This paper argues that the Dominican, Robert Holcot's, Trinitarian theology is methodologically consistent with what one finds in the Franciscan theologian, William of Ockham's, Summa logicae. Both theologians, it is argued, develop a form of Trinitarian minimalism that rejects many of the developments in thirteenth-century Trinitarian theology. Further, it is argued that the traditional two-model approach to medieval Trinitarian theology, as found in Théodore de Regnon, Michael Schmaus, and Russell Friedman must be re-evaluated in light of current research.

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.

In the Summa Theologiae Thomas Aquinas mentions a kind of judgment of virtue through inclination. He uses it to explain how, through the gift of grace, a finite human being can know an infinite God. His arguments show that his negative judgment of the significatory capacity of speculative likeness, as source of knowing God, does not have to be taken as his last word on the possibility of positive (albeit imperfect) knowledge of Him in this life. Rather, it becomes clear that Thomas thinks that, as the forming of the tendency of the will through pursuit of a natural good can be the ‘remote’ (to use his term), non-discursive, source of judgment of that good, so the divine good of the gift of grace in the essence of the soul can be a remote source of positive (albeit imperfect) judgment of divine things. The differences and similarities of the two kinds of judgment are discussed, and verification issues are examined in conclusion. Thomas’ remarks on the two kinds of judgment deserve more study, since they challenge the almost universal acceptance of relativism as well as the extent of authority given to post-enlightenment methods of verification.

This article builds upon the analogical reflections of John Milbank – taking his work in a distinctly “projectionist” direction. It is argued that analogy (as Milbank understands it) allows us to talk of “projection” in theology without succumbing to Feuerbach's anthropological reductionism. In my discussion of Milbank's work, what is emphasized is the “poetic” nature of theological analogy, in which the divine and human creations intersect. God is revealed in and through the human, through the things we make. In its development of projectionist themes, Milbank's work, it is shown, demonstrates several potentials for feminist theology and philosophy of religion. In particular, his analogical vision helps to overcome any sort of dichotomy between human and divine, “projection” and “truth”. Crucially in this regard, Milbank's analogy stresses the importance, not only of our “makings”, but also of the divine initiative.

This paper clarifies the full extent of the differences between Jacques Maritain and Dorothy Day on pacifism and anarchism in the light of their solidarity. I argue that their differences were primarily due to the particular challenges they faced in their specific vocation arising from the World War II context, and secondarily due to their different understandings of the relationship between nature and grace. While Day became drawn to a concrete heroic life of the supernatural virtues under the guidance of her spiritual director John Hugo, Maritain aimed to philosophically elucidate all the possible means available to modern Christians which may contribute to a historical realization of the Christian ideal. Their theological difference on nature and grace did not constitute a fundamental rift if taking into account the role of conscience as the essential element of a person's dignity, where the spiritual life takes shape and discernments are made. The pure means of the philosopher and the supernatural means of the saint are united in the Christian who is willing to give all for the object of their love.

I say briefly what the Catholic Church now teaches about Purgatory. I offer an account of time which allows the purgatorial process to be genuinely temporal, but not precisely quantifiable or temporally relatable to processes and events in our space-time. I examine ancient, Enlightenment and modern notions of punishment, connect them with a theory of the relation of right and wrong to law and with the conception of a faculty of will, and argue that purgatorial process need not be considered punitive. I suggest it might consist in coming to share God's divine knowledge, and consider how prayers for the dead might help them.

In much of the theological discourse concerning human evolution, the emergence of the human “soul” is commonly treated as off limits from any naturalistic analysis, lest one reduce human uniqueness or the immortality of the soul. This article offers a naturalistic approach to the “soul's” emergence in conversation with Catholic theological commitments, using René Girard's mimetic theory. I argue that locating “religion”—defined as the taboos, culture, and rituals that contained early human violence—as prior to cognition and language better orients our conceptions of what we mean by the human soul and how we evolved into our current form.

In 1221 the General Chapter of the Order of Preachers (Dominican friars) sent out groups of friars to various European countries. The largest group was sent to England where they established their first priory in the University city of Oxford on the Feast of the Assumption, 1221. Within a decade they had spread to Ireland and has established their first houses in Scotland. The Scottish Dominicans remained part of the English province for close on 300 years. The Scottish Wars of Independence forced a reconsideration of that relationship. In 1481 Scotland became an independent province and adopted the Strict Observance initiated by Raymond of Capua (1330-1399). The province flourished for the first sixty years of its existence before being overwhelmed by the Scottish Reformation.

In breaking out from the analytic paradigm of certainty, St John Henry Newman is credited with keeping channels open for new streams of thought to irrigate philosophy in the century after his. Contemporary commentators sometimes see themes in Newman that anticipate ones taken up by Wittgenstein after him. This paper explores some simple convergences and divergences between Newman's and Wittgenstein's tendency of thought. It draws mainly on Newman's philosophical writings, in such as the Oxford University Sermons and the Grammar of Assent, and from Wittgenstein's mid to later writings, from such works as The Blue Book, Philosophical Investigations and, of course, On Certainty. It argues that Newman's attention to speech as distinct from the rest of what might be called language is critical. This paper eventually challenges the assumption that Wittgenstein has provided the last word on approaches to knowledge such as Locke's. Instead, it proposes that within Newman there is already a more powerful critique, one that would cast Wittgenstein as the last protesting exemplar of an approach he is thought to have dismantled.

