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.

This paper takes its cue from studies that point to the influence of Thomas Aquinas on the psychoanalytical theory of Jacques Lacan and explores key Lacanian themes of language, desire, God/the real, embodiment and gender from the perspective of the Summa Theologiae. To illustrate how a Lacanian perspective opens new interpretative possibilities with regard to the Summa, it focuses on language and desire, on the doctrines of creation ex nihilo and the incarnation, and on Thomas's attempt to incorporate gendered Aristotelian concepts of form and matter into Christian theology. It argues that it is possible to resist Lacan's nihilism, while allowing his psychoanalytical approach to language to bring about a deconstructive reading of Aristotelian philosophy from the perspective of Christian theology. This allows the reconciling paradox of the incarnation to challenge the dualism of form and matter inherent in philosophical cosmologies, to offer a more dynamic understanding of the significance of material creation and its incorporation into God by way of the resurrected body of Christ. A Lacanian approach brings to light hidden and neglected dimensions of Thomas's theology, making possible a postmodern Thomism, which offers a viable theological response to some of the most challenging questions facing theology today, around questions of language, desire, gender and creation.

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.

The recent movement of apparent restorationism seems to suggest that the Church represents an enclave where people can find a holy place, a narrowing of the universal call to holiness that was the mandate of Vatican II. This is not a task for Christians alone; it is a call for all people to rediscover the true nature of the human being in the world. Such a profoundly worldly vocation makes a radical demand for a holiness grounded on baptism and the charisms with which the Holy Spirit endows the people of God. ‘To be secular is the special characteristic of the laity’ (Lumen gentium, 3). There is a an important rediscovery of the sacred taking place here: Christians are called to transform the world in and through God in a genuine and secular spirituality.

The language of “People of God,” which exemplifies the radical shift in ecclesiology found in the documents of the Second Vatican Council, not only has gained a predominance of use in contemporary Roman Catholic theology, it provides a vocabulary with which to explore the identity of the Roman Catholic laity, particularly as they relate to the scripturally-grounded titles of “King,” “Priest,” and “Prophet.” This article considers the implications of this identity in contrast to the Institutional ecclesiology with which it competes in the conciliar documents as well as in many official statements since Vatican II. Viewing these titles from their roots in Hebrew and Christian Scripture opens new avenues of empowerment for the laity and for transforming the whole Church.

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.

Hans Urs Von Balthasar's lament that coincidence of the theologian and the saint has not been the norm since the Middle Ages can be emblematic of a methodological issue impacting both academic theology and the Church wholly by separation of that which as a faith tenet should be unified—word and witness. Theologians’ intent today to speak from but not be confused with their location, the theological discipline's reach for respectability in an increasingly secular academy, market forces deliberately shrinking theology's influence except in such as interdisciplinary endeavors supporting other publics’ aims, the contemporary narrow specialization of the theologian, and the sometime view that narrow tasks serving theology are theology itself all result in conflations of theology and religion. So “theology” and “spirituality,” as Balthasar identified the breach, will be separate. Yet we hope that theologians, with all others, will be saints. Does this not, particularly to students, transmit the faith? Although Bernard Lonergan's method might seem to exacerbate the separation given its numerous theological specialties and conversion types, it also offers the way of reunification—without threat to academic integrity. The theological method, with its turn to the subject, can ground a theology (and method) of pedagogy.

Thomas Aquinas articulated an understanding of nature that sought to maintain together the integrity of created causality and God's providential ordering of the cosmos. Developing and combining Aristotelian and Neoplatonic approaches to nature and to final causality, Thomas formulated a horizontal or linear final causality wrapped within a larger vertical or circular final causality. This formulation balanced two seemingly opposed principles. First, that natures operate through intrinsic principles toward determinate ends. Second, that non-cognitive agents must be directed toward an end extrinsically. Aquinas balanced these two principles by situating the first within the second such that God creates and directs natures toward determinate ends through divinely bestowed principles intrinsic to those natures. In this way, Aquinas's understanding of providence underlies his approach to nature.

The paper offers an alternative to the prevailing “discipleship” model of the Christian life that requires self-transformation, considerable effort and self-sacrifice, and tends to make negative judgements against those who fail to live according to the model. The model is illustrated by the example of Thomas Aquinas. A second, complementary model is drawn from the role of the crowds, who followed Jesus in the Gospels. With the help of Karl Barth's account of vocation, the second model makes it possible for the church to consider those who, for certain reasons, do not live in accord with the discipleship model to be considered good Christians, rather than unsatisfactory ones.

This article supplements Ralph Martin's recent book, Will Many Be Saved? Our primary thesis is that those who hold double predestination or universalism cannot, if consistent, hope as Christians should for their own and others’ salvation, and therefore can neither live their own lives with a view to reaching the heavenly kingdom nor promote others’ salvation. We also contend that the same disabilities are likely to subvert those who hold certain views that approximate universalism. We go on to set out some positions regarding damnation and salvation that, we believe, all Christians ought to hold and hand on. God wills everyone to be saved, and those who are saved are saved by God's grace. Entirely through their own fault, more than a few people will end in hell. But no one still alive and able to repent need end in hell. While created persons cannot build God's kingdom, insofar as Christians do the Father's will in this world, they prepare materials, beginning with themselves and their interpersonal relationships, for that kingdom.