bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Law and Theology in Fishacre's Sentences Commentary
Authors: Goering Joseph
Published: July 2007

The topic of this brief communication, Theology and Law in Fishacre’s Sentence Commentary, emerges, as one might expect, from the decade- long project of producing a critical edition of the commentary on Peter Lombard’s Sentences by the Dominican theologian, Richard Fishacre. Preparing this edition has been a delightful and often-surprising exercise, and it is one of the surprises that concerns us here. Put in the form of a question, it is this: Why does a Dominican theologian, teaching in the theology faculty of the University of Oxford during the 1240’s, devote so much of his exposition of Book Four, on the Sacraments, to a detailed consideration of the Church’s canon law and to the teachings of the jurists?'

The edition of Fishacre’s commentary provides two kinds of clues to the question. The first is what Fishacre says, explicitly, and the second is what he does—the ways in which he utilizes canon law and the teachings of the canonists in his commentary. We will examine each type of evidence in turn.

Fishacre, like most medieval teachers, took a great deal of care in writing his inaugural lecture for each term of study in the schools, and these lectures now form the prologues to his commentaries on each of the four books of Sentences. What is striking, at least to this reader, is not what Fishacre says about the relation of Law and Theology, but rather what he does not say. Nowhere in the Prologue to Book Four does he prepare us for the abundant recourse he is about to make to the teachings of the canonists.
Why Medievalists should talk to Theologians
Authors: Kerr Fergus
Published: July 2007

Philosophers regularly debate with their predecessors, historians of philosophy are often astonished at the results, yet the two seldom exchange notes. The Bounds of Sense, published in 1966 by Peter Strawson, is one of the best books by one of the finest Oxford philosophers of our day: an interpretation of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, the author allows in the second sentence of the preface that, ‘as any Kantian scholar who may read it will quickly detect, it is by no means a work of historical-philosophical scholarship’. In the other philosophical tradition, Martin Heidegger brought out a study of Kant in 1929 which immediately sold out: in his preface to the second edition (1950), he allowed that the ‘violence’ of his interpretation, deplored by Kantian scholars, could indeed be substantiated from the text, but fended off the criticism by claiming that ‘historical-philosophical research is always justified when it makes this objection against attempts that want to bring about a thoughtful conversation between thinkers’. He goes on: ‘In contrast to the methods of historical philology, which has its own task, a thoughtful dialogue stands under different laws’. In short, students of the history of philosophy have a job to do; but they have no part in the conversation in which philosophical thought takes place. Heidegger, and even Strawson, clearly regard the work of historians of philosophy as less than vital for the advance of philosophy.

University students of philosophy, in whichever tradition, learn within their first few weeks to rehearse the objections to Cartesianism; it is not an objection that, historically, Descartes may never have been a Cartesian.
Pneumatology: Edward Schillebeeckx's Recent Theology
Authors: Bergin Helen
Published: July 2007

The Christian theological tradition has always found discussion of the Holy Spirit difficult. In early patristic writings, for example, the Holy Spirit was often treated as an adjunct to discussions about the relationship between Jesus and God. For both Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas, the Spirit was ‘love” or “gift”—designations which are indeed real, but also to a certain extent elusive. Today, some contemporary theologians find the task of describing the Holy Spirit no less difficult. William Hill and Colin Gunton both speak of the “self-effacing” Spirit; Leonardo Boff speaks of the Spirit who “cannot be imagined” while Paul Evdokimov speaks of the “mysterious face” of the Spirit. Other contemporary theologians speak of the Holy Spirit in relation to the Spirit’s function of making connections. Some time ago, John Taylor called the Holy Spirit The Go-Between God. Latterly, Mary Grey and Elizabeth Johnson have been exploring the Spirit’s function as that of bringing different entities into relationship. Kilian McDonnell suggests that the Holy Spirit is the “horizon” in which believers pray and reflect, but the Spirit is never an “object.” Such comments about the Holy Spirit from believers prior to and contemporary with Edward Schillebeeckx provide a background for discussing and assessing his treatment of the Holy Spirit.

This discussion has three parts. I will first describe the theology of the Holy Spirit presented in the theological writings of Edward Schillebeeckx between 1974 and 1994; second, I will offer some critique on his treatment of the Holy Spirit; third, I will draw on Schillebeeckx’s theology to suggest future directions for pneumatology.
The Magnificat of the Redeemed Woman
Authors: Beattie Tina
Published: July 2007

There has been a tendency in recent years among feminist and liberationist theologians to read the Magnificat primarily as a proclamation of social justice and liberation for the oppressed. A publication called Mary, Mother of Socialism, offers a number of essays which evaluate the liberative potential of the Magnificat, including one by Graham Dowell called “The Magnificat — a Christian Manifesto?” which offers a side-by-side comparison of Mary’s Magnificat and Marx’s Manifesto, with some fascinating juxtapositions and resonances between the two.

