Thomas Aquinas has a philosophy of education. In this article I try to indicate what it amounts to by focusing not only on his theoretical discussions of teaching and learning but also on what can be gleaned about his approach to teaching by looking at his own teaching practice as displayed in some of his writings. In addition, I look at two of Aquinas's sermons that shed light on what he thinks about teaching and learning.

The work of Herbert McCabe offers a model for thinking about the world and human life in it that has yet to be fully appreciated. In this essay, I argue that McCabe's linguistic model provides invaluable insight into human communication and the moral life, showing the natural law to be more like scaffolding than a list of stipulations.

Gillian Rose's re-thinking of Hegel in the wake of twentieth century ‘right’ and ‘left’ wing Hegelianisms has offered occasion for a recovery of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit as more than simply the narration of the way consciousness absorbs its objects, as textbook accounts often suggest. Rose's suggestion is that Hegel offers a program of radical criticism that destabilises the modern ego in speculative thought itself. Sarah Coakley's recent first volume, of a proposed four, of her systematic theology triangulating Trinity, prayer and dispossessive spiritual practices provides a fruitful dialogue partner for Rose's project in that Coakley offers a mode of thinking about prayer deeply attentive to the shape of spiritual discipline and it's relation to theological grammar. This paper contests that it is precisely in the non-objectivity of divine being, as thought by Rose and Coakley, that we find resources for conceptualising thinking itself as a dispossessive spiritual act. The theological and the spiritual (theory and praxis) cannot, therefore, be partitioned out without violence being done to the act of thinking itself.

The enduring value of the Pascal's Wager is that, bypassing intractable debates over God's existence, it brings the question of God into a practical, existential focus. This essay seeks to re-examine this famous Wager for its possible application to the current context of widespread agnosticism and increasingly assertive atheism. The essay argues that if rightly contextualised the Wager reminds people to seriously address their need for meaningful commitments and to confront their mortality. Rather than focusing on winning and losing in the afterlife, the Wager in our modern context can serve to highlight how human life is structured according to meaning, giftedness and relationality. Revealing the gifted and finite nature of existence provides grounds for a discussion of ultimate meaning and God.

Lawrence Moonan (1937–2013) pioneered the study of the medieval Scottish philosopher Lawrence of Lindores; he published a major work on the notion of divine omnipotence in early scholasticism; and he kept worrying that in these post-Deistical times many philosophers and theologians have forgotten what it is like to think of God as strictly infinite.

In many jurisdictions the list of factors for which anti-discrimination law applies has been expanded to include sexual orientation. As a result, moral and legal difficulties have arisen for religious organizations whose basic beliefs include the belief that sexual acts between persons of the same sex are immoral. In light of these difficulties, is anti-discrimination law of this sort unjust? Recently John Finnis has argued that, as commonly applied, such anti-discrimination law is disproportionate and therefore unjust. In this essay, I critically examine Finnis's argument, and argue that, on account of the conception of disproportionateness that is employed, it does not succeed. So as to enable the argument from disproportionateness to succeed, I develop and defend a modified conception of disproportionateness.