In recent decades, scholars have increasingly reached agreement on how to interpret Aquinas’ account of the rational grounding of faith. Drawing comparisons between Aquinas’ position and Alvin Plantinga's “Reformed Epistemology”, many commentators hold that according to Thomas, belief that the articles of faith are divinely revealed (and thus, true) can be rational even absent naturally perceptible evidence that the articles are so revealed. In Plantinga's terms, belief in the articles of faith is “properly basic”. Although this interpretation is plausible, its proponents have further argued or implied that Aquinas’ account only renders basic belief in the articles rationally justified in an “externalist” sense. Thomas’ observation that there is naturally perceptible evidence (e.g. miracles performed by prophets) that the articles are revealed is supposedly crucially important, because only the perception of such evidence renders belief in the articles justified in an internalist sense. In this article, I argue to the contrary that on Aquinas’ account, one with basic belief in the articles can have “internalist” justification for her belief without possessing naturally perceptible evidence that the articles are revealed. Thomas’ contention that basic belief in the articles of faith is rationally appropriate need not render him an “externalist” about epistemic justification.

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.

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.

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

For Aquinas, the very meaning of perfection demands that there could be no absolute perfection that was not shared by three Persons. My first aim in this paper is to establish this point, which has been acknowledged only rarely by readers of Thomas, yet which follows unavoidably from Thomas's theology of the Word. I show as much by engaging with scholars who, rightfully attentive to Thomas's teaching on faith and reason, and to his rejection of “necessary reasons” for the Trinity, deny or fail to recognize this link between the meaning of perfection and the necessity of the Trinity. Such scholars, however, all end up running aground on claims that Thomas consistently registers. I hope to show, therefore, that new approaches to this area of Thomas's Trinitarian thought are needed: approaches that can acknowledge his presentation of perfection as necessarily Triune without violating the limits he places on natural reason.

Edmund Lazzari in “Would St. Thomas Aquinas Baptize an Extraterrestrial,” maintains that Aquinas would disagree with those who would baptize a fallen extraterrestrial on the grounds that they “disregard the necessity of a human nature for incorporation into the Mystical Body of Christ,” baptism being the means whereby human beings are so incorporated. Lazzari maintains that, “Because of the crucial role that that assumption of a human nature plays … in Thomistic soteriology, it is not possible to simply transfer the effects of the life of Jesus Christ to other intellectual beings who are not sharers in human nature.” I first intend to show that Aquinas does not hold that a being must have a human nature to belong to the Mystical Body; rather having a rational nature suffices. Secondly, I intend to show that while the effects of Christ's death and resurrection are not such as to be automatically applicable to intelligent extraterrestrials (ETIs), much less to be automatically transferred to them through baptism, Aquinas would maintain that God is capable of ordering things in these ways, as they do not imply contradiction. Thus, if there are fallen extraterrestrials, Aquinas would not assume that it would be inappropriate to baptize them.

Despite growing interest in Thomas Aquinas' biblical exegesis in general, and in his reading of Romans in particular, little attention has been given to the way Thomas actually uses scripture to do theology in his most enduring and influential work: the Summa theologiae. This article makes a preliminary attempt to remedy this neglect by exploring the role played by Romans 1:19-20 in the Summa. Given the deep connection of both Romans 1 and Aquinas to the perennial debates about natural theology, we might expect Thomas’ engagement with those verses to be concerned chiefly and resolutely with the questions animating these debates. But this is not at all the case. Far from being limited to arguments for philosophical knowledge of God, the Summa's more than twenty citations of Romans 1, I argue, re-present the whole drama of Christianity in microcosm. Even according to the letter, Paul's words have many senses for Thomas. The goal of this article is to draw out these many senses and demonstrate the creative interplay of scripture and theology in Thomas’ Summa.

The Third Man argument, as it originated in Plato's Parmenides, is unjustly read into Aristotle. The Parmenides argument is briefly examined, followed by an analysis of the relevant Aristotelian texts, with a special emphasis on the commentary of Thomas Aquinas. Three different versions of Aristotle's Third Man argument are identified, of which none contain the essential infinite regress that characterizes the Parmenides argument. Finally, current scholarship on the Third Man argument, especially as it pertains to Aristotle, is reviewed. In this respect, I note that the overwhelming tendency has been to identify Aristotle's Third Man argument with that of the Parmenides, in spite of the fact that Aristotle only once articulates his version of the Third Man argument, and that this articulation is vastly different from its Parmenides counterpart. I conclude that contemporary Third Man scholarship must take this into account.

I examine Jacques Maritain's assertion that his godfather, the Catholic writer Léon Bloy, was both an artist and a mystic, capable of reaching the heights of mystical contemplation of God. First examining this assertion in light of Maritain's mystical theology and philosophy of creativity, I show that a conventional reading of their operative principles renders mystical experience and artistic experience essentially different in their respective modes and objects of knowledge. Drawing on Maritain's personal reflections on Bloy and recent developments in Maritain scholarship, however, I then make the case that by virtue of relatively unexplored elements in Maritain's testimony and theoretical principles, the Christian artist can also have the experience of the Christian mystic when they direct their work to the mysteries of the Christian faith. I call this convergence ‘Infused-Poetic Contemplation’.

Beneath the appalling incidents of sexual abuse in the Church, there are key theological issues. Along with Pope Francis, I argue that central to this crisis is the abuse of power. I propose that part of the way to address this is through a discussion of the appropriate use of power; and perhaps the best way to think about the appropriate use of power is through the notion of the appropriate use of authority - as service. Here, I suggest there could be the beginning of an ecclesial response that would involve the wider Church along the developing lines of synodality that Pope Francis promotes. After an initial introduction focusing the abuse of authority and the call for a greater synodal way of relating in the Church, there is consideration of the vital foundation of authority rooted in intimacy with God. This leads to an exploration of the centrality of the example of Christ for authentic exercise of authority. Dialogue is seen as a healthy expression of authority, while living the tensions in the exercise of authority suggests a true witness to authority could be the formation of communities of discourse bearing many of the hallmarks of the synodal process.