In this discussion, I aim to offer a sympathetic reading of some central themes in Herbert McCabe's 1969 paper ‘Transubstantiation and the Real Presence’. I begin by setting out McCabe's core claims, before introducing an analytical framework that is intended to throw further light on their import and importance.

While the Christian emphasis on creation as a free and gracious gift is often juxtaposed with Neoplatonic notions of world-production as the emanation of being from the First Cause, I argue in this essay that there is no obvious contradiction between the doctrines of creation ex nihilo and emanation ex deo in Aquinas's thought. This is partly because the Christian teaching that the world is created ‘from nothing’ was never intended to deny that it was from God, but to deny that it was made from anything other than God. By drawing on the Liber de Causis to support his explanation of creation as the emanation of all being from the universal cause, Aquinas provides us with a way to foreground a doctrine which belongs to the foundations of Christian faith but which rarely receives sufficient attention in systematic theology – namely, the omnipresence of the God who is in everything.

This article argues that, without being reducible to a version of the Free Will Defence, Aquinas' theodicy and philosophical theology can offer contemporary versions of the Free Will Defence stronger metaphysical and theological foundations from which a response to Mackie's compatibilistic challenge – probably the most serious challenge against this defence – can be derived. Mackie's challenge to the Free Will Defence is the argument that the possibility of evil is not a necessary condition for the existence of free will, for God – if He existed and was omnipotent, omnibenevolent and omniscient – could have and would have created rational and free agents such that they would always freely choose the good. I claim, following Aquinas' hylomorphic ontology, that the creation of such a will is logically impossible as it would require the creation of a will containing naturally and invariably the formality of the universal and perfect good, and so the creation of a will indistinct from God's, which is by nature uncreated.

Thomas Aquinas, like many other, but by no means all medieval theologians and philosophers, espoused a theory of truth by identity. Truth exists primarily in the mind, but insofar as it realises the truth of things, truth exists in things also. Both truth and meaning are inherent to form, which shines forth in things to render them as things, or as exemplars of universal essences. In the event and act of knowledge, form as species migrates from things into one's mind by a process involving at once passive stamping, active abstraction, and imaginative mediation. To know in this manner is to manifest, and express further the truth of things which is intrinsic to their very being. It is not merely to think logically or coherently, or to judge correctly as to evidence, though these things are certainly involved. Nor is it to ‘represent’ in a detached fashion a supposedly objective reality that is in itself alien to meaning or truthfulness.

In the nineteen sixties, when the author became a Dominican, the province went through a profound crisis. This article asks how it was able to survive this crisis and find new life and vigour. It did so because the brethren were usually able to engage in constructive dialogue. This was due to three characteristics of the province. As British, it embraced diversity in its core; the intellectual tradition of the province, an open Thomism, pushed it beyond any simplistic opposition between the tradition and progress. There is a tradition of brotherhood often overflowing into friendship which held the brethren together in times of crisis.

A study of the British reception history of Rerum Novarum between 1891 and 1919 shows the key role of Fr. Vincent McNabb OP in popularising in the Catholic press what would become the predominant interpretation of the encyclical, switching its perceived emphasis away from the defence of private property to the advocacy of an urgent redistribution of property unjustly withheld from the impoverished working classes

In this text, I explore the contribution of the Dominican, Osmund Lewry, to medieval scholarship by focusing on his work on the medieval Dominican, Robert Kilwardby (1215-1279). I examine in some detail one area of Kilwardby's thought that was first noted by Lewry: the question of how the principles of scientific knowledge are acquired. In order to do so, I will briefly connect Kilwardby's answer to this question with those of his two more famous Dominican contemporaries, Albert the Great (ca. 1200-1280) and Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274). The aim of this paper is to give to provide a glimpse of the outstanding contribution of both Kilwardby and Lewry to the development of medieval philosophy and the scholarship on medieval philosophy.

Drawing especially on Aquinas and Pope Francis, the paper argues that Christians are indeed called to love non-human animals. Human love (amor) for non-human animals follows from the Trinitarian example of divine love (amor), and includes affection, dilection, benevolence, and thus charity as friendship. Love for and fraternity with non-human animals constitutes a necessary dimension of Christian conversion. The specific form this love takes depends on the particular natures inherent in different species. So to show love to a dog will be very different from showing love to a wolf, which is in turn very different from how one shows love to a chicken, or to a frog, and so on.

This essay considers possible answers to the question, 'When will Christ come again?', and argues that the Second Coming is most intelligible not as an arbitrary arrest of history but as an act of mercy in circumstances which cry out for it.

