It took nearly thirty years for a forgotten box of cassette tapes, mislaid in an abbey in Austria, to be brought to light. On these tapes, recorded in 1985, the voice of Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) walks his listeners, with small, careful steps, through the thick terrain of contemporary theology. Now, after decades, these lectures have been dusted off, transcribed, and published for readers across the globe.

The Divine Project is a study of God the Creator and of man as this Creator's masterpiece. "Ratzinger", as Professor Matthew Levering writes, "guides us through the most difficult domains of modern theology and modern life: how to read the Bible; the Reason of God and the reasonableness of the cosmos; the meaning of original sin; technology, ecology, and creatureliness; the Cross and the Eucharist; and Vatican II, pluralism, the Magisterium, and the nature of the Church."

This once-forgotten work offers a short and accessible tour of the whole theological world of Joseph Ratzinger, one of the most important minds of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.