What it means to be a person is a key issue in contemporary bio-ethical issues. A new socially ordered metaphysics with greater emphasis on the long-range interests of the community might provide common ground for resolving points of difference. Colin Gunton's trinitarian approach to contemporary social issues and a somewhat modified notion of “society” in the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead are used in this essay to sketch such a new social ontology and to indicate how its use might at least change the tone of the current debate.

Current theological literature on dating emphasizes issues of premarital sex and chastity. At the same time, recent sociological research suggests that dating is being replaced by the alternative practice called “hooking up” among college-age students. A key issue not addressed in these discussions is whether the current generation's contraceptive practices influence the decision to hook up rather than date. I argue that one cause of younger women's sexual assertiveness today is the increased use of contraception, which in turn promotes a mentality that sustains the practice of hooking up and an insufficient anthropology. For theologians who attempt to discuss these issues with their students, a more adequate anthropology is necessary in order to better ground a theology of dating that is able to compete against the practice of hooking up.

Recent publications on theology and film attempting to explain what a parable is remain less clear about how or why a parable works for cinema, and many definitions do not fully take into account the formal dynamics of film qua film nor parable qua parable. I seek to demonstrate the benefits of a more precise conception of cinematic parables by utilizing philosopher Paul Ricoeur's understanding of “parable” to make theological interpretations of film that take audio-visual aesthetics into consideration. I conclude with three recent examples of cinematic parables in order to demonstrate this Ricoeurian parabolic hermeneutic: Asghar Farhadi's Iranian melodrama, A Separation (2011), American filmmaker Anna Rose Holmer's enigmatic The Fits (2016), and Aki Kaurismäki's droll Finnish comedy, The Other Side of Hope (2017). Ultimately, I make a case for film as theology, what I am calling “theocinematics.”

Relativism is a central issue in anthropology, philosophy of science, and a number of other disciplines. It is usually contrasted with objectivism or foundationalism, the quest for universal and absolute norms. Richard Bernstein has recently written an illuminating overview of the relativist-objectivist tension and has sketched out a notion of rationality “beyond objectivism and relativism.” This paper is an effort to follow Bernstein's lead and consider the theological implications of objectivism and relativism and the attempt to move beyond them. The first two parts of the paper take up objectivism and relativism in their philosophical and theological forms. The third section briefly explores some aspects of a non-relativist and non-objectivist model of rationality.

This article proposes a theological interpretation of Jean-Luc Marion that accents the importance of prayer as a remedy to conceptual idolatry. It also addresses theological concerns about Marion's understanding of the relationship between phenomenology and theology, and about his critical attitude toward ontology. In response to the first concern, it uses Marion's readings of Dionysius the Areopagite and Augustine to demonstrate that Marion prioritizes a prayerful approach to theology that transcends phenomenology, even while benefiting from it. In response to the second concern, it draws on Marion's treatments of Dionysius, Augustine, and Aquinas to show how the same prayerful theology accommodates an ontological way of praising God. Prayer is the key to both arguments. Prayer resists the conceptual idolatries operative in the realms of phenomenality and of being, while revealing the potential iconicity of both. Finally, this article clarifies why Marion's recent Augustine book is crucial to an understanding of his project.

The environmental crisis has transformed the debate over the appropriate size of the human population, presenting humans with a choice of reducing population, redistributing resource use, and restraining consumption or inflicting severe, perhaps fatal, damage to the earth's capacity to sustain life. Having surveyed gross evidence supporting this choice, this article argues that Christianity must reinterpret its tradition, resymbolizing respect for life from an exclusive focus on birth and fertility toward the sustaining of life and life's habitat, earth.

This article explores Gregory Baum's notion of how the Holy Spirit leads the church to a new understanding of Jesus as the Christ. It begins by examining Baum's interpretation of the doctrinal development at Vatican II, then analyzes the innovative understanding Baum has developed based on how the Spirit works to reformulate the church's message through a process of cultural conversion. It relates Baum's theory to preceding reflection on the development of dogma, then takes up Rosemary Ruether's criticism that Baum's position deprives Scripture of its transcendence. It concludes by developing a way of relating Word and Spirit that combines Baum's openness to the spirit with Ruether's concern for the transcendence of Scripture.

The article argues that contemporary dialogue on sexuality and contraception represents a new way of approaching Christian sexual ethics. Through an analysis of the experiential reflections of practitioners of natural family planning and artificial birth control, it shows that both sides seek the following goods: self-giving, relational intimacy, mutuality, sexual pleasure, and a strong connection between sexual and spiritual experience. It claims that while each side has distinctive insights, their shared concerns offer a way beyond the post-Humanae Vitae tension on sexual ethics. In this new dialogue, proving HV right or wrong will be much less important than helping Christian couples develop their sexual relationships in the context of their commitment to Christian discipleship.

This paper explores the apocalyptic discourses of Johann Baptist Metz and Friedrich Nietzsche, examining in particular Metz's juxtaposition of Nietzsche's approach to time as eternal recurrence with biblical apocalyptic's approach to time with an end. While framing his criticism of Nietzsche in terms of these differing approaches to time, Metz's opposition focuses on Nietzsche's affirmation of even the most brutal experiences of suffering in the world as mere moments in the innocence of becoming. In contrast to attempts in Western thought to either justify (Leibniz, Hegel) or affirm (Nietzsche) suffering as a necessary byproduct of the creation of the best possible world (Leibniz), historical progress (Hegel), or the innocence of becoming (Nietzsche), Metz retrieves the biblical apocalyptic spirituality of protest, resistance, and political compassion as the authentic response to innocent suffering.

Thomas Sheehan has made the “atheological” charge that “Christianity's original sin is to think it is about God,” but there is a different lesson to take if attention is paid to the metaphoric dimension of the ways Aquinas, Rahner, Heidegger and even Sheehan himself think and speak about God. If there is an original fault from which Christianity must be saved, it has as much to do with the conception of what is happening when Christianity thinks and speaks, as it does with the conception of what this speaking and thinking is about.

La nouvelle théologie is often associated with a certain disapprobation of Thomism. Yet in its “first phase,” the theological renewal of the Dominicans M.-D. Chenu (Le Saulchoir) and Louis Charlier (Leuven) was founded and justified upon a historical hermeneutics of Thomas' conception of theology. Against neo-Thomism's excessive rationalism, both Chenu and Charlier strove to recover Thomas's reciprocal immanence of faith and theology by reorienting theology towards the revealed Given. Their concrete elaborations of this fundamental aim, however, ran along different lines. For Charlier, actual theology should be positive theology, regulated by collective faith as expressed in the official teaching of the Magisterium. Chenu on the other hand upholds a theology—both positive and speculative—animated by the theologian's subjective perception of faith. These differences reveal that Chenu and Charlier belong to different theological schools with their own theological traditions: the speculative-theological tradition of Le Sauchoir (A. Gardeil) versus the positive-theological tradition of Leuven (R. Draguet).

Recent interest in the study of hermeneutics has called for a reexamination of many Christian classics. This has initiated a retrieval of many valuable insights found in the classics that are extremely important for contemporary theology. Newman's Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine is such a classic. From the time of its publication in 1845, the Essay has been an important and influential work in the life of Catholic thought. By reexamining Newman's work, we are assisted along the unfolding hermeneutical path known as Catholic theology. This article examines Newman's theory of development, three major objections to that theory, and a review of the relevance of Newman's theory for contemporary hermeneutics.

This essay examines the role that the theory of “first principles” plays in Newman's critique of