bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Recent Thomistica: II
Authors: Kerr Fergus 
Published: July 2007

No one in the English-speaking academy would even try to write an exposition of ‘Thomism’, inhibited as we are by fifty years of the (no doubt salutarily) deflationary effects of analytic philosophy. More positively, the current wave of scholarly works suggests that a systematic exposition of Thomas Aquinas’s thought, if possible at all, would be premature. (We have noted some of the studies of his use of the Bible: New Blackfriars 83 (2002): 245-251).Thomism is a tradition, long tracts of which remain unresearched. Two conferences have recently mapped some of the territory. Saint Thomas au XXe siècle (Paris: Saint-Paul 1994) contains more than twenty excellent papers tracing the history of Thomism since the foundation of Revue thomiste, the quarterly journal of the Dominican friars at Toulouse. The focus is on France, indeed on the Toulouse ‘school’; yet, as well as a fascinating picture of that particular tradition, we get a great deal of insight into the principal conflicts in Catholic theology during the twentieth century (how deep these were is not widely appreciated in the English-speaking world, where even Catholics themselves tend to believe that we all agreed, prior to the Second Vatican Council).Saint Thomas au XIVe siècle, a special issue of Revue Thomiste (Janvier-Mars 1997), offers another set of fine essays on one generation of theologians, the first after Aquinas’s death, some of whom were devotedly Thomist, others (including Dominicans) much more critical and some even ferociously anti-Thomist. Largely unknown to any but specialists in medieval studies, these controversies show how contested Aquinas’s thought has been all along.
War on Ash Wednesday: A Brief Christological reflection
Authors: Hanby Michael 
Published: July 2007

At perhaps no time in recent memory has the temptation to hopelessness been so great or the relative powerlessness of most of the world’s humanity so obvious. As I sit to write this essay, safely complicit in the “protection” afforded by the world’s richest and most powerful nation and yet strangely imprisoned by it, we appear to be careening ineluctably toward war—or escalating an ongoing war largely invisible to the public eye—against a country half of whose population is under the age of fifteen. Vast opposition in the United Nations is greeted with incredulity and incomprehension by President Bush on our half-willing behalf, and massive protests worldwide are countered simultaneously with piety about the blessings of free expression and an indifference which shows that such liberty is countenanced, such displays encouraged even, because sovereign power and a bland pluralism of purely private opinion have drained these expressions of any weight. This impotence is what we have learned to call freedom. In Washington, war protesters dutifully apply for permits to register their dissatisfaction. Could there be a clearer example of modern democracy’s ingenious capacity to domesticate dissent simply by permitting and embracing it?It is particularly appropriate, as we are plunged helplessly and headlong into war, that we are also invited by the Ash Wednesday liturgy and the season which it announces to contemplate this powerlessness, to offer sacrifices of repentance worthy of it, by dwelling on the fact and meaning—or perhaps the meaninglessness— of our deaths. “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
‘To Live and Die Upon a Dogma’: Newman and Post/Modern Faith
Authors: Loughlin Gerard 
Published: July 2007

Today, as in his own day, John Henry Newman (1801-1890) is a contested site, the name for different ways of being Catholic. Competing views of Catholicity still seek for legitimacy by appealing to the authority of Newman’s thought, of his intellect, and, not least, his Cardinal’s red hat, conferred on him by Pope Leo XIII in 1879. At the beginning of the last century, those known as Liberal Catholics or Catholic Modernists appealed to Newman as their patron saint. George Tyrrell (1861-1909) declared himself a ‘devout disciple of Newman’, and confessed to having been ‘brought into, and kept in, the Church by the influence of Cardinal Newman and of the mystical theology of the Fathers and of the Saints’. Today, however, it is not Catholic Modernism, but religious postmodernism that might be in want of Newman’s imprimatur.Professor Terry Wright, for example, has recently suggested that Newman’s reading of the Bible offers a via media to postmodemity. For Newman recognised the ‘multiplicity of meanings’ to which a critical, open and historical reading of the Bible gives rise. ‘The All-wise, Allknowing God cannot speak without meaning many things at once’, Newman declared.
The Claim of Judaism Correctly to Interpret Scripture in accord with Scripture's own Imperatives and Narrative
Authors: Neusner Jacob 
Published: July 2007

