Atheism, the thesis that God does not exist and Thomism, the thesis that there are “proofs” for the existence of God based on experience and reason can be juxtaposed to each other as two extremes. On the other hand, the very statement of each implies the need to consider the other, so that the atheist and the Thomist both claim to belong to rational discourse, however much they differ in conclusions. The scriptural tradition has consistently found the one who says there is “no God” to be “foolish,” that is, someone with more than just an intellectual error.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of charity in the moral life by focusing on the nature of charity and its requirements. What does it mean to say that someone has charity? Through an examination of the virtue of charity: subject, object and order, I will establish the necessary way in which charity functions as love of neighbor, including the love of God through love of neighbor. Focusing then on love of neighbor, I will examine what, for Aquinas, is constitutive of living charity through mercy, beneficence and almsgiving. Throughout, I will argue that one cannot have charity without living charity through love of neighbor.

St Thomas's hylomorphic anthropology grounds his famous statement of the precepts of the natural law in the Summa Theologiae. When we come to the third precept of the natural law, namely man's inclination to good according to the nature of his reason, we enter into the realm of politics. On account of the incarnate nature of human reason, the other natural human inclinations are also imbued with political significance. Right reason, which is also incarnate reason, tells us that procreation and marriage have an intrinsic mutual ordination to each other. Heterosexual marriage is the unique locus in which children can both be procreated and be given the upbringing and education which is their right. Since society has a special purchase on children in order to ensure its future – and its future well-being – heterosexual marriage ought to enjoy a special legal status and protection. The corollary is that society can only undermine the conditions of its own well-being if it tries to tamper with the meaning of marriage as heretofore understood by granting gay unions the legal rights and duties of heterosexual marriage.

Starting from a statement of Thomas Aquinas to the effect that even though a saw made of glass would be more beautiful than one made of iron, it would not fulfil its artistic end, it is argued that we have largely lost an awareness that the fine arts in their pursuit of beauty must also have a connection to some end, just as the saw does to cutting, and that seeking beauty in the abstract and divorced from such an end has had deleterious effects, including the loss of the artist's social role, the disappearance of the fine arts from everyday life and their replacement by objects of mass culture. This process is particularly illustrated by the history of the connection between poetry and music.

While there is a tradition in western religious thought of “contemptus mundi”–hating the world–there is also a tradition of loving the world. Figures as diverse as Augustine, Nietzsche, and Freud have queried whether and how we can love the world: how we can enjoy it for its value. Whereas Nietzsche and Freud thought that a Christian theistic framework prevented us from loving the world, a close reading of Augustine's Confessions shows that this is not true, at least in one sense. For Augustine, this article tries to show, theorizes how it is precisely within a Christian theistic framework that we can love the world most deeply and take the most delight in the world. This vision of Augustine's is not without its own challenges, but it offers at the least a significant “response” to claims by those like Nietzsche and Freud who believe that Christian theism and loving the world are irreconcilable.

Emancipating Saint Paul from both his imagined “spiritual” prison and interpretations that cast him as Nietzsche's venomous priest, Alain Badiou reads Paul as providing the resources necessary for standing in the face of the endless flows of global capital that characterize the geopolitical landscape at “the end of history.” Read against the background of the apparent triumph of political and economic liberalism I will argue that the most compelling aspect of Badiou's reading is that he finds in Paul a universalism that resists the rampant automatisms of capitalism. Moreover, I will be primarily interested in the extent to which Badiou's reading of Paul radically calls into question the conclusions not only of those self-proclaimed prophets of the ethics of alterity but also of those theologians that are finally unable to give up the desire to control outcomes and master contingency. In this way I will argue that, despite his proclamation of Christianity as a fable, Badiou can be helpfully read as a profound theological resource that points toward the shape of a radical ecclesiology that refuses to be defined on the artificial terrain of modernity and struggles instead in all its fragility to remain faithful to the resurrection.

While Judaism, Christianity and Islam are now commonly classed together as ‘Abrahamic religions’ it seems clear from what Paul the Apostle writes that, from the Christian point of view, Islam should not be regarded as ‘Abrahamic’

This essay seeks to show that contemporary interreligious dialogue, like contemporary theology, best proceeds by way of philosophically erudite ressourcement. As regards Christian‐Muslim dialogue, this requires tapping into the major classical exponents of Muslim philosophy and theology, as exemplified in the work of David Burrell. Inspired by Burrell, the present essay focuses on the contribution of al‐Ghazali to Muslim thinking about predestination, a central theme in the Qur’an and arguably in the Bible as well. In order to set the stage for the engagement with al‐Ghazali, the essay begins by comparing Joseph Ratzinger's concerns that predestination as commonly understood implies a ready‐made web according to which God saves some and damns others, with ‘Umar al‐Ashqar's interpretation of the Qur’an along these lines. Al‐Ghazali's view, while advocating a strong version of predestination, is more philosophically and theologically nuanced, and it provides a basis for Christian and Muslim dialogue about how to characterize the relationships between divine and human agency, faith and reason, and divine wisdom and will. This ongoing dialogue will find in classical Christian theology valuable ways of addressing, with contemporary import, the same problems that concern al‐Ghazali.