This essay is not intended to detract from these imaginative rereadings of the Magnificat to challenge a dehumanising economic order, but I want to suggest that the prophetic vision of social justice which the Magnificat proclaims is secondary to its message that in the redemption of Mary, womankind is liberated from the consequences of the fall and invited into a new world of integrity, freedom and dignity through the incarnation. This is the way in which a number of patristic writers interpreted the Magnificat, and it has profound implications for some of the vexed questions of sexual difference and equality which risk tearing apart the fabric of contemporary Catholic theology. I should add that I do not think that the seamless robe of salvation history is so easily torn apart by theological squabbles, but I do believe that we could save ourselves much hostility and grief if we could only look anew at our rich theological heritage, and setting aside the rhetoric and polemics of secular feminism, ask in all honesty and faithfulness what it means to be woman who bears the image of God no more and no less than man does.
Catholic Theology in Britain: the Scene since Vatican II
Authors: Nichols Aidan
Published: July 2007

A good place to begin this survey of the post-conciliar Catholic theological scene in Britain—which means, overwhelmingly, in this context, England—is the symposium on theology and the Catholic Church in this country, held at Downside under the presidency of Dom Christopher Butler in 1963. Though, as that date indicates, the papers were written and published while the Second Vatican Council was still in session (they were the product of the sixth of a series of Downside symposia on matters of intellectual interest to Catholics beginning in the later 1950s), the majority of the authors consciously looked forward to what would be, they imagined, the setting and general direction of Catholic theology in Britain after the Council. In various respects, to be examined shortly, the Catholic contributors were right in their predictions, but not in all. The historian will note the role of Christopher Butler as inspirer of the Downside symposia in general and author in particular of the opening essay inTheology and the University. An Ecumenical Investigation.As abbot of the only English monastery with a substantial scholarly tradition, a writer of distinction on the Gospels, ecclesiology, spiritual theology and apologetics, as well as a nationally known radio personality through the panel programmeAny Questions,his attendance at the Council as that rare bird a theologicalperituswith voting rights— owing to the accident that he was at the time abbot president of the English Benedictine Congregation—gave him the opportunity to become the single most influential interpreter in England of the Council’s devices and desires, especially when he was made a bishop auxiliary to Cardinal Heenan with, in effect, a special portfolio for doctrine and theology.
Theodicy and Blissful Freedom
Authors: Moonan Lawrence
Published: July 2007

A blunt commentator on the things around us can argue that by failing to choose the ‘obviously better’ possibility of making beings who would act freely but always go right, God cannot be both omnipotent and wholly good ‘. An underlying argument runs:

1 (1) If God does not choose the obviously better possibility of making beings who would accept freely and always go right,

God cannot be both omnipotent and wholly good. (Assumption.)

2 (2) God does not choose the obviously better possibility...

(Assumption.)

1,2 (3) God cannot be both omnipotent and wholly good.

(1,2 modus ponens.)

This, the Underlying Argument, is weaker than the Blunt Commentator’s original one. If it fails, the original one cannot succeed, but if it goes through, the original one does not necessarily go through. I number the main steps, chiefly to keep track of the assumptions.

In Part I, I argue that the Underlying Argument fails to prove the conclusion that God cannot be both omnipotent and wholly good; and that it fails, from ignoring a view exploiting the notion of blissful freedom: a theologians’ notion, but one already appealed to by at least one philosopher strongly sympathetic to the Blunt Commentator’s argument. In Part II, I draw attention to an ambiguity in ‘always go right’, with a view to pursuing, in Part III, consequences of a further ambiguity to be seen in ‘God cannot be both omnipotent and good’, demanding attention to two diverse forms of theism. One of these— ‘existence-theism’—is invulnerable to a Blunt Commentator’s argument, but can exploit some of the Underlying Argument’s steps to support a Blunt Commentator’s conclusion in the sense needed to impugn the other form, ‘character-theism’.
God and Alterity
Authors: Mendez Angel F.
Published: July 2007

In philosophy the question about God has developed, historically, parallel to and intimately connected with metaphysics. In metaphysics, the onto-theological thought of God arises from its dependence on the ontological difference, the thought of the ‘unthought as such.’ Within this philosophical construct, God is ultimately thought as the ‘ground’ of all that is, the Being of beings, thecausa sui.This paper, mostly inspired by the philosophy of Jean-Luc Marion and Emmanuel Levinas, argues in favour of a post-metaphysical way of thinking about God: a thinking which releases God from the onto-theological category of Being, and addresses the radical and irreducible alterity of God; a thinking which critiques thinking, in order to address the dilemma of our discourse of Transcendence to be shared within a community-indialogue.