The claim of Judaism to own the Bible rests on four facts, and one further claim. No reasonable person can deny the facticity of the facts I shall adduce in evidence of the Judaic claim of possession. The claim is a matter of interpretation of Scripture: who is right about its main point, as I shall explain.The first fact is, Judaism takes seriously and keeps the laws set forth in Scripture. In contemporary Judaic life there are disagreements on details, but no one who affirms the authority of the Torah denies the commandments. Take the Sabbath for example. It is the seventh day of the week, sundown Friday to sundown Saturday. We keep that law. Christians do not. Take the matter of the covenant of circumcision, beginning with Abraham. We keep that law, Christians do not. Christians focus on their liberation from the law of the Torah; they do not keep the Sabbath as God commanded it; they eat forbidden food; they do not observe the laws of the Torah. Why should they even want to claim to own Scripture at all, if they do not keep important commandments that Scripture sets forth?The second fact fundamental to the Judaic claim to own the Bible turns from law to theology, specifically, Scripture’s theology of Israel, defined as the people called by God to his service in the Torah. The Jewish people today as for all the centuries from the beginning of Scripture to the present finds in Scripture its story of itself.
Joshua and the Pilgrim People of God in the New Testament
Authors: Ounsworth Richard J 
Published: July 2007

It is possible, as I know from recent experience, to spend three years studying theology in a secular university, and even with a majority of that time devoted to the New Testament barely touch on anything that might credibly be called ‘New Testament Theology’. The texts of the New Testament are studied in considerable detail, with careful attention paid to the theological positions of each individual writer—or at least, for the most part, of Mark, John and Paul—but with no attempt to create a synthesis, to trace theological themes that link disparate books, or to allow a reading that goes beyond narrow exegesis to inform the exercise of speculative systematic theology. There are honourable exceptions to this general trend: Gerd Theissen’s A Theory of Primitive Christian Religion attempts something in the way of a synthesis, but explicitly goes beyond the texts of the New Testament in a way that makes his programme more a historical study of early Christian theology than New Testament theology properly speaking. Arguably one has to look back to the likes of Barth and Bultmann for authentic New Testament theology, theology based on the scriptural texts themselves rather than on a historical reconstruction of the theological milieu that produced them, and addressing modem theological concerns.This article proposes one route towards developing this sort of theology, beginning with the significance of Jesus’s name. Though the Holy Name was once an important Catholic devotion, it receives little attention today, either spiritual or scholarly: yet when properly explored through readings of, in particular, the Letter to the Hebrews and Matthew’s Gospel, the fact that Jesus’s name is identical to that of Joshua (in Greek lesous, in Hebrew Yeshua) proves to be far from trivial, opening the way to a theologically powerful and spiritually refreshing approach to Christology and ecclesiology.
The Place of authority in our Judgments of Truth, goodness and Beauty
Authors: O'Neill J.C. 
Published: July 2007

Kant thinks that our judgments in all three parts of Critical Philosophy: metaphysics, practical judgment, and aesthetics, entail antinomies, antinomies that were to be resolved in analogous ways. For example, in aesthetics, the dictum de gustibus non disputandum is antithetical to the claim that if we could not dispute questions of taste, we could contend for them and expect others to agree (Kritik der Urteilskraft paras. 56, 57, B232-240; A229-237). He putatively resolves the antinomy by claiming that the judgment of taste in the thesis does not presuppose ‘distinct’ concepts, but the judgment of taste in the antithesis presupposes an ‘indistinct’ concept, a super-sensed substratum of appearances.I agree that our judgments in questions of metaphysics, ethics and aesthetics face philosophical problems. There seem to be two ways in which we engage with others in discussing these judgments, the mode by which we say, “Don’t argue! Hutton’s Hams are the best”, and the mode by which we submit to the invitation, “Come now, and let us reason together” (Isaiah 1.18). I argue that our judgments in questions of fact and of morals and of beauty are made with authority. I argue, further, that our expressed judgments in all three spheres are required to be submitted to the authority of others. This is not an antinomy, since each proposition is consistent with, and even entails, the other.But, you may say, I rarely, if ever, have any authority, since I am compelled by the facts to think what is the case, what is true.
‘“Go and make disciples of all nations” Preaching the Kingdom or Religious imperialism?’
Authors: Radcliffe Timothy 
Published: July 2007

