Few more sophisticated or more divergent treatments of the relation between truth and the divine are to be found than those offered in the writings of Thomas Aquinas and Martin Heidegger. This paper traces the differing approaches of these two thinkers in order to attempt a partial elucidation of that relation. One motivation for this contrastive analysis is the conviction that recent treatments of Heidegger's readings of Aquinas have tended too hastily to deny the possibility of fruitful or substantive dialogue between them. In contrast to these accounts, I argue that Heidegger's three central criticisms of Aquinas’ conception of truth – that it posits a subject-oriented and representionalist theory of knowledge, an unwarranted intellectualism, and an ontotheological grounding of truth's objectivity – paradoxically expose vulnerable flanks in his own constructive account. The argument proceeds by way of: (i) an exposition of these three strands of Heidegger's critique, focusing inter alia on some overlooked lectures delivered during the composition of Sein und Zeit; and (ii) a critical assessment of those strands by reference to relevant passages in Aquinas’ writings on truth.

This paper seeks to demonstrate the enduring importance of the teachings and methodologies of Thomas Aquinas to the theological project. The paper has three parts. The first part emphasises the importance of Aquinas’ clarity in dealing with the question of God, emphasising how God is radically transcendent and yet sovereignly present to, and active in, creation. The second part addresses Thomas Aquinas’ thought on human relatedness to God, especially in the area of prayer. The third part focuses on Aquinas’ account of human flourishing as virtuous living. A no less goal of this paper is to demonstrate that, even if Aquinas had not said anything about a particular issue as perhaps the question we seek to address is of of our time, much is to be gleaned from his precise and clear, analytical and argumentative approach to all questions.

Gillian Rose's re-thinking of Hegel in the wake of twentieth century ‘right’ and ‘left’ wing Hegelianisms has offered occasion for a recovery of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit as more than simply the narration of the way consciousness absorbs its objects, as textbook accounts often suggest. Rose's suggestion is that Hegel offers a program of radical criticism that destabilises the modern ego in speculative thought itself. Sarah Coakley's recent first volume, of a proposed four, of her systematic theology triangulating Trinity, prayer and dispossessive spiritual practices provides a fruitful dialogue partner for Rose's project in that Coakley offers a mode of thinking about prayer deeply attentive to the shape of spiritual discipline and it's relation to theological grammar. This paper contests that it is precisely in the non-objectivity of divine being, as thought by Rose and Coakley, that we find resources for conceptualising thinking itself as a dispossessive spiritual act. The theological and the spiritual (theory and praxis) cannot, therefore, be partitioned out without violence being done to the act of thinking itself.

The emergence in the 1980s and 1990s of a renewed Thomistic moral theology showed that the same could and should be attempted in dogmatic theology, with full weight given to the biblical, patristic, and spiritual emphases of the Ressourcement movement

Is the world the site of diaphany where one encounters the ‘transparency of God in the universe’ in a Teilhardian fashion, or should one give credit to von Balthasar's insistence that the cosmos can never serve as the final meaning of revelation since divine revelation is best conceived as God's unsurpassable work of art, the epiphany of divine glory over against the cosmos and human history? This paper seeks to explore the contours of two different conceptions of the natural world as God's creation and as the site of revelation. While, in passing remarks throughout his treatment of the form of divine glory, von Balthasar is repeatedly dismissive of the Teilhardian vision, he seems to overlook entirely the real significance of the Teilhardian endeavour, which is directed towards seeing a different and yet essentially similar form, that of the Christiform cosmos. Far from representing a kind of naive ‘new naturalism’ (as von Balthasar contends), Teilhard de Chardin's theology ultimately gets very near the same via tertia heralded by his Swiss confrère.

Thomas’ Compendium was composed in imitation of Augustine's Enchiridion, and with the intention of correcting features which struck Thomas, as they have struck other readers, as strange. The treatment of faith was the principal focus of Thomas’ discontent. In place of Augustine's wandering history of the engagement of divine goodness with the world, Thomas emphasised the cognitive aspect of faith and its concern with being. The two approaches differ in the extent to which they can allow a distinction of the cognitive from the voluntative in virtue. Augustine's insistence on keeping them together has definite strengths in resisting voluntarism, but Thomas’ emphasis imposes constraints on the moralising reduction of faith to action.

In speaking of the divine ideas or God's creative act in general, Aquinas's favorite analogy is that of the artist. Hence, understanding the finite artisan, especially in the way his idea functions as an exemplar, is key to understanding the mentem Thomae on a whole host of issues most especially exemplar causality. This paper asks a question seeking specificity on the causality of the artist's idea and thereby exemplar causality in general. Is an exemplar cause in its primary instance (the idea) an instrument? Does an exemplar idea always cause in an instrumental mode? This paper, after delineating exemplar and instrumental causality separately, argues the affirmative. All ideas which function as exemplars also necessarily function as instruments, the objections of mediation, temporality, the relation of intellect/will, and efficient causality notwithstanding. In concluding the paper identifies three possible implications for this finding including a slight qualification of Aquinas's mature rejection of instrumental creation.

According to John Polkinghorne, the Fall is the major Christian doctrine that is the most difficult to reconcile with contemporary science. Like him, however, I believe it is vitally important, even in this regard, to try to pinpoint the extent to which taking science seriously requires us to modify traditionally held beliefs. In this paper I focus on two problematic ideas associated with the Fall: (i) the idea of a primordial human couple (Adam and Eve), and (ii) the idea that this couple was subjected to bodily death as a result of their original misdeed. I argue that, contrary to appearances, it is possible to harmonize these beliefs with contemporary science – at least if one presupposes some kind of soul-body dualism. I also try to show that this dualism, although philosophically non-fashionable nowadays, is yet to be refuted or made redundant by current evolutionary theory or neurophysiology.