This work is divided into three major sections. Beginning with Marion’s interpretation of Heidegger’s account of the analytic of theDasein,the first section will suggest that one starts the question of God from God alone—thegiftof Love that precedes Being—rather than from Being. The second section will introduce Emmanuel Levinas’ account of the ethical pre-condition of discourse and reason. For Levinas, discourse starts with, or is preceded by, the gaze of the face of the Other who refuses to be reduced into a category of the same. Subsequently, the questions of language and reason, their limits, necessity, and ethical reach will also be addressed. Finally, this paper will revisit the question of God and reflect on the philosopher’s and theologian’s call to dialogue with, and service to, the community.
The Responsibility of Theology for the Question of God
Authors: Moonan Lawrence
Published: July 2007

In at least two ways it can be sensible to ask about the responsibility of theology for something or other, not just the responsibility of individual theologians. They are rather like the ways in which we can ask about the responsibility of the engineering behind some dam, say, not just that of the individual engineers, for the safety of the dam. In one, we may ask about something in the abstract nature of engineering, its concepts or principles: Was it reliance on some daring new engineering concept that was responsible for the dam’s failure? In the other way, we may ask about the received practices of engineers generally, not just about the actual practice of the engineers involved on that occasion. Do they tend, for example, to double the theoretically necessary thickness of certain structural components, and is that practice responsible for their structures withstanding more than their due of wild weather and erratic maintenance? Or do they tend to pare things down to the point where only near-perfect workmanship and near-ideal materials can keep things safe?

I consider both kinds of question. But a recurring concern is one the President asked me to keep in mind, when inviting me to speak to the topic: the concern that there may be a ‘modern culture... in which the God-question is vitiated often right from the start in the way in which it is posed’.
God, Theology and Music
Authors: MacMillan James
Published: July 2007

There has been a resurgence of interest in a particular kind of contemporary music in recent years. This has been a surprise to many, especially the composers involved, because we live at the end of a century that has seen a retreat by the composing community from the larger music loving public. If one looks back to the early days of the century we see figures like Schönberg, establishing private societies for the performance of contemporary music. A perception is beginning to emerge within the composing community that the priorities of composers have in some way separated from the priorities of the larger music-loving public. At the very time when a museum culture was beginning to be the main priority of classical music listeners, composers were going into a very exploratory mode. In the century of the holocaust and the loss of meaning generally, composers have gone into a kind of laboratory phase when the very nature of music was the stuff of their investigations. Composers like Boulez, Stockhausen, Berio and the young Turks of the post-war generation took music into a very abstract phase indeed by making explorations into the purely abstract nature of music but with an ideological and idealistic desire to turn their backs on the past. They wanted to start afresh from year zero, as it were, to write a music that was untainted by tradition, a music that would not have any resonance of a failed bourgeois culture.
The Responsibility of Theology for Spiritual Growth and Pastoral Care
Authors: Endean Philip
Published: July 2007

‘It seems that theology has no significant responsibility for spiritual development and pastoral care: at best, theology is a harmless distraction which entertains some Christians endowed with certain kinds of temperament; at worst, theology is a positive impediment to proper Christian formation and growth’. So a Thomist videtur quod non might begin, and the documentation would be easy to find. We might, for example, quote the famous adage, ‘by love he may be caught and held, but by thinking never’.We could reflect on how pastoral supervisors often try to get trainee ministers to respond to ‘what is really going on’, and not to think too quickly in terms of articulated theology. Again, many of us will know good priests who will tell us that seminary training in theology was something they survived. They began real learning on the job, on the basis of simple goodness and common sense. Theology is something of which they are in awe, or nervous, or suspicious; it remains remote from their awareness.

Sed contra: we should always be able to provide ‘an accounting for the hope that is in us; the bishop, the prime pastor,’ must have a firm grasp of the word that is trustworthy in accordance with the teaching’ (1 Peter 3:15b; Titus 1.9). We need therefore a responsio that engages with the objections, admitting their force, but somehow suggesting a more positive account of what theology might contribute to good pastoral practice.
The Irresponsibility of New Testament Scholarship in the Twentieth Century
Authors: O'Neill J.C.
Published: July 2007

A brilliant young German New Testament scholar said to me recently in an e-mail message, “What is more, scarcely anything new can ever be said; mostly it is the arrangement of well-known thoughts from a new point of view that is helpful and releases new impulses. Really new thoughts are accordingly received with great scepticism. So I often ask myself what we are actually doing.” That on the one hand, and the spurious excitement of the “Honest to Jesus!” movement, publicising the work of the Jesus Seminar, on the other hand. The Jesus Seminar meets several times a year in the United States and sets itself to decide by vote the likely authenticity of the sayings of Jesus and of events in the Acts of the Apostles. It was founded by Robert Funk. His book, Honest to Jesus, aims “to set Jesus free”, to “demote Jesus”, and to “declare the New Testament a highly uneven and biased record of various early attempts to invent Christianity.” The show will be on the road in the United Kingdom when Funk visits the country from the end of March AD 2000 to the beginning of May to hold seminars and rallies. It seems that close detailed scholarship by individuals dealing with the New Testament is regarded as boring and that the only excitement is to be gained by joining with others and getting Bishop Spong to puff your book, trying to shock the public in echo of Bishop John Robinson.
Sloth
Authors: Casey John
Published: July 2007