When Gareth did his degree in Theology at Oxford, he chose as an optional paper ‘Comparative Religion’. Typically it never occurred to him that he might study the texts in translation, and so over the summer he acquired a working knowledge of Chinese and Japanese. This was very disconcerting for his tutor who did not know a word of either language! So I had to find a tutor in the School of Oriental Languages who told me that he could not imagine how anyone could have so rapidly learned so much. So it is in honour of Gareth’s interest in this area that I wish to offer a few thoughts on the relationship of Christianity and other religions. Having been for nine years a Jack of all trades and Master of the Dominican Order, I have no special expertise, except about airports and exotic foods. But this never inhibited the vigorous arguments that Gareth and I had about everything, usually with copious whisky, and which I miss more than I can say.At the end of Matthew’s gospel the risen Jesus said to the disciples, ‘Go and make disciples of all the nations’. Christianity was from the beginning a missionary religion. That is why it was transformed in the first few years from a Jewish sect into a faith that includes us. From the middle of the last century onwards we can see a growing doubt about this mission. What right have we to export our faith? And especially after September 11th, we may wonder if we are not adding to tensions around the world, as Christians and Muslims compete with claims for the truth?
Redemption and Human Freedom in the Bach Passions
Authors: Breyfogle Todd 
Published: July 2007

Gareth Moore loved music, and he loved, in particular, the music of J. S. Bach. He owned an extensive collection of Bach recordings and could quote from the choral works, especially the chorales, from memory. One year, as I recall, he devoted himself to learning to play the Goldberg Variations on the piano. Gareth and I became acquainted through the Oxford Bach Choir, where our singing together grew into a long friendship whose conversational mainstays were music, theology and philosophy. One of the special joys of our friendship over the years was a series of conversations about the theology and tonal allegory of Bach’s great renderings of Christ’s Passion—the St. John Passion and the St. Matthew Passion.Bach’s Passions were the subject of several lecture series Gareth had given in his later years, and though at least one of the series of lectures (delivered in French!) was tape-recorded, it is our loss that Gareth did not collect more systematically his many insights into Bach’s musical theology. I was fortunate, however, to participate with Gareth in several colloquia on both Passions, occasions which allowed us both to explore in an intelligent though not strictly academic setting the meditative dynamic of Bach’s work. I am indebted to Gareth for much of what I know about Bach, as for so many other things human and divine. And however deficient my own appreciation of Bach may be, it is the product of a love which Gareth shared so generously in his gentle and penetrating conversation.
Senses and Sensibilities
Authors: Phillips D.Z 
Published: July 2007

I came to know Gareth Moore’s work, initially, by being asked to be the publisher’s reader for what was later published as Believing in God (T.&T. Clark 1988). The book presents one of the most masterly analyses of “belief in God” in the philosophy of religion. The original title of the manuscript was “God as Nothing,” in which it was argued that we cannot understand belief in God without understanding what it means to become nothing before him. I suggested, foolishly perhaps, that the title should be changed. On the one hand, given a culture that emphasizes rights more than obligations, I feared that talk of human beings as “nothing” would be mistaken for a denigration of them. On the other hand, I feared that the denial of God as a “something” would be misunderstood as reductionism, or even atheism. The change of title, while it makes central the author’s concern with belief in God, does not indicate the distinctiveness of its discussions. In any event, the book has not had the attention it deserves.I invited Gareth Moore to the annual philosophy of religion conference at Claremont Graduate University more often than any other speaker. He read the following papers: “Tradition, Authority and the Hiddenness of God” published in Philosophy and the Grammar of Religious Belief ed. Timothy Tessin and Mario von der Ruhr (Macmillan 1995); “Death and Transcendence,” published in Religion without Transcendence? ed. D.Z Phillips and Timothy Tessin (Macmillan 1997); and “Hearing the Voice of God” to be published in Biblical Concepts and Our World ed. D.Z Phillips and Mario von der Ruhr (Palgrave).
Religion Without Beliefs
Authors: Meynell Hugo 
Published: July 2007

