According to Thomas Aquinas, a sovereign government may legitimately execute sinners in pursuance of the common good. Aquinas outlines his defence of Capital Punishment (‘CP’) in the Summa Theologica (‘ST’) 2–2, q.64, a.2 and the Summa Contra Gentiles (‘SCG’), Book 3, Chapter 146. Aquinas's stance on this issue is well known and his argument in favour of CP has been extensively discussed. This article will focus instead on the objections Aquinas raises to the institution of CP in the ST and SCG, along with his responses to these objections. After providing a brief sketch of Aquinas's account of legal punishment, Aquinas's argument for the legitimacy of CP will then be outlined. The objections which Aquinas raises to CP will then be individually examined, along with his reply to each. After examining the underpinnings of Aquinas's objections and responses, the outline of a critique will be offered which draws upon the thought of Augustine and Karl Barth.

Anselm's argument for the salvific necessity of the Incarnation in his Cur Deus Homo is justly famous and elegantly simple: only man ought; only God can; therefore, only a God-man both ought and can (atone for sin). Unfortunately it is a paralogism, trading on an equivocal use of ‘ought’. It is not difficult, however, to reconceive the meaning of the terms ‘ought’ and ‘can’ in a way that both renders the argument formally valid and deepens our christology. Sin may be conceived, per Anselm's own insistence, as a condition of the human soul in its relation to God, a failure of the human will to establish itself in harmonious union with the divine will. If the integrity of created human nature requires that its psychological conditions are propagated together with it, then one who has both the duty and ability to atone for sin must be descended from Adam but must enjoy the original justice of the soul that Adam rejected and deformed in himself. Thus, systematically reconstructing Anselm's argument has the surprising consequence of enabling us to posit an argument for the salvific necessity of the Immaculate Conception as a preparatory stage in the hypostatic union of the Incarnation.

Psychologists have recently once again started using “soul-language” in their anthropological investigations. This paper will explore some of the attempts to “re-soul” psychology over the past few decades, especially in the work of Bruno Bettleheim, Otto Rank and James Hillman. Having explored the strengths and weaknesses of these positions the paper ends with an account of the self taken from the work of St Teresa Benedicta a Cruce (Edith Stein) which, it argues, enables the Christian Trinitarian perspective to resolve tensions inherent in the other psychological models.

This article joins others in assessing the role of Christ in the moral theology of Thomas Aquinas. It investigates one specific phrase in the Summa Theologiae in four stages. First, there are some foundational considerations of Aquinas's overall framework. Second, I examine the evidence supporting Aquinas's original description of Jesus as our ‘dearest friend’ and as further disclosed in the Tertia Pars, specifically in His Passion and in His role as Teacher. Third, this leads to a consideration of Jesus as ‘wisest’ as the Incarnate Word and Wisdom. Fourth, I probe this sapiential aspect further in terms of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, specifically, that of wisdom, and, in particular, as construed in recent work on the second person perspective and Joint Attention. By investigating this phrase of Aquinas, it emerges that its sapiential, soteriological and inter-personal character is illuminated further by its Christological and ecclesial dimensions.

In this article, I explore the nature of Augustine's theological thinking. My thesis is that Augustine is an “improvisational theologian,” meaning his theology begins from the place that an improvisational musician's thinking does: attunement. In order to prove this thesis, I have three sections. The first is an analysis of the type of thinking that takes place in improvisational music, showing how it is predicated upon an idea of attunement. Second, I explore the improvisational nature of Augustine's thought by seeing how attunement is also at work in his thinking. In order to do this, I show how he develops a musical worldview in De Musica and how this guides his subsequent thinking in De Doctrina Christiana and Confessions. I conclude by briefly pointing to different contemporary theological issues that this reading of Augustine can enrich.

This article shows the relevance of past ages to the current project of the new evangelization. In particular, it presents St. Catherine of Siena as an example of the intuition that saints throughout the history of the Church have had regarding how to undertake the process of evangelization. The concept of the “new evangelization” is outlined by referring to the writings and speeches of Pope St. John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI, and Pope Francis. While covering the basic features of the new evangelization, Saint Catherine's life and insights are presented as an example of how to accomplish the project of the new evangelization.

This paper reflects on Christian formation, the growth of the disciple into the image of Christ, from two traditions, the Thomistic and Ignatian. The Thomistic tradition offers a rich theological theory of virtue, but seems to require a more convincing narrative of how ‘infused’ virtue develops in the Christian life. The Ignatian tradition offers a more experiential spirituality, but today needs to explain how spiritual experience can be lived out. It is argued that the two traditions can be seen as mutually complementary, and that, by understanding the relation of virtue to the practice of spiritual discernment, a fuller account of Christian formation is possible.

Andrey Bely was an important member of the Russian symbolist movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This essay presents a summary of the development of his ideas regarding the origins of image and symbol in poetic language. For Bely language organizes chaos. The poet finds images in the internal world of dreams. Music has an organizing power beyond that of language, which language attempts to imitate. Under the influence of Vladimir Solovyov he looked to the union of Divine Wisdom or Sophia with the Eternal Logos as the principle behind symbolic images. Later, under the spell of Rudolf Steiner, he found the source of inspiration in the eternal dwelling of the Logos from which the human ego descends into flesh. The task of the poet is to recover the memory of the time before he left the realm of the Logos and to return to that realm by participating in Christ's ascent to the Cross. The autobiographical novel Kotik Letaev gives an account of recovering memory from before birth and the need to be joined with Christ crucified.

In the discourse of a number of theologians there is a perceived gap between spirituality and ‘theology proper’. This gap would not have been perceived or understood by Aquinas, Augustine or others of the long tradition of theological enquiry, since they saw union with God as the highest fruit of theological thinking. There is another gap today between the term ‘spirituality’ used in a loose and decontextualized fashion by the Mind, Body, Spirit industry and those for whom its study is part of mystical theology and its practice part of the church's mystagogia. The fact that many otherwise orthodox believers, as well as those alienated from regular church belief and practice, turn to more esoteric spiritual paths may be a sign that a return to a better-informed and theologically grounded knowledge of the mystical tradition is long overdue.

This article tests whether it is possible to be a ‘phenomenological-Thomist’ through the provision of the first stages of a loosely speaking Heideggerian phenomenological interpretation of the meaning of being an entity as it is disclosed in experience. In the process, the article will unpack and reinterpret the concepts of esse and esse commune in the thought of Thomas Aquinas.

Beginning with Mark C. Taylor's Crisis on Campus, and its critique of the structure and delivery of contemporary higher education, this essay argues that if there is a crisis in education, it is not technical, not reducible to the delivery of education. If there is a crisis, it lies in the contemporary world's misunderstanding of the goals or ends of the university. Borrowing Antonin's Sertillanges’ account of reading from the Intellectual Life, the essay concludes by suggesting that the goal of university education is formation of the mind, not mastery, edification, of entertainment.