The discovery that Neanderthals once existed raises the question of their relationship with homo sapiens. Neanderthals have been studied in various disciplines, giving rise to a range of opinions about them. This article raises the question in a theological perspective, asking what a Thomist should make of the status of Neanderthals, whether they were created in the image of God and Christ died for their sins. Having examined what light might be thrown on their status by that of angels and aliens, it is asked whether Neanderthals are part of the same human family as sapiens. Genetics has shown that sapiens and Neanderthals had offspring, leaving Eurasian sapiens with about two per cent Neanderthal DNA, including our Lady, and implying that, when the Word became flesh, the Word became partly Neanderthal. Since reconciling Catholic teaching on Monogenism with the results of population genetics implies interbreeding between humans properly defined by a subsistent immaterial soul and a wider population, there is reason to ask whether the meeting of Neanderthals and sapiens may also have been an example of interbreeding. Possible evidence for Neanderthals possessing a subsistent immaterial soul, and so being part of the same human family as sapiens, is assessed.

This article engages with an example of Newman's reception in 20th Century thought, in Raymond Williams's Culture and Society from 1958. Williams considers that Newman's wording in The Idea of a University demonstrates a particular moment in the development of the semantic field of the word ‘culture’, which is indicated by the fact Newman does not use the word at an important juncture in his text. Williams also locates Newman in a developing trajectory of English understandings of culture at a point when (what we now term) culture was presented as a surrogate religion. Both of these points are responded to by showing that the word ‘culture’ would not have served the purpose Williams apportions to it for Newman's argument, and that Newman should not be associated with those for whom the domain of culture was emerging as an alternative to religion in the 19th Century. Moreover, this analysis will show that Newman's understanding of what we today term ‘culture’ should be understood in terms of a broader semantic cluster best captured by the word “sensibility”: a set of pervasive tendencies, predispositions, and qualities.

This article revisits the past decades of scholarly use (or rather non-use) of Bernadette Brooten's Women Leaders in the Ancient Synagogue to reveal that citation practices in biblical studies—or any field—can be inherently political (e.g. misogynistic) whilst maintaining a pretence of scientific objectivity. As a corrective, the author calls for the abandonment of the myth of neutrality in the biblical studies classroom. She argues that rape is only one end of a long spectrum of behaviours that silence; at the other, more subtle end of that spectrum, and all along it, are thousands of lesser instances of silencing and diminishing that occur in the classroom, that are gentler extensions of the notion that women's bodies do not belong to them, that men are the default human beings, and that women are valuable only insofar as they are pleasing or useful from a male standpoint. Parks advocates a biblical studies pedagogy that intentionally upholds inclusion and diversity in its curriculum, its group dynamics, and its citation practices, even (or especially) within institutions that do not. This is especially important given the prevalence of survivors of sexual assault and gender-based violence in every classroom; maintaining a neutral stance implicitly re-inscribes and encourages the status quo of rape culture.

Pope Francis has brought a fresh style of ministry, including his own, to the Catholic Church. This reflects the accounts of ministry in the New Testament, which eschews privilege and position, and focuses on ministry on service and sees ministers as servants and slaves.

I examine Jacques Maritain's views on the relationship between art and ethics or what is today called the ‘ethical criticism of art’, and examine what Maritain's thought can contribute to debates in contemporary aesthetics and wider society. In part I of the article, I approach Maritain's attempted reconciliation of artistic freedom and the demands of morality in three steps, first recalling Maritain's definition of art, second looking at Maritain's analysis of the extra‐artistic concerns of the artist, and third offering a critique of Maritain's views on why art is valued by the community and what justifiable moral claims of the community upon the artist might be—particularly regarding the method of production of artworks. Comparing Maritain's theories to those of contemporary writers in part II, I argue that Maritain's ethics of art can be used to complement Jacques Rancière's notions of the ‘distribution of the sensible’ and ‘artistic regimes’, and that, in the terminology of the ethical criticism of art, Maritain affirms a position which is a composite of ‘moderate moralism’ and ‘ethicism’—a position which is both explanatorily powerful in ascertaining how and why we recognise and value art, and flexible in accommodating changing artistic forms and practices.

I examine Jacques Maritain's definition of art and what it contributes to debates on definitions of art in contemporary aesthetics. Of particular concern are the so-called ‘fine arts’. I make three claims; first, that Maritain's definition of art is superior to other traditional and contemporary theories in avoiding their pitfalls and accommodating key data to be met by definitions of art, such as the existence of avant-garde art. Second, I claim that in accommodating avant-garde art, in particular ‘conceptual art’, Maritain's definition of art refutes the Wittgensteinian argument that art is an ‘open concept’ which cannot be defined. My final, resulting claim is that Maritain's definition deserves to be the pre-eminent definition of art today. This article consists of four sections. Section one provides some context of definitions of art and the data and conditions that have to be met by a viable definition. Section two provides the foundation and first pillar of Maritain's definition of art, what I identify as a cumulative ‘descriptive’ definition. Section three provides the second pillar of Maritain's definition of art, applicable specifically to the fine arts. Section four applies Maritain's full descriptive definition to the problem of conceptual art.

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.