“I AM NOT A GREAT FRIEND OF THE AUTHORITIES”: FATHER ANTÓNIO VIEIRA AND TRADITION

Abstract

It is not uncommon to stick to Father António Vieira the label of “messianism” – which has even happened to illustrious “vieirists” – but this is clearly a mistake. To the Coimbra’s court of the Holy Office, the Jesuit confessed to being a “millenarian”, simply because he believed in the advent of a “new state” of the Church, which he called “the Kingdom of Christ consummated on Earth” and which he identified with the new eon announced by the Old Testament prophets and initiated in Jesus Christ (see The Key of the Prophets). The theme addressed here – Vieira’s relationship with tradition – allows us to understand his determination to give a new answer to a new reality: the possibility of evangelization (and conversion) of the whole world.

KEYWORDS: Church Fathers. Theology. Tradition. Scripture.