Since this is the last lecture in the series about The Seven Deadly Sins, it might be a good idea to stand back and think for a moment about the point of such a list. That seven is a good, mystical number obviously makes us suspicious about any claim (if one was ever made) that the list of the deadly sins was arrived at by the exercise of pure reason. It is not difficult to add to them. Why is cruelty not a specific deadly sin? Cruelty does not obviously come under wrath, nor, for that matter, under pride, envy or lust. Aquinas lists cruelty (ferocitas) as a sin against temperance. He distinguishes it from ferocity and savagery (saevitia and feritas), which are ‘bestial’ vices. Cruelty, for Aquinas, is the vice of excessive severity in punishment. Its opposing virtue is clemency—the rational tempering of punishment—which Aquinas considers to be part of temperance. These are fairly persuasive distinctions. Yet Aquinas’s idea of cruelty seems to have little if anything to do with the sort of cruelty that has most caught the attention of the modern world, which was touched on by Nietzsche—the deliberate infliction of pain upon another for pleasure. This was philosophised upon even more interestingly by Jean-Paul Sartre as being part of a project to reduce the Other to objecthood, revealing and at the same time cancelling his freedom. That would seem a good candidate for an additional deadly sin.

Perhaps, though, we should think about the deadly sins as a sort of mirror image of the virtues—as these appear, for instance, in Aristotle.
A Reply to Tom Weinandy
Authors: Webster John
Published: July 2007

My friend Tom Weinandy has taken my admittedly polemical words very seriously, so that a paper which was intended to provoke seminar discussion has also provoked dismay on the part of a theologian and colleague whose judgment I respect very highly. What I have written, I have written; others must judge its truth. But some things in Tom's response call for a brief reply.

First, the tone of my remarks, Tom says, betrays ‘almost complete lack of sympathy’ with Fides et Ratio and a ‘dismissive attitude’ bordering on ‘the mocking’; ‘if he tells me, ‘one restrains one's impatience and focuses one's mind'—which it looks like I have failed to do—things can be seen to be a good deal better than I have made them out to be. Maybe, though on re-reading Fides et Ratio I remain unconvinced that it is a first- rate piece of apostolic teaching. What I must make clear—and what the polemical tone evidently obscured—is that I am not at all opposed to bishops intervening in the academy: far from it. I entirely agree with Tom that much in the academy is ‘inimical to the Christian gospel', and that Christian theologians can be victims of academic terrorism. My protest is not intended to suggest that the teaching office should leave the academy alone, but that its interventions must betray a consistently apostolic character. An episcopal judgment, if it is to be received as apostolic, has to commend itself by indicating the truth, and the rather bullying tactics deployed in some bits of Fides et Ratio simply do not help.
Schelling and Onto-theology
Authors: Leask I.
Published: July 2007

The Schelling revival has never quite reconciled itself to the Swabian’s religious anima. Schelling’s Hegel-critique may now be recognized as something like a proto-deconstruction of Idealism’s ‘paroxysmal’ self-assertion; but, we are told, this ‘anti-logocentric’ kernel has usually to be extricated from a mystical-theosophical shell. Likewise, there may be vast, fruitful depths to Schelling’s stricture that Being is irreducible to thought; nonetheless, Schelling’s “apparently dead theology” is best either forgotten or else ‘translated’ into the lexicon of Lacanian psychoanalysis, Derridean deconstruction, Rortyian postmodern pragmatism, etc. The religious concerns of Schelling’s later work are, it seems, little more than an embarrassment for those driving the revival.

Despite profound gratitude towards those (principally Bowie) who have done so much to instigate the current Schelling renaissance, I want to suggest here that we should not be so quick to brush aside, or ‘translate’, Schelling’s theologico-religious interests—for such a dismissal leaves us not just decontextualizing Schelling’s Hegel-critique, but, as well, missing out on a crucial Schellingian contribution to contemporary debate about the question of onto-theology. Schelling’s continuing relevance is more than his blowing open the Hegelian Identity of Thought and Being; it is also his concomitant reinstatement—not merely incidental to but fundamental for his critique of Idealism’s auto-apotheosis—of the ancient Platonic conviction that the divinity ‘is’ epekeina tes ousias, beyond Being or any metaphysical construction.
Imitating God: The Truth of Things According to Thomas Aquinas
Authors: Pickstock Catherine
Published: July 2007

How should one respond to the death of realism, the death of the idea that thoughts in our minds can represent to us the way things actually are in the world? For such a death seems to be widely proclaimed by contemporary philosophers.