Northrop Frye’s views, both on the Bible and on other works of literature, are strongly influenced by the writings of William Blake. When the University of Toronto Press published a collection of Frye’s writings on religion, it was thus very fitting that William Blake’s picture of God answering Job out of the whirlwind should be used as a frontispiece to the book. In the spirit of Blake, Frye treats the Bible as a sovereign means for the expansion of human consciousness and imagination, and I believe that this is one very useful way of looking at it. But the question between Frye and most traditional Christians is, whether it also contains, however implicitly, a message about what is so, what philosophers might call propositional content. Frye seems to hold that such propositional content as there is in traditional Christianity may be abandoned, indeed is much better abandoned.It appears to me that Frye is a thinker of genius rather than mere talent. Quite apart from the brilliance of his work on other parts or aspects of literature, few other writers, if any, have thrown as much light as he on the way in which the Bible ‘works’ on the human mind, as an imaginative structure of narrative and imagery. But however much Christians may stand to learn from Frye’s understanding of the Bible, his views are by no means compatible with any form of orthodox Christianity. What are the outstanding differences, and what are the reasons for them?
Kenny on Aquinas on Being
Authors: Boland Vivian 
Published: July 2007

Throughout the course of his career, Anthony Kenny has remained in dialogue with Thomas Aquinas. In his introduction to Aquinas: A Collection of Critical Essays (1969) - a book intended to make the medieval Dominican intelligible to philosophers brought up in the analytic tradition - he argued that although superseded in regard to the philosophy of nature and logic, Aquinas’s work in metaphysics, philosophical theology, philosophy of mind and moral philosophy entitles him to rank with the greatest of philosophers, in fact as ‘one of the dozen greatest of the western world’ (p.l).Just over ten years later he presented a similar assessment. In logic, linguistics and scientific methodology Aquinas’s contribution is slight, he says, and his ‘most rewarding work’ is to be found in metaphysics, ethics and the philosophy of mind (Aquinas, 1980, p.30). The compliment is not as straightforward as it might seem, since Kenny goes on immediately to add that Aquinas’s ‘theory of Being involves philosophical confusions which not even the most sympathetic treatment can eradicate’ (pp.30-31). Not only confusion, though, since the chapter devoted to ‘Being’ concludes by charging Aquinas’s account with ‘sophistry and illusion’ (p.60). The significance of this, Kenny says, is that this is precisely the part of Aquinas’s philosophical work that is most cherished by his admirers and, in particular, by his theologian- admirers.
Dealing with Evil
Authors: Turner Geoffrey 
Published: July 2007

Our previous conference had been held in Leeds on 9-12 September 2001 and during the course of the last morning but one, word came through of the spectacular assault on tens of thousands of civilians in New York. Some had watched it live on television after breakfast. By midday we had learnt that the twin towers of the World Trade Centre had collapsed with many people inside. Outrageous and brilliantly executed as it was, we quickly realised that it was one more example of an assault on innocents in a political cause to add to Srebrenica, Tel Aviv, Jenin, now Bali and so many others. Whatever the political injustices, real or perceived, they could not justify such an assault on ordinary people. Here evil was at work.Suggestions for the next conference inevitably included: forgiveness, reconciliation, Christian-Muslim relations, but in the end the committee decided to pull several themes together under the topic Dealing with Evil. The purpose was to have a moment of theological reflection on an ever-present theme without getting caught up excessively in the crises of the moment.The conference opened with the paper by John Hemer on how God dealt with evil through Jesus on the cross. Here, we were told, is God’s rejection of an apocalyptic overcoming of evil in some dramatic resolution. The God incarnate in Jesus Christ is no deus ex machina who stops the forces of destruction in their tracks. Jesus confronts evil by suffering it and refusing to perpetuate it. Karen Kilby examines the tradition of ‘theodicy’ where philosophers of religion try to answer the question of why an omnipotent and loving God allows evil to flourish in our world.
Samson Terroristes: A Theological Reflection on Suicidal Terrorism
Authors: Wicker Brian 
Published: July 2007

