Aquinas’ treatise on conscience was the culmination of a lengthy debate that had been going on for centuries. This debate is today known and carried on under the name “weakness of the will” or akrasia. In my article, I am aiming to demonstrate that this discussion, which started with the Aristotle's problem of incontinent (akratic) man, has been going on through Augustine's problem of “two wills”. I would like to demonstrate that Aquinas links this discussion to his conception of the conscience and synderesis. Despite the fact, that R. Saarinen in his book about “weakness of the will” proves there is no connection between Aristotle's incontinent (akratic) man and Augustine's problem of “two wills”, my aim is to explain that it is Aquinas himself who connects Aristotle's incontinent man with Augustine's “two wills” and that incontinent person is someone who acts against his conscience.

Friedrich Heiler’s Classic essay on prayer — Das Gebet — first appeared in 1919: several times reprinted and revised, with an abbreviated translation into English published in 1931, this vastly influential work helped to popularize and to fix in the theological mind a sharp distinction between two antithetical styles of spirituality, the ‘mystical’ and the ‘prophetic’. The distinction owed something to William James, something to a group of Lutheran scholars interested in the history and phenomenology of religion, of whom the most significant is probably the great Nathan Söderblom (whose general influence upon Heiler is very considerable). Heiler enumerates a variety of ways in which what he and his teachers thought of as a basic polarity in religion might be characterized — as a tension between the healthy and the diseased, the active and the passive, or (with Söderblom) between a mysticism of the affirmation of personality and a mysticism of the denial of personality. For Söderblom, this ran parallel to the distinction between ‘salvation-religions’, with the notion of escape or release at their centre, and religions of revelation and prophecy. For Seeberg, working in the same tradition, it was the gulf between the ‘contemplative’ and the ‘voluntarist’ approaches. Heiler, understandably, sees no point in speaking of two kinds of mysticism here, and so frames his own version of the confrontation in terms simply of the mystical in general (understood as involving ‘radical denial of the world and the ego’) and the ‘prophetic’; and he proceeds to develop a detailed and intriguing typology of spiritualities, which has remained probably the most influential section of his work.

The aim of this paper is to examine the historical question as to whether mono-episcopal government existed in the local Church in Rome in the first century AD. It is not intended to engage upon the related task of theological reflection upon the role of bishops within the Church and their claim to be successors to the apostles in this role.

There has been a development in the Church’s understanding of ministry and authority, just as there has been a development in the Church’s understanding of the Trinity or the Incarnation. Leo the Great was as certain of the authority of the Petrine office, as he was of the reality of the two natures of the one person of Christ. The task of showing whether such developments were legitimate is ultimately a theological one, though it is one that will involve reflection upon history. It is not prima facie obvious that a high doctrine of the papacy does require that a single bishop exercised magisterial authority in Rome in the immediate post-apostolic age. Yet this question is only raised at this point so that it may be set aside. Here we consider the simpler historical question as to whether the evidence available requires, suggests, or excludes the supposition that Christian ministry in Rome in the latter part of the first century was mono-episcopal.

What the late Stephen J Gould baptized ultra-Darwinism is anti-evolutionary. In so being, it leads to the undermining of science, rationality, and, lastly, to ethical nihilism, wherein any notion of humanism is impossible, and this for one simple reason – there is now no such thing as a human. In addition, we argue that ultra-Darwinism is a progeny of crass philosophical dualism, and this leads it to despise matter and the material world, even though, paradoxically, it espouses materialism. We conclude that the theory of evolution invalidates ultra-Darwinism.

Thomas Aquinas is celebrated for many things in the history of Christian theology, but one is the revolutionary place he gives to the thesis that Christ acquired knowledge by way of empirical experience. That his claim should be so revolutionary strikes us today as odd. Any reflection on Christ's knowledge ordinarily begins today by stressing how the Word of God assumed our ordinary human limited ways of knowing. In medieval times, however, theologians found it extremely difficult to accept that Christ acquired knowledge by the normal empirical, experiential route. A crucial role in Aquinas's theological advance beyond this position was played by his philosophical commitments, within the wider context of the soteriological character of his Christology. However, there are problems involved in Aquinas's particular theological position on Christ's acquired knowledge and his wider picture of Christ's knowledge. The same philosophical means that enabled Aquinas to recognise the reality of Christ's acquiring knowledge also led him into an overall picture of the perfection of Christ's knowledge that was not so satisfactory. Part of the solution to the difficulties into which Aquinas gets himself can be found in a philosophical position already employed by him in his mature account of Christ's knowledge.

It is not my intention to attempt a systematic examination of what Catholic historians have had to say about the Reformation in England. Such an examination, beginning, perhaps, with the work of Dr Nicholas Sander and Fr Edward Rishton in the sixteenth century - De Origine ac Progressu Schismatis Anglicani - and working through to Fr Philip Hughes’ three volumes on The Reformation in England would indeed bring the enquirer into contact with a large number of fascinating personalities and would incidentally, provide him with a number of examples of prejudice and propaganda, as well as with models of painstaking and disinterested scholarship. Nor am I concerned only, or even mainly, with Catholics who have written historical works, but with all Catholics who have in one way or another to deal with history and with historical problems, particularly with historical problems which still arouse religious prejudices and which may be the occasion of religious propaganda.

