In a recent, provocative essay (“Inheriting Wittgenstein's Augustine,” New Blackfriars (February, 2018)), Philip Porter criticizes Augustine's habit of drawing analogies between the embodiment of concepts in language and the Incarnation of the Word as Jesus of Nazareth, suggesting that his distinctions encourage us to drive a wedge between God the Son and the human being, Jesus, whom he is. Porter worries that Augustine succumbs to the linguistic and then theological fantasy that we might peel away the word's flesh, to attain to the Word beneath. He proposes to dissolve this fantasy by way of a Wittgensteinian revision of Augustine's linguistic Christology, eschewing the distinction between the “verbum mentis” and the “verbum vocis,” the better to safeguard the unity of Christ. In what follows, I suggest that while Augustine is indeed tempted toward Christological error by an inappropriate extension of the linguistic analogy, Porter's proposed corrective both neglects important resources from the developed Chalcedonian tradition, and has as its unhappy outcome that “God is robbed of his transcendence, and creation of its true gratuity.”

In the human imagination, money is a symbol of many things, from base and alienated labour to individual freedom and social power. In the organisation of society, money is a treasure that breaks the limits of time. In the economy of labour and consumption, money is no more than a functional token. The move from symbol through treasure to token is a typically modern story of ever greater cultural disenchantment and every greater functional success. Fortunately, the conflicting narratives of money do not lead to the interminable mutual incomprehension of conflicting approaches to morality. If anything, the de-mystification of money has helped create spiritual opportunities.

William Newton and Helen Watt have both criticised the attempt to draw an analogy between gender recognition and adoption. Newton argues that recognition of adoptive fatherhood rests on an “analogy of proportion” whereas to use the word “woman” of someone whose natal sex is male is, at most, “a weak form of analogy”. However, the definition of woman provided by Newton excludes those who are infertile and neglects the cultural dimension of gender. The case of Casimir Pulaski shows that someone could participate in many of the cultural aspects of being male, as these were expressed in his society, irrespective of the facts of his internal anatomy. Watt thinks the analogy, if modified, shows that there is an onus against transitioning. She does not regard cross-dressing or taking cross-sex hormones or use of pronouns to express gender incongruence as being intrinsically wrong but argues that transitioning is potentially misleading and can have harmful consequences. Watt's practical arguments are weak as they do not include a broad range of considerations, especially considerations about inclusion and discrimination. On the other hand, Watt's concession is significant as it implies that, at least in some circumstances, transitioning could be virtuous.

Neither a recapitulation of the Catholic Church's teaching on the Filioque nor a comprehensive reconstruction of Thomas Aquinas’ theology of the Spirit, this paper is instead a response to several objections raised against Thomas’ defense of the Filioque by the highly-original Orthodox theologian Sergei Bulgakov. Following his patristic predecessors, particularly Augustine of Hippo and Cyril of Alexandria, and the conciliar tradition, Thomas situates the contemplation of the Spirit's procession within Christology—for He is the Spirit of Christ (see Rom. 8:9). The Christological framing of the Spirit's procession a Filio leavens theological examination of the doctrine's expansive influence on the understanding of other Christian Mysteries. By examining Matthias Joseph Scheeben's speculative reflections on the procession of the Spirit as analogous to the creation of Eve and illuminative of the Church as Bride of Christ, Bulgakov's most damning criticism, that the Filioque is a theologoumenon lacking in “life-significance” is rebutted. Finally, additional avenues of elaborating upon the Spirit's procession as indivisibly connected to other mysteries of the faith are advanced.

In this article I discuss the surprising similarity between the interpretation of the story told in chapter 3 of Genesis put forward in several of his novels by Sebastian Faulks and my own interpretation set out in my book, The Fall and the Ascent of Man: How Genesis Supports Darwin. Faulks and I argue that Genesis 3 is about hominization, the achievement of human status by a proto-human couple by the acquisition of self-awareness. However, that is where the similarity ends. I consider Faulks's understanding of self-awareness to be seriously mistaken, reductive and incoherent, and I take issue with what I consider to be the consequences of this mistaken understanding.

Aquinas’ fifth way for demonstrating the existence of God shows a confidence in its argument that is not generally shared by the contemporary reader. Natural entities that lack awareness (or perhaps self-awareness) act in an end-directed manner; this implies a fundamental relation to goals they do not consciously choose; this in turn points to the existence of a governing mind. The article tries to make sense of this argument against the background of philosophical naturalism that is assumed by much contemporary thought. It addresses the question of what kinds of end-directed activity fall under the scope of the argument, and why Aquinas thinks that these imply a governing mind. The article notes the unusual structure of the argument, suggesting that it should be understood (as should all of the five ways) as an attempt to wake the reader up to something so fundamental that it is usually overlooked. The main difficulty for the contemporary reader is to recover an Aristotelian sense of what it means for something to exist. If readers can achieve this, they may come to appreciate why an argument that seems enormously controversial in the present day seemed reasonably obvious to Aquinas.

This paper begins by exploring how Joseph Ratzinger's post-doctoral work on the Theology of History in St Bonaventure is shaped by his interest in how theology can be grounded in salvation history. Through this lens, he examines Bonaventure's multi-form theories of scripture and the place of St Francis in salvation history to show how prophetic interpretations of scripture are consistent with Christ as the apex of history. The paper goes on to demonstrate that these insights also influence Ratzinger's later work, particularly his reading of Dei Verbum, his recognition of the Mariological dimensions of hermeneutics, as well as his consideration of various prophetical manifestations of the life of the Church such as the monastic movement and the new ecclesial movements.

The idea that God speaks to humans and responds to their call is often taken for granted in the Judeo-Christian tradition. This paper reflects on the significance of the fact that God is Deus loquens: one who speaks in revelation and who is also inner Trinitarian eternal utterance. To outline an anthropology and a theology of speech, two Hungarian interlocutors are summoned: twentieth century poet János Pilinszky (1921-1981) and exegete and literary critic István Jelenits (b. 1932), whose accounts are instructive concerning the nature of human and divine communication. As a next step, the post-synodal apostolic exhortation Verbum Domini (2010) by Pope Benedict XVI is examined, which can be seen as providing the outlines of a systematic “theology of the word.” Such theology is aware that the word of God is an analogical concept rooted in the Trinitarian reality of divine communication.

Promoting ecological awareness and sustainability of God's creation is now considered as a primary task of the CST. However, from its beginning with Rerum Novarum, CST emphasizes the promotion of social justice and equity, and highlights the dangers of economic inequalities between richer and poorer nations and the need for distributive justice. To that effect, human development was its central theme, which is favored by the dominion mandate and is known nowadays as the Anthropocene. Important documents like Gaudium et Spes and Populorum Progressio are illustrative for this anthropocentric stance, while less attention is given to the wellbeing of nonhuman creatures and natural ecosystems. Nevertheless, from Octogesima Adveniens onwards, the CST starts to look into environmental issues. Pope Francis' Laudato Si' in 2015 introduces a significant shift by referring to nonhuman creatures as ‘our fellow creatures’, thereby extending ‘intrinsic value’ to all nonhuman creatures. In his integral ecology, he promotes a sustainable and integral development that favors the wellbeing of both human and natural environments. In this article, we assess Laudato Si's view on sustainability and integral development in confrontation with the wider framework of the Planetary Boundaries's concept of sustainable development.