The issue of hyper-specialization within the various academic fields has often been raised in the context of recent discussions concerning the purpose or end of the modern university. Theology, one such field in which continual specialization seems prevalent, is further complicated by questions regarding the relationship between faith and the scientific character of theology, as well as the role of the university with regard to that relationship. Though seemingly diverse, a resolution to both of these questions may be found by giving an account of how the sciences, like theology, are specified. It is the purpose of the present article to explore the classical Thomistic position on this subject, and to apply its principles to the case of theology. It is shown that the specification of a science can be understood in terms of both the “formal object which” is known in a given science and the “formal object under which” it is known. The former can provide a correct starting point for managing the multiplicity of “sub-fields” and various specializations within the science of theology, while the latter can help to answer the question of the interrelation between faith and theology as a science in a university setting.

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.

The Catholic Church's efforts at evangelization must include even its own members in an age of growing secularization wherein religious impulses can be subordinated to culture even unconsciously. Bernard Lonergan observed that religious values should transcend cultural and personal values. But prominent advertising confirms that in contemporary Western societies religious values are subsumed under others, even where spirituality may be held important. The goal before the Church, then, is a transposition of values possible in focus upon a common perception of theology and the culture reflected in advertising—the felt transcendence of the human person. The Second Vatican Council called for the Church to engage with the world; if the message served by the Church is to be heard above the din of the larger culture, it must be delivered in manners persuasive upon the sensibilities of contemporary people. The powerful cultural transmitter that is advertising may assist in this task, for study of the anthropologies of advertising and theology reveals certain surprising commonalities suggesting that methods, if not media, could be equally effective in both realms. Advertising's use of ethnography and narrative, in particular, may provide lessons for the Church in defining audiences and targeting the message to them.

This article presents an introduction to the rhetoric of eroticism and pain in the theology of medieval mystic, Mechthild of Magdeburg (c. 1208-c. 1282/94), author of The Flowing Light of the Godhead. A survey of select texts from TFL is presented, with a focused analysis of Book IV, Chapter 12, where pain is cast in the role of a courtly intermediary between Christ and the soul. It is argued that a deeper consideration of this chapter provides significant insight into Mechthild's overall conception of pain in relation to the divine. Moreover, she writes with a coherent mystical theology of pain situated firmly within the Christian liturgy and narrative tradition.

Theologians interested in postmodernism and contemporary culture have recently turned to liturgy as a resource. However, these scholars often overlook the rich tradition of philosophically and theologically sophisticated reflection on liturgy of the past few decades. The result is that essential features of liturgy are overlooked. These features include the authoritative nature of liturgy for theology, and the impossibility of fully expressing the content of liturgy in propositional theology. By turning to the work of liturgical theologians, including Alexander Schmemann, Aidan Kavanagh, and Geoffrey Wainwright, I suggest that the attempt to grapple with contemporary issues by appealing to liturgy will always be compromised unless liturgy is understood in a modest, not broad, sense. I argue that recent work by Catherine Pickstock and William Cavanaugh, among others, ignores the authoritative nature of liturgy. These recent enthusiasts of liturgy promote a ‘liturgical culture’, but in the process their work takes away what makes liturgy most potent.

The paper argues for new concepts in theological ethics: structures of virtue and structures of vice. The Catholic tradition's development of the ‘structures of sin’ in the 1970's and 80's was a significant contribution to magisterial teaching. However, this concept should be updated in light of the trajectory and concepts of post-Vatican II theological ethics. The article proceeds in two parts. Part one recapitulates the development of the concept of structures of sin in the Catholic tradition from the Second Vatican Council to Pope Benedict XVI's recent social encyclical, Caritas in veritate. Part two reflects on the findings of part one, and proceeds to define and defend the concepts structure of virtue and structures of vice. These related concepts more accurately capture the moral nature of social structures. Social structures have the capacity to produce just or unjust outcomes, and to play a significant role in the character formation of persons. Therefore, the structures of virtue and structures of vice are offered as insightful ways of discussing the moral status of social structures.

Pope St Pius X's Pascendi dominici gregis, denouncing modernism as ‘the synthesis of all heresies’, was promulgated in September 1907. The (false) suspicion that its intended target was Cardinal Newman – a suggestion promoted by George Tyrrell, among others – sparked a protracted controversy in the British secular and religious press, with modernists and anti-modernists both fighting to claim Newman. After narrating the early skirmishes of this debate, this paper explores the controversy in light of two main themes: popular views regarding Newman's standing and esteem in the eyes of the curia and magisterium; and his central, symbolic role in the construction of English Catholicism. Both, I argue, fanned the flames engulfing the letters pages of the Times. Particular attention is also given to the key (and perhaps surprising) role of another great English Cardinal in defending Blessed John Henry: St Pius’‘uncompromising ultramontane’ Secretary of State, Rafael Merry del Val.