Whether they like it or not, Catholics have to concern themselves with history. They belong to a church which claims to have been founded by an historical person at a particular point of time in history. They claim that there is continuity between the Church founded by Christ and the Church today. They claim that the line of supreme pontiffs is not eventually lost in the twilight of fable but can be traced back to St Peter. The Catholic explaining or defending the claims of his Church must continually have recourse to history, not only because his Church makes particular historical claims but because in a great many of the attacks made on that church, the arguments employed are arguments from history.

When people think about Newman, they usually think, first of all, about his ideas, doctrinal development, the relationship between faith and reason, the place of the laity in the Church, and much else besides. But however brilliant those ideas may have been, Newman was never simply a thinker, a man trapped in his brain. The key question for him was always how to make the ideas become real. He had no interest in moving minds without touching hearts. Newly ordained as an Anglican deacon, then as a tutor at Oriel, as a leader and preacher during the early years of the Oxford Movement, as a parish priest in Birmingham, as an educator, and as a champion of the via media, of moderation in dispute, his instinct was invariably pastoral.

This paper offers a survey and proposal concerning Catholic ecclesiology in the post-Vatican II context. As a survey, it addresses the attempts by four major Catholic thinkers, de Lubac, Congar, Rahner and Balthasar to articulate dual dimensions of the Church. In the last century, the surge in biblical studies and empirical methodologies has wrought numerous ecclesial images, dimensions and models for understanding the various aspects of the Church. While many of these attempts are descriptive, or even symbolic, there is a need to move to an explanatory method for a more systematic apprehension of the various dimensions of the Church. The proposal of this paper will argue that such an explanation lies in how the Church understands itself with respect to each of the missions of the Son and the Holy Spirit as developed from the thought of Bernard Lonergan on the two dimensions of the Church. This will allow for a plethora of images, but simultaneously it will provide for some normative control of meaning over these various dimensions.

This paper addresses the foundations of the Church systematically as it originates in the Triune God's plan of salvation. The Church is an extension of the missions of the Son and Spirit in history. Analogies are invoked to help ground the nature and the mission of the of the Church. The paper further explores the implications of Ecclesia de Trinitate in light of Vatican II, the visible and invisible missions of the Son and the Spirit, the role of Mary and the multi‐religious context.

This essay explores the political and legal problem of legitimate wars in relation to the theological question of justice and peace. It begins by charting a brief genealogical account of how in the modern era the Christian ‘just war’ tradition was formalised and thus drained of much of its substantive and practical context.

The essay also examines and rejects a number of contemporary attempts to use ‘just war’ theory in order to legitimate modern warfare. The argument is that both neoconservative realism and political liberalism instrumentalise the ‘just war’ tradition to defend and extend central state power. Christian pacifism has a compelling critique of realism and liberalism, but it fails to offer a genuinely transformative ontology and politics.

The essay concludes by calling for a metaphysics of peace that can resist the modern primacy of violence and make real the divine promise of a harmoniously ordered cosmos.

The Acts of the Apostles relates how in the Jerusalem church “the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common. With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all." The author of Acts is not simply reporting three separate facts about the apostles, how they felt, how they lived, and how they preached. Their preaching gains its power from their common faith and life. Their rejection of private property and redistribution of wealth, cutting at the roots of avarice, form an eloquent expression of their faith in the God who hears the cry of the poor, whose day of justice is at hand. The heart, the purse, and the voice are formed in a single apostolic life.

This picture of the apostolic life was at the heart of St. Augustine's vision of religious life and dear to the early Dominicans who adopted his Rule. Humbert of Romans in his Commentary on the Rule was adamant that the brother who even said “that’s my book!” and meant it committed mortal sin. All things had been shared before the Fall and would be in the Kingdom. Private property was a frequent cause of envy and strife. It tied down the heart. Humbert set out the different reasons why voluntary poverty was integral to the office of preaching. Preachers have to go everywhere and not everywhere could afford to support the retinue, the horses and servants, of a rich prelate.

This commemorative article, drafted for the 75th anniversary of Vincent McNabb's death in 2018 (it was also the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of his birth), re-tells his story, visits the unresolved question of his sanctity, and, by considering his themes, seeks to point up his amor intellectualis, and not just cordialis, the generosity of a many-sided man.

A consideration of our human participation in the divine creativity can be regarded as a legitimate, indeed desirable appendix or coda to the theology of creation. It is essentially a consideration of the relationship between creature and creator, of the active relationship indeed of creatures, that is of ourselves, with God. A look at God’s active relationship with us, at what the creator does with and for his creatures, means reflection on God’s providence and on his government of his creation. A look at our active relationship with God, at what we as creatures do for the creator, means reflection on our ability and our need to know and glorify God.

But the question immediately arises whether it makes sense to talk about creatures doing anything for the creator; and it is answered by the very firm assertion that God has absolutely no need of his creation at all. We, all creatures, owe him everything, he has no need of us. Our need of him is total, he owes us nothing. Difficult to establish any relationship between such radical unequals, but leaving that point aside, we are faced with the next question that arises, which is why, in that case, did God create the universe. The only possible answer is because he wished to. And why did he wish to? The answer you give to overpersistent children—because he did.