THE ST. THOMAS MORE LECTURES, 1

Sponsored by the St. Thomas More House, Yale University This page intentionally left blank THE PROBLEM OF GOD YESTERDAY AND TODAY

by John Courtney Murray, S.J.

NEW HAVEN AND LONDON, YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS Copyright © 1964 by Yale University. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers.

Designed by Crimilda Pontes, set in Garamond type, and printed in the of America

Library of Congress catalog card number: 63-13970 ISBN: 0-300-00781-7 (cloth), 978-0-300-00171-6 (paper)

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NIHIL OBSTAT: Rev. Carroll E. Satterfield, Censor Ltbrorum

IMPRIMATUR: »J* Most Rev. Lawrence J. Shehan, D.D., Archbishop of November 6,1963

IMPRIMI POTEST: John J. McGinty, SJ. September 15,1962 PREFACE

IN THE WINTER of 1962 it was my privilege to give the in- augural series of St. Thomas More Lectures at Yale University. I spoke from notes, since I was largely drawing on materials and ideas familiar from detailed use in my courses in theology at Woodstock College. In preparing the lectures for publica- tion, I thought it best to be faithful to the sense and style of the original notes, insofar as they had either style or sense. The decisive reason was that it seemed important to keep the story- line clean, to keep it moving, and to resist the temptation to blur it by development of particular episodes and ideas or halt it by pausing to append citation. In the lectures, I did not under- take to do more than present the line of a story which is also the structure of an argument. These pages will have served their purpose if they furnish anyone with the framework for further study of the story with a view to a fuller understanding of history's most momentous argument. My affection for the Yale community, faculty and students,

V PREFACE dates principally from the year 1951-52 which I spent as visiting professor in the department of philosophy. The affec- tion has been strengthened and further informed with a sense of gratitude by the invitation of the University to give the St. Thomas More Lectures and by the response of the com- munity to their presentation. I must also record my gratitude to the Yale University Press for having undertaken their publication. J.CM. Woodstock, June 1963

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