This paper is dedicated to the memory of Herbert McCabe OP, the best theologian / have ever met, whose work will remain exemplary for all who aspire to think theologically in the twenty-first century.George Bush’s ‘axis of evil’ is presumably part of what this conference is about. Certainly, the intentional killing of the innocent, that is people who have done us no harm, must be one of the most blatant examples of evil anybody can think of. Dealing with this evil has, alas, become one of the pre-occupations of the present age. The last century saw enough of it, from Auschwitz and Hiroshima to Srebrenica and Omagh. But today we are confronted by what many see as a new form of this evil: namely suicidal terrorism. Yet even this is not so unambiguously evil that people cannot find religious justifications of it. Indeed the existence of a religious industry for justifying killing the innocent is, I take it, part of the evil that we are dealing with at this conference.Many Muslims, and perhaps some Christians too, think of those who perpetrate suicidal murders as martyrs for the faith, specially blessed by the Almighty with a vocation to kill. Some even find arguments for it in the Qu’ran or in Islamic law, or in the Old Testament. But before we rush in to condemn their arguments, we must remember some precedents. The most obvious is that of Samson.
Blackfriars from 1924 to 1934
Authors: Kern Fergus 
Published: July 2007

In a letter to Fr Bede Jarrett, dated 17 July 1925, Basil Blackwell refers to the financial instability of Blackfriars, this journal, which he had published since 1922: ‘The policy of safety, no doubt, is to cease publication at the end of this volume’ — volume VI.On his father’s death, in 1924, Basil Blackwell, then aged thirty five, took over the bookshop in Oxford. At this distance, it looks as if he decided to focus on building up the bookshop, rather than the publishing house he had founded in 1921. Not until the 1950s did his become a significant name in academic publishing, with such books as Elizabeth Anscombe’s Intention, a classic as it turned out, never out of print. By then, Blackwell’s was the leading academic bookshop in the United Kingdom.According to the letter asking Bernard Delany to resume the editorship, Fr Bede says that Basil Blackwell had come to regard Blackfriars as ‘little more than respectable’, whereas he expected it to be ‘fresh, daring and sane’ when he took on the job of publishing it.
Preparing the Way for the Lord: Evolution, Christianity and the Dialogue on Moral Freedom
Authors: Tschudin Alain J‐P.C. 
Published: July 2007

Presupposing that science and religion can share dialogue, can this be informative and come to bear fruit in the future? As a Catholic Christian who studies social evolution and Christian ethics, I shall answer “yes”, notwithstanding the challenge mounted by conflicts inherent in this debate. My interest lies in the dialogue between Christian moral philosophy and the theory of Darwinian evolution, as first published in On the Origin of Species (1859). The information flow arising out of a shared understanding of knowledge from these disciplines may be mutually beneficial. By contextualizing Jesus within evolutionary history, I shall argue that evolutionary theory can inform the Christian conception of human nature in relation to the world and equally, that Christian thinking can contribute to the ethics of scientific and secular engagements with the world. Despite the continued confrontation between science and religion, I hope to negotiate some of the impasses so as to trace a path towards conflict resolution and reconciliation.Early on, Creationism impeded the improvement of relations between science and religion. Creationists (they are not yet extinct!) support a literalist reading of Creation as described in Genesis. In short, they hold that God, from intelligent design, created all species separately. Hence, for Creationists there is no genetic relatedness between species and no need to invoke evolution as an explanation for life on Earth. Yet, thanks to Darwin, the theory of natural selection radically undermined the notion of intelligent design—and with it the pre-evolutionary alternative of life as an outcome of random physical processes.