By ‘atomism’ I mean the idea, applicable in various fields, that explanation proceeds from small to large and part to whole. A theological atomist would see the salvation of mankind as the sum of the salvations of individuals and try to understand the Incarnation, the Last Supper, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection and the Ascension as successive episodes each making its own separate contribution. I argue that we are essentially social beings, and infer that God can communicate with us, and we can be united with him, only as forming a society. More controversially, I suggest that the Son of God became incarnate primarily in a society, and saved it by turning it into a single supernatural organism, living with divine life.

The commemoration of the half-centenary of the Second Vatican Council has garnered enormous interest in the protagonists, circumstances and, interpretations that evolved in the period leading up to and following the council. Beyond the dialectics of hermeneutics of (dis)continuity of the council which has gained currency in recent post-conciliar discourse, however, attention has equally been drawn to the grand leitmotif that birthed the Council, namely, the clichéd aggiornamento and the pentecostal renewal envisioned by Blessed Pope John XXIII. Despite its determining importance, Cardinal Walter Kasper opines that the Church is still certainly a long way from being able to speak of a new Pentecost. One of the architects of such ecclesial reforms and pneumatological renewal in the Council was the erudite French ecclesiologist and ecumenist Yves Marie Congar (1904–1995). This article seeks to demonstrate that Congar was not only a celebrated pneumatologist but also a visionary of charismatic ecclesiology, deemed as a resourceful tool for re-evangelization.

There is a danger in separating out just a small portion of Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologiae for a detailed study while neglecting the larger framework from which this section comes. Yet students of Aquinas have failed to recognize the import of Thomas’ discussion of ends, both final and proximate, and how these are related to his later discussion of acquired and infused moral virtue and their relation to charity and prudence in the Prima Secundae of his Summa. In asserting that charity is necessary for all true virtue, the roles of the Church, the state, their members and even the place and role of grace and nature are confused. A proper understanding of the distinction between acquired natural moral virtue and infused moral virtue and their distinct ends assists in a more complete understanding of the position and responsibilities of each of these in building up a more just earthly society and the ultimate attainment of eternal beatitude.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church speaks of “the ability of human reason to know God [and the Church's] confidence in speaking about him to all men….” Such claims involve both philosophical and theological questions concerning the possibility of transcending cultures. Philosophy can vindicate the capacity of the intellect to speak of God, and despite varying intellectual traditions, the Church has been able to communicate the Gospel across cultural boundaries. In fact, historically Christendom was built up by preaching not to individuals but to cultures. Conversion of a culture means that its fundamental principle has changed, and individuals will usually begin to change with it. This does not necessarily imply an inauthentic or merely formal religious adherence, but highlights the fact that cultures as well as individuals are susceptible of evangelization.

This paper considers the centrality of the doctrine of creation ex nihilo to both Augustine and Aquinas, especially as these pertain to knowing and naming God. It argues that too much has been ceded to Augustine's purported debt to neo-Platonism, and too little to the doctrine of creation as found in the Christian (and Jewish) middle-Platonists. In these thinkers God's self-disclosure from the burning bush was of signal importance, the ‘I AM WHO I AM’ glossed in terms of God's creative and redemptive power. The theme is traced through Augustine and Aquinas before returning the Christology of the Book of Revelation.

This article considers how the young Thomas Aquinas treats the question of universal salvation by examining his reading of 1 Timothy 2.4, God wills that all humans should be saved, in two of his early works, the Scriptum on the Sentences of Peter Lombard and the sixth Disputed Question on Truth, both dated to the period 1252–1257. Drawing on John Damascene's distinction between God's antecedent and consequent will, Thomas here teaches that whereas God wills antecedently in a unimodal way that all humans should be saved, He wills consequently in a bimodal way based on foreknown merits. Though foreknown merits are not a cause of predestination itself, they are a cause of glory, one of predestination's temporal effects. On Thomas's account, then, reading 1 Tim 2.4 as a straightforward statement of what God has done eternally—namely, predestine or save every individual human—would undermine the freedom of the human will that is necessary in order to attain to beatitude.

When academically inclined atheists critique arguments for the existence of God, they commonly target arguments of Intelligent Design as proposed by Paley, Dembski, and Behe. In so doing, it is not uncommon for them to include within the scope of their criticisms Aquinas's fifth proof for the existence of God – the proof from final causality. In this essay, I shall argue that there are very significant differences between the Fifth Way and the more modern arguments of Intelligent Design which means that any critique offered in regard to the latter normally leaves the former unscathed. Moreover, I shall also argue that the Intelligent Design approach concedes some of the erroneous premises of the atheists’ own arguments and that these are in no way conceded by Aquinas in the Fifth Way or elsewhere.

Gavin D'Costa's writings represent a significant attempt in the current discussion of the theology of religions to utilize the resources of Trinitarian doctrine and address the function of religions in the divine salvific plan. This paper systematically outlines his theology through an interpretive model of particularity/universality to elucidate its structure and highlight his emphases on Christology, Pneumatology and Ecclesiology. I argue that while his system has the considerable merit of a desire to maintain a single economy, there remain several difficulties, including a possible conflation of salvific will and grace, and a dissonance of the proposal of limbo with his system.

Christian identity is an important basis of Christian ethics since identity formulates the notion of how to live in and for the world. This research concentrates on Martin Luther's communitarian concept in his theology and ethics. Because the church is a liturgical community for the moral transformation, church needs to communicate with the world through her liturgical ceremonies. Based on this ethical concept in Luther, this research paper focuses on how Christian identity becomes the foundation of theological ethics, how Christian ethics is active in the relation with neighbors and how the church practises her ethics in community with the world.