In summary, they argue that since we only have access to the world via knowledge, it is impossible to check knowledge against the world in order to see if it corresponds with it. This is a powerful and some might say unanswerable contention, and yet if we accept it, it seems to follow that there can be no such thing as truth at all. But how can Christians accept such a state of affairs, or accommodate themselves to it, since truth has always been held to be a predicate of God himself, and of Jesus Christ, the truth incarnate?
Perichoresis and Projection: Problems with Social Doctrines of the Trinity
Authors: Kilby Karen
Published: July 2007

Over the last three decades there has been a great outpouring of writings from both Catholic and Protestant theologians on the doctrine of the Trinity, almost all of which, ironically, have lamented the neglect of the doctrine. Again and again one reads that although the Trinity is central and crucially important to Christianity and Christian theology, it has not been given adequate treatment. It is unacceptable, theologians protest, that the Trinity has come to be regarded as an obscure and complex theological technicality, a piece of celestial mathematics impossible to understand and with little relevance to the life of the ordinary Christian. Karl Rahner remarked that modern Christians were ‘almost mere “monotheists’” paying lip service to the Trinity but in practice ignoring it. If it were announced that the dogma had been a mistake and was to be erased from official Christianity, nobody, he thought, would be too bothered, neither the ordinary believing Christians nor the authors of theological textbooks.’ Rahner’s diagnosis has been widely accepted and widely regretted. The consensus is that the Trinity is at the heart of Christianity, and both theology and piety have gone astray if it is regarded as belonging to the specialists. A retrieval (it is believed) is needed: the Trinity must be understood once again (one reads) as a positive and central element in the Christian faith rather than an embarrassing obscurity, and as profoundly relevant to the life of individual Christians, to the life of the Church, and perhaps beyond.
“I have Tears and Hope”: Martyrdom in the Twentieth Century
Authors: Murray Paul
Published: July 2007

On the evening of the first of August, 1996, the Dominican Bishop of Oran in Algeria, Pierre Claverie, was murdered by a bomb placed in a side-road near his house. He had been warned many times about the danger of remaining in the country, especially since an underground group of Muslim terrorists had begun deliberately targeting people like himself. But he chose to stay. In the days after his death, against the wall near the place where he and his driver had been blown up, the local people placed flowers and small written tributes in his memory. Among them was a card from a young Algerian woman called Yasmina. On the card she wrote: “Ce soir, mon Pére, je n’ai pas de paroles. Mais j’ai des larmes et de l’espoir”. (“This evening, Father, I have no words. But I have tears and hope.”) Because these words are both heart-broken and hope-filled, I can think of no words more fitting to use as a title for this paper on martyrdom. “I Have Tears and Hope": Martyrdom in the Twentieth Century.

I say “tears”, first, because looking back over the last one hundred years, one soon comes to realize that perhaps no other century in history has witnessed the death and martyrdom of so many people, or has seen so much systematic and deliberate torture of the innocent. And, added to the usual tragic circumstances associated with martyrdom, a vast number of people in the 20th century, found themselves caught up helplessly between the two great opposing ideologies of Fascism and Communism.
The Responsibility of Theology for the Question of God
Authors: Moonan Lawrence
Published: July 2007

In at least two ways it can be sensible to ask about the responsibility of theology for something or other, not just the responsibility of individual theologians. They are rather like the ways in which we can ask about the responsibility of the engineering behind some dam, say, not just that of the individual engineers, for the safety of the dam. In one, we may ask about something in the abstract nature of engineering, its concepts or principles: Was it reliance on some daring new engineering concept that was responsible for the dam’s failure? In the other way, we may ask about the received practices of engineers generally, not just about the actual practice of the engineers involved on that occasion. Do they tend, for example, to double the theoretically necessary thickness of certain structural components, and is that practice responsible for their structures withstanding more than their due of wild weather and erratic maintenance? Or do they tend to pare things down to the point where only near-perfect workmanship and near-ideal materials can keep things safe?
The Responsibilities of Theology to Business (or the Responsibilities of the Butcher, the Baker, and the Imagemaker)
Authors: Alford Helen
Published: July 2007

The title of this talk presupposes some important definitions. The conference title, “The Responsibilities of Theology”, struck me firstly as rather odd, but also as strikingly familiar. Many is the time I have seen the heading “The Responsibilities of Business”. In this light, such terminology implies that there is some kind of corporate (in its original sense) identity under the heading “theology” or “business”, to which some kind of responsibility can be ascribed. Lots of ink has been spilt over whether one can say in any meaningful way that the business corporation “acts” and can therefore “have responsibilities”, and this title seems to invite the same kind of approach to the “enterprise of theology”.’ I’ve taken a particular line on these questions, which is apparent in the thesis below. To take a particular line in order to get somewhere is the kind of thing that a business person would do. Results are important to businesspeople-an important point for theology to take on boarcbut the drawback in this is that to focus on results also tends to narrow down the discussion. In order to “get somewhed’ I am going to do the same thing, which will inevitably leave some avenues of possible discussion left untouched.
Aquinas's Views on Teaching
Authors: Quinn Patrick
Published: July 2007

As a teacher and philosopher, Thomas Aquinas sets out to investigate the nature of pedagogical activity in his treatise, On the Teacher in Articles 1-4, Question 11 of the Disputed Questions on Truth. His analysis of teaching and of the teacher’s role are informed, as one might expect, by his epistemological views and theological beliefs. One of the first issues that Aquinas has to confront is a theological one, namely, whether or not one can describe any human being as a teacher if one believes that God is the pre-eminent teacher as the primary source of all knowledge. While the latter proposition may seem rather problematic to contemporary Western thought, it was an acceptable issue for discussion in Aquinas’s time and is formulated by him in various ways in a number of the objections cited at the beginning of Article 1. Many of these appear to originate from the Augustinian tradition, together with some others from scriptural sources, and all of them argue along the lines that the Christian belief in God’s noetic power is difficult to reconcile with our human capacity to function freely as independent cognitive beings. In terms of pedagogy, this becomes a debate about the very existence of an authentic human pedagogy if God is believed to be teacher par excellence. Aquinas decides to deal with this problem at the outset.
The Call to Holy Rest
Authors: Billy Dennis J.
Published: July 2007

I once read a mystery novel where the main character, an author by profession, always finished one of his books by lighting a candle, uncorking a bottle of champagne, and toasting himself for a job well done. It was his way of celebrating the outpouring of his creative juices. It brought closure to his work, a festive spirit to his life, and release to pent-up tensions. The ritual became so much a part of his work that the two could hardly be separated. His creativity was sparked by the thought of the celebration to come; the celebration, in turn, derived its significance from the many hours of labour dedicated to the writing process. These two very different activities were closely related. Neither made any sense without the other.

This simple example from the world of fiction has led me to think of God’s “rest” from his creative action in a similar way. The Book of Genesis reminds us that, after six days, God completed the work of creation by resting, blessing, and making holy the seventh day (Gn. 2:1-3). To say that God “finished” or “completed” his work on the seventh day implies that the very activity of “rest” is itself part of the creative process. Without it, something would be missing; the creative act itself would not be complete; a new creative act could not begin.
Confessions of an Existentialist: Reading Augustine After Heidegger, Part II
Authors: Smith James K.A.
Published: July 2007

Reading Augustine “after Heidegger” in a two-fold sense, in Part I we considered the ek-static or transcendent character of the self in Augustine’s Confessions. There we argued that it is a structural characteristic of the self to seek its own happiness, but that search can take different directions, either finding its joy in the world instead of God (C 10.23.34), or the “authentic happy life” which finds its happiness in the fruitio Dei (10.22.32). Here in Part II we turn to an analysis of these different directions of the self: first, to the inauthentic, fallen self who enjoys the world (§§ 4-5), and then the authentic self who constitutes the world differently (§§ 6-7).
Newman's theology in the Dream of Gerontius
Authors: Velez Juan R.
Published: July 2007

John Henry Newman once remarked to a friend that his Dream of Gerontius. “was written by accident — and it was published by accident”, yet his personal history proves otherwise; it was the fruit of many years of agonizing study and prayer leading him to the Roman Catholic Church. It is rightly considered a major contribution to Roman Catholic spirituality and doctrine which continues to inspire theology and piety.

The Dream of Gerontius expresses in poetical form many truths of Catholic dogma concerning creation, redemption and eschatology. This, Newman’s longest poem, composed in 1865, almost twenty years after his entrance into full communion with the Roman Catholic Church, underscores his Catholic beliefs in the mysterious complementarity between God’s justice and mercy whereby at the particular judgment, some souls require a final preparation for heaven. In his Plain and Parochial Sermons Newman had rebutted the 19th century denial of possible eternal damnation. In the Dream of Gerontius, he emphasized God’s merciful dispensation. Eschatology is intertwined with Christology and Christian anthropology. Furthermore, the seeds of an ecclesiology of communion are present as a dominant theme.
God
Authors: McCabe Herbert
Published: July 2007

‘God,’ ‘Theos,’ ‘Deus’ is of course a name borrowed from paganism; we take it out of its proper context, where it is used for talking about the gods, and use it for our own purposes. This is quite a legitimate piece of borrowing and quite safe so long as it does not mislead us into thinking that the God we worship (or don’t) is a god. We always do have to speak of our God with borrowed words; it is one of the special things about our God that there are no peculiar appropriate words that belong to him, as with the language of carpentry or computer-speak. He is always dressed verbally in second-hand clothes that don’t fit him very well. We always have to be on our guard against taking these clothes as revealing who and what he is.

For this reason it is sometimes safer to use clothes that are quite obviously second-hand, words that have been quite scandalously ripped from their proper context and stretched and bent and distorted to suit our purposes. That is one reason for preferring ‘The Father’ to ‘God’ as a name for our God. ‘The Father’ is manifestly being used in a metaphorical or extended sense and so is unlikely to mislead us. It is also the word that Jesus prefers to use.
Defect of Sacramental Intention: The Background of Apostolicae Curae
Authors: Gaine Simon Francis
Published: July 2007

In 1896 Pope Leo XIII’s Apostolicae Curae declared definitively that the Anglican orders of the past and of his own day were ‘absolutely null and utterly void’. His principal reason was defect of sacramental form, but to that was added a second reason, namely, defect of sacramental intention. In other words, the sacrament of holy order was not conferred among Anglicans on account of the deficient form found in their Ordinal dating from the reign of King Edward VI, but also on account of a defective internal intention to perform the sacrament on the part of Anglican ministers.
Iris Murdoch's ‘Good’: A Critical Analysis of its Nature and Relevance
Authors: Widdows Heather
Published: July 2007

From the late 1950s to the early 1990s, Iris Murdoch produced her own unique brand of moral philosophy which offers commentary and insight into the current debate concerning the nature of moral values. Over the years, Murdoch criticised existentialism, behaviourism, linguistic analysis and utilitarianism on the grounds that they present distorted, and at best partial, depictions of the moral life. At the root of her criticisms is the conviction that these views are out of step with experience and are too narrow to account for the reality of moral value as it manifests itself in ordinary life. Today, as the debate regarding the nature of moral values—between the realists and non-cognitivists— becomes more polarised around what have come to be defining issues, such as whether there are moral facts (moral facts being assumed to be analogous to scientific facts), her criticisms and her opposing schema continue to have validity, and offer an alternative approach to moral values and the moral life. Moreover, her philosophy contains elements which could enliven the current debate in both theology and philosophy regarding the nature of moral value.
Cosmological Liturgy and a Sensible Priesthood
Authors: Fagerberg David W.
Published: July 2007

In the field of theological studies, subdivided specialties have been separated from each other with such a watertight seal that those of us who regret such dissociation might find cause to applaud Mr. G. K. Chesterton’s assessment of what made for his success as a journalist.

On the whole, I think I owe my success (as the millionaires say) to having listened respectfully and rather bashfully to the very best advice, given by all the best journalists who had achieved the best sort of success in journalism; and then going away and doing the exact opposite. For what they all told me was that the secret of success in journalism was to study the particular journal and write what was suitable to it. And, partly by accident and ignorance and partly through the real rabid certainties of youth, 1 cannot remember that I ever wrote any article that was at all suitable to any paper.... I wrote on a Nonconformist organ like the old Daily News and told them all about French cafes and Catholic cathedrals; and they loved it because they had never heard of them before. I wrote on a robust Labour organ like the old Clarion and defended medieval theology and all the things their readers had never heard of; and their readers did not mind me a bit.
War and Peace and the Environment
Authors: Echlin Edward P.
Published: July 2007

The flower power of the sixties was ultimately anthropocentric in its, ‘make love, not war’. In America Philip Rule, S.J., observed that flower power died trampling flower beds during a demonstration at Harvard. Nevertheless, the tramplers had a point: love conquers conflict. Conflicts damage the whole earth, or soil, community, for whose health, people, under God, are responsible. Environmentalists, therefore, who increasingly include a significant percentage of Christians, are among peacemakers’— and earth lovers’—best friends. The peace movement, and environmentalists everywhere, are in at least partial ‘intercommunion’, they recognise each others’ ministries.

And their mutually supportive ministries are (literally) vitally necessary. For human aggression among people and against the earth, remains wanton and, fortified by modem technologies, increasingly life threatening to all living beings on earth. The causes of conflict are myriad, including transnational corporation led globalization itself. Human beings are neither wise nor clever enough to manage the biosphere without conflict. World banks, trade organizations, and conglomerates fail to understand that the real, fundamental economy is the earth’s economy, within which all other economies are dependant and derivative. For humans to attempt to manage the world’s trade, or services, is like a child trying to manage a panther, which is pretty much the point of God’s words to Job (Job 38-39). Relentless population growth, with unsustainable demands on the earth’s water, soil fertility, and climate, brings conflict, not only in developing regions, but even in North America. Vanderbilt University’s Howard Harrod argues that anthropocentric utilitarianism, which devalues animals, triggers conflicts over human treatment of other animals.
Venerable Catherine McAuley and The Dignity of the Human Person
Authors: Allen Prudence
Published: July 2007

Over a century before the principles of the “new evangelization” were proclaimed in 1965 in Gaudium et spes (The Pastoral Constitution on the Church and the Modem World) Catherine McAuley (1781-1841), vigorously promoted its two key principles: (1) the dignity of the human person and (2) the virtue of solidarity with the suffering poor, sick, and ignorant. From her First Conferences alter founding the Religious Sisters of Mercy in 1831 in Dublin, Ireland, Mother Catherine consistently taught her Sisters to put these principles into practice in their apostolic work in education and health care.

Drawing upon Venerable Catherine McAuley’s original writings and biographies of her life and works, this article will demonstrate how she helped prepare the way for consecrated persons in the new evangelization of the Church in the modem world. The themes are divided as follows: Part I—The Dignity of the Human Person, Part II—Solidarity with the Poor, Sick, and Ignorant, and Part III—Urgent Problems for the Church in the Modem World.
Patterns of Ministry in the New Testament Church
Authors: Robinson Bernard P.
Published: July 2007

Had I been asked back in the 1950’s about the origins of ministry in the church, I should (being, in theological terms, a rather precocious teenager) have had a ready answer. The Lord had appointed apostles, answerable to Peter, who in turn had transmitted their authority to bishops, presbyters and deacons, all subject to Peter’s successors, the bishops of Rome. (If pressed, I might have acknowledged that it was possible that presbyters and bishops were originally indistinguishable, and that the threefold ministry may have developed from an earlier twofold ministry.) Had not Clement of Rome shortly before the end of the first century spoken of the line of successors running from Christ to the apostles and then to those that they in turn appointed (1 Clement 42; 44)? The inspired author of Acts had testified that it was the practice of Paul and Barnabas to appoint presbyters in every city (Acts 14:23), and Paul in the Pastoral letters had indicated that the means of designation was the laying-on of hands (1 Tim. 4:14, 5:22; 2 Tim. 1:6). The primacy of Peter was evident from Matt. 16:13-20; the intervention in the 90’s by Clement bishop of Rome in the affairs of the Corinthian church reflected the fact that Rome was already then exercising the primacy bestowed on Peter. A decade ago, Fr Aidan Nichols gave an account of the origins of ministry which has much in common with this one, but most of us now think that the way in which things came about was much more complex than that. Let us review the evidence in chronological order.
Searching out the Holy Spirit via Earth's Elements
Authors: Bergin Helen
Published: July 2007

Many attempts have been made in the Christian tradition to name or describe the Holy Spirit. We have heard the Spirit of God termed ‘teacher’ (Jn 14:26), ‘love’ (1 Jn 4:13), ‘gift’, ‘go-between’. Each of these descriptions is helpful and each is at the same time partial.

In this paper, we wish to explore the Spirit of God (in Christian terms, the Holy Spirit) in relation to air, earth, fire and water. Interest in the four elements has an ancient recorded history, reaching back at least to the Greek philosopher Empedocles in the 5th century BCE. It has also had a history in anatomy and psychology. We note this in reference to the ‘four humours’ in Elizabethan literature. Today, study of the four elements has an impact on areas of astrology, health care and religious traditions. We will focus on the Christian story.

We suggest that there is particular value today in linking the Spirit with four of earth’s elements, mindful always that such connections are analogical. We maintain that an awareness from our Tradition of the close links made between the Spirit and the elements can assist us not only to view the Holy Spirit anew, but can also remind us to respect more deeply the earth in whose elements we as human beings share. First, we will reflect theologically on each element in relation to the Spirit. Second, we will discuss the adequacy for pneumatology of such an understanding. We begin our study with a discussion of the element ‘air’.
The Dialogue of Metaphysics and Religion with Natural Science: Some Continental Examples
Authors: Booth Edward
Published: July 2007

In a private conversation with an occupant of Rutherford’s chair of Physics at Cambridge University, I was struck by his distance from that overall association of metaphysics and religion which we take as normative, even though, at this moment, it is understandably diversified. “I am prepared to consider the possibility of mind—though most of my colleagues are not.” That British scepticism here is not aggressive conceals from many the intellectual distance that has grown up between science and religion; it also ensures that, despite the heroism of individuals who rise above the ethos, debate is in fact rudimentary; the anti-religionists consider the battle won. English culture and paideia have lost an overarching conception of their unity. That is not the case elsewhere.

But when had this conception broken down? The background, but little known, work of Anneliese Meyer, from the Vatican Library, showed the anticipations of “modern” science in late medieval science. A.N.Whitehead saw the contribution which medieval scholasticism had made to a rational culture, including subsequent natural science. Both Descartes as the mechanist of man and animals and mathematician, and Newton as mathematician-mechanist of the Cosmos, kept their faith, as did Leibniz as mathematician-theodicean. “The Enlightenment”, about whose extent there is incomplete agreement, expressed itself in France in the unbelieving ideal of the Encyclopedic, in Germany in the religious rationalism of Christian Wolff. The position of Kant was not one of pure enlightenment. The last speculative endeavours to include natural science within an overall, complete philosophy including religion