In The Grain of Wheat, Hans Urs von Balthasar quotes St. Basil on the intent contemplation of God's works. In Letters to Malcolm, C. S. Lewis speaks of making “every pleasure into a channel of adoration”, by praising “these pure and spontaneous pleasures” as “‘patches of Godlight’ in the woods of our experience.” According to Iris Murdoch, such attentiveness requires a degree of “selflessness” that resembles aesthetic contemplation and— it may be inferred — prayerful reflection. Using these passages and others by Kathleen Norris and Simone Weil, this essay offers related perspectives on the process and the effects of attentiveness, in poetry and prayer. Poets practise, and thereby teach an attentiveness that is analogous to that achieved in certain forms of prayer. Prayer, like poetry, gives thanks for the mysteries — even as it seeks to understand and respond to the injustices and sufferings — of life. Denise Levertov illustrates in her poetry an awareness of how such attentiveness can be productive, in her late religious poems especially.

Failure to attend to the claims of theology as a public form of discourse has made us blind to the true causes of our attachment to the university. In what follows I want to explore why it is that liberal societies continue to value the university but increasingly find it difficult to articulate coherent reasons for its defence. I shall argue that any plausible defence of the value of the university within Western societies requires the concomitant recognition of two propositions: first, of the moral value of the search into the meaning of human freedom and, secondly, of the certainty that human freedom can only properly be exercised in obedience to the objective order of truth. I shall further argue that, for all its strengths, Liberalism as a political doctrine cannot conceptually unite these two propositions because of its commitment to a voluntaristic interpretation of freedom. As a modest proposal for constructive progress in this debate, in my concluding remarks I suggest three ways that St. Augustine's early educational thought makes more intelligible our own educational ideals than do major competing accounts.

From a comparison of the much-discussed and supposedly epoch-making Neo-Modernist ‘Jubilee church’ in Rome and a new study of John Ninian Comper's church architecture, the article enquires into theologically informed principles of church design and in their light considers some crucial elements in the symbolics of ecclesial space, notably altar, screen, communion rails and tabernacle.

Recent social change has produced a relocation of the sense of personal identity from communities rooted in time and place to voluntary associations gathered around common interests. In consequence, the focus of moral consciousness has shifted from natural human values to constructed, systems of rights and obligations.

Against these trends I argue that while times and circumstances change, the principal moral truths remain constant as do their implications for the place of ethics in public life: first, do no evil; and second, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. What lies beyond is not in the field of moral law, though it may be in the field of moral virtue. Here what is required is, as St Augustine, Adam Smith and Aurel Kolnai would say, human wisdom; and it part of human wisdom to recognize that in public life where what is at issue includes the well-being of the community, one does better to strive for the good and the acceptable than to seek for the perfect.

Much contemporary theological aesthetics treats beauty as straightforward. This is, however, to neglect tensions in our experience and understanding of beauty. The issue of these tensions arises in the examination of the role of the imagination in the epistemology of beauty, as well as in the examination of the relationships between beauty and truth, and beauty and goodness. The treatment of these relationships in the work of Kant and Maritain is assessed. The aesthetics of Kant and Maritain are classic attempts to address and even overcome the tensions in these relationships, but on close examination fail to do so. That writers whose works are often cited in favour of clear-cut positions do not resolve these tensions, and that questions raised by these issues fail to go away, supports the view that these tensions are inherent in our experience and understanding of beauty. If so, and if beauty is understood as in some way revelatory of the divine, it follows that there are tensions inherent in our experience and understanding of beauty as revelatory. Such tensions need to be incorporated into theological aesthetics.

Henri de Lubac argues that Christians today lack an appreciation of the centrality of the Gospel to human meaning. This apologetically disastrous deficiency is related, for him, to Cajetan's “corruption” of Thomas's understanding of nature and grace. After presenting this issue, this article examines the reception of ideas akin to Cajetan's conception by Christians and popular culture, which latter has accordingly adopted an indifferentist mentality toward religion. Other impediments to thinking through the Gottesproblem today are taken up next, specifically the legacy of critical atheism and the distraction that shields persons from this problem's relevance. Distraction, although aimed at saving persons from the thought of death and from anxiety, actually produces a deadening and banalization of human hope. The hope of Gaudium et spes, which is addressed last, is not the eviscerated hope of contemporary persons. The language barrier centering on “hope” between the Council fathers and contemporary persons can only be bridged by addressing the formative causes of the hope of those indifferent to the Gospel.

In Jeff McMahan's The Ethics of Killing, an example involving a congenitally retarded child and a dog of similar cognitive ability is used to attempt to show that arguments about the potential to manifest traits are morally irrelevant to the abortion debate. McMahan argues that our intuition to enhance the child rather than the dog may be irrational. I explain that the only way to maintain common-sense ethics and strongly held intuitions about function and dysfunction is to accept a theory of design and to think, not in terms of “species” but, in terms of kinds of things that are designed to function in specific ways, where the failure of an individual of the kind to manifest characteristic functions is indicative of a privation rather than evidence that the individual is not – or not yet – a member of that kind and thus not as morally significant as members of the kind.

Like the Messianic Banquet, the Messianic Torah is a concept frequently encountered among New Testament scholars. It seems to be presupposed as a category well known to first century Judaism and, therefore, to be a yardstick against which Jesus’ ‘legislative’ activity could and can be measured. An examination of this concept begins with the tension in Jewish thought between the eternity of the Mosaic Law and the various strategies designed to supplement its inadequacy to deal with contemporary situations. Given that the unique circumstances of the Messianic Age involve a further complication, the relevant texts are reviewed for their contributions to the problem. The Old Testament writers look to a deepening of observance of the Mosaic Law in the eschatological times. The Pseudepigrapha offer little more apart from a hint of Messianic legislation in Psalms of Solomon 17. Even the gospels do not show us a Jesus who fits readily into the model of a Messianic legislator. In fact St John probably pictures him as the embodiment of the Torah, the Word made flesh. The conclusion is that, whatever the later rabbinic teaching on the subject, the idea of the Messianic Torah is a scholarly construct as far as the New Testament is concerned.

Anselm's ontological proof, which sets out to show that God must exist and which depends upon the premise that human beings can conceptualize God, seems antithetical to the apophatic tradition, but Anselm's work in general and his proof in particular are, nonetheless, exemplars of apophasis. The proof shows the atheist's position to be untenable, while also revealing the ambiguities of the believer's claim. In proving the necessary existence of God, Anselm destroys all idols and with them, all human conceptions of divinity, for whatever conception can be achieved always stands vulnerable to being overcome. Thus, Anselm is left to conclude that God is in fact “something greater than can be thought.” Anselm shows that language can never offer a final and complete formulation for God, and he does so through his own name for God (“something-than-which-nothing-greater-can-be-thought”), a name that remains brilliantly open and which is ingenious, not for what it affirms about God, but rather for what it denies.

An initial analysis of the theological aspects of Christian-Muslim relations. After setting the historical scene, the following theological issues are briefly explored: consequences of two faiths worshipping God, prophethood of Muhammed, status of the Qur'an, Jesus as “Son of God”, a Qur'anic Christology, “People of the Book” vs. “People of the Incarnate Revelation”, the divine/human relationship in heaven, salvation and original sin, free-will and predeterminism, unicity of God vs. Trinity, Unitarians as “true Christians”, death and resurrection vs. “undead ascension”, and has the magisterium of the Church distorted the true message of Jesus? Three dimensions of the issues are covered: Content: what are the theological issues? Method: how do we handle the issues? Consequences: what difference might that make for Christian theological reflection? The challenge is to develop a methodology that moves beyond polemic or apologetics, that recognises the limitations of understanding and that returns theological discourse to the realm of faith and accountability before God.

Informed study of Aquinas suggests that absolute idealism and realism do not differ about the relation of created and uncreated freedom (praemotio physica) but rather, if at all, about created vis à vis uncreated being generally. Both cannot be in the same sense. Nor, therefore, have we grounds for distinguishing divine or infinite thinking from real production, if nothing else really is. The Thomist doctrine that God has no real relation to anything outside God is thus, implicitly, absolute idealism. Positing “ontological discontinuity” denies the absolutely infinite transcendence in affirming it. We have no being as God, uniquely, has. This is the meaning of “image”, while “face to face” is ultimately one face (intimior me mihi). Seeing and being are one. Thus Hegel should be seen as rather explicating than reducing creation, thus deepening the doctrine and not offering an alternative. R. Gildas merely assumes the latter. Infinity requires union with “alterity”within God and intra-Trinitarian and ad extra processes are thus analogous. So self-renouncement as explaining either creation (originating an origin) or incarnation (kenosis) is anthropomorphic paradox. God has to be “all in all”.

Islam contains a greater plurality of theology than is often realised. Here two “alternative voices” are chosen as examples of how cultural accretions can be questioned to what is taken to be the original, pure voice of Islam. Amina Wadud has led a mixed congregation in prayer in New York and has demonstrated, not without opposition, that women can be imams. There follows a discussion of the historical debate about women as imams and reactions to Wadud's actions. The second voice is Hasan Askari, an Indian Muslim who has written widely on inter-faith dialogue. He maintains that to reduce differences between Judaism, Christianity and Islam, differences should be interpreted symbolically rather than literally. He questions all claims to finality in any religion and he believes that historical Islam has yet to be transformed to “universal Islam”. Religious differences can only be finally transcended at a level of mystical experience.

In this paper I seek to address the question of the interpretation and translation of the Proslogion and to understand why the text of this major work is repeatedly mistranslated. Having identified the various strands in the interpretative tradition and taken as my paradigm case an analysis of a passage from Proslogion, 4, I suggest that the reason for the errors to be found in the various attempts at translating this passage is to be found in the fact that the translators are influenced by the interpretative tradition and translate in accordance with it, even when this leads to ‘obvious’ mistranslation. I ask whether there can be a definitive interpretation and translation of the Proslogion, and answer this question in the negative, primarily because important elements of Anselm's thought are not available to us. Nevertheless, I suggest that it is possible to avoid errors of interpretation and translation by remaining within the constraints of the text. Finally, I attempt to lay some ground rules for those readers who are interested in an accurate reading of the Proslogion.

The ability of Christian discourse to give people a sense of their identity sustains the concrete church. The cultural revolt of the 1960s which suddenly weakened the power of discursive Christianity in Britain may be partially explained in terms of the deterritorializing power of capitalism. In the context of this deterritorialization the formation of self-identity becomes more difficult and strong religious identities have a new appeal. Post liberal theologians have endorsed the identity-forming power of the church. But Christian identity must still be worked out in relation to what lies beyond the borders of the church. Christians rediscover their own foundational story in the acts and deeds of others. Theological formation should involve not only an immersion in the Christian tradition but also the search for what recognisably shares in the same project that the gospel defines. The history of personalism suggests what this search might look like in practice.

Recent debate on the relationship between morality and religious belief has tended to cast the role of religion in a negative light. While there are certain facts that may support this view, a philosophical investigation of the link between ethics and religion can contribute to the debate by focusing on certain fundamental issues. Noting the importance of the debate and showing the implications of whichever side one takes, this article argues that the claims for a purely humanistic ethics can be supported by an empirical observation, a philosophical argument and even on theological grounds. At the same time, however, it defends the view that religious belief in a personal God can have a positive contribution to morality by way of vision and motivation.

I discuss the recent tendency to extend the concept of sacramentality by applying it to the world or to aspects of it like beauty, e.g. by David Brown in his God and the Enchantment of Place. I look at the Church's traditional teaching on sacraments, in terms of signs, words, and effectiveness, making use of J.L.Austin's work on Performative Utterances, and explore how these three features might apply to the extended concept of a sacrament. I argue that we can perceive signs-by-likeness of God in the world, especially in beauty, and that we can often discern the effectiveness of such signs. We lack, however, anything here corresponding to the words of the sacraments of the Church. I conclude, therefore, that the parallel between sacraments in an extended sense and the sacraments of the Church is only partial; nevertheless the extended usage is justifiable, provided that we realize its limitations.

On Christmas Day 2007, Channel Four took its viewers for two hours on an alleged search for ‘the real Jesus’. The programme largely failed to introduce any real experts; there were errors and painful gaps in the ‘information’ provided; there was hardly any recognition that, over and over again, there was another side to the positions being presented. Among the fantasies once again trotted out was Jesus’ supposed life and death in India, a ‘thesis’ that was invented without a shred of evidence in the 1890s. The presenter repeatedly pushed theories about early followers of Jesus reworking beliefs and practices from Gnostic and other sources. St Paul was portrayed as the ‘real’ founder of Christianity, without a word being said about this view being proposed and long ago refuted. The poor quality of this programme was astounding. One expects something much better, especially on Christmas Day.

The concept of cultural identity is illustrated by the example of Latin America. At the same time Latin America is shown to be a true part of the Western world and understandable only as such, and the reasons for other cultural identifications of Latin America are examined. Then the cultural development and identity of the West as a whole is considered, with special reference to two competing accounts of Western cultural development, both of which focus chiefly on the econonmic development of Europe and North America, in contrast to its cultural or spiritual roots. Finally the special case of the United States is looked at, and it is asked how her peculiar self‐understanding affects her cultural identity as part of the Western world.

We believe that the God who spoke the universe into existence actually became a human being and dwelt among us. Furthermore, he left us a rich text full of his teachings. Sadly, however, the Jesuit revelation is easily negated by a fundamentalist theory about how to read the biblical text. This paper argues that the whole of Scripture must be read from the perspective of the Gospel lest we make the Jesus revelation into merely one prophetic revelation among many.