, and his unwavering defense of orthodox Christology—against the heresies of his time—was grounded in this deep unity of truth an...

Aidan Nichols has been contributing to theological literature since the early 1980s. Now in his seventy-fifth year, he looks back not only on his writings but on the long arc of life from which they arose. Though nominally Anglican in childhood, his earliest sense of the transcendent came through an encounter with God in nature. A pivotal experience in a Russian Orthodox church in Geneva led him to become a confessing Christian. Orphaned as a teenager, Nichols returned home and journeyed from...

From its founding in 1928, the Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius created an unprecedented bridge between Russian Orthodoxy and the Christian West. Through its journal—first under the Fellowship’s name and later as Sobornost—it became the principal venue where the exiled Russian Orthodox intelligentsia engaged with Anglican theologians of the Catholic party, as well as, on occasion, with other Protestant traditions. In this deeply researched account, Aidan Nichols traces the journal’s evol...

In The Holy Eucharist, Dominican theologian Aidan Nichols, OP, presents a rich historical and theological study of the Church’s central sacrament. Tracing the development of Eucharistic doctrine from the New Testament through the Fathers of the Church and the medieval scholastics, Nichols offers readers a clear understanding of how the mystery of Christ’s Real Presence has been contemplated and celebrated throughout history. Drawing from Scripture, the writings of the saints, and the magister...

The Year of Consecrated Life invited Catholics to reflect on and celebrate the witness of those who have dedicated their lives entirely to God. But what exactly is the Religious Life? In this concise and insightful book, Fr. Aidan Nichols, OP, offers a clear introduction to its origins, development, and enduring spiritual significance in the life of the Church. Drawing from Scripture and the early Christian tradition, Nichols traces the emergence of Religious Life from the Gospels and the Apo...

This book serves as an introduction to the life, personality, and thought of Vladimir Sergeevich Solov’ëv, the founder of Russian sophiology—the theology and philosophy of divine wisdom. Widely regarded as Russia’s most significant philosopher, Solov’ëv’s ideas have inspired renewed interest since the end of the Soviet era and have influenced a modern “philo-sophiological” movement in the West. Fr. Aidan Nichols, OP, presents Solov’ëv’s thought in three major stages. In his early theosophical...

Redeeming Beauty explores the depth of the Christian tradition—both Western and Eastern—in its understanding of sacred aesthetics, the theology of beauty as it relates to divine revelation, creation, and art. Fr. Aidan Nichols, OP, examines how beauty serves as both a reflection of God’s creative power and a pathway to holiness. Nichols investigates five central themes: The foundation of beauty in the natural order as an expression of divine creativity Beauty as a quality of biblical reve...

Return of the White Canons recounts the remarkable yet little-known efforts of the Canons Regular of Prémontré—the Premonstratensians or “Norbertines”—to restore their Order in Victorian Britain. Once prominent across medieval England and Scotland, the Norbertines had long vanished from the British religious landscape. Drawing on fresh archival research in France, Belgium, and the United Kingdom, Fr. Aidan Nichols, OP, offers the first detailed narrative of this ambitious revival. He situates...

Sergei Bulgakov (1871–1944) was one of the most influential Eastern Orthodox theologians of the twentieth century. After beginning his career as a professor of political economy at the University of Kiev, Bulgakov underwent a profound intellectual and spiritual transformation. Moving from Marxism to Idealism and ultimately to a renewed Orthodox faith, he became one of the leading theological voices of his time. Following his ordination to the priesthood in 1918, Bulgakov fled Moscow during th...

This concise and accessible work offers a clear introduction to spiritual theology—the study of the spiritual life within the Christian tradition. Fr. Aidan Nichols, OP, explores how Christian spirituality unites biblical revelation, Church Tradition, and lived experience into a single path of holiness. Drawing from both Catholic and Orthodox sources, Latin and Byzantine alike, Nichols presents the spiritual life as it has been received from the Church Fathers and passed down through every ag...

In Holy Order: The Apostolic Ministry from the New Testament to the Second Vatican Council, Fr. Aidan Nichols, OP, presents a concise yet comprehensive study of the priesthood’s development throughout Christian history. This book traces the theological and pastoral evolution of Holy Orders from its biblical foundations to modern renewal. Nichols begins with the New Testament witness to apostolic ministry and continues through the writings of the Fathers, medieval scholastic theology, and the ...

"The Singing-Masters: Church Fathers from Greek East and Latin West" by Aidan Nichols offers a passionate account of the theological achievements of eighteen Church Fathers. The selection includes ten from the Greek East and eight from the Latin West, figures who have been authoritative for Catholic doctrine or influential in Church life. Nichols provides a dramatic, humanized account of patristic thought, enriched with biographical details and a serious discussion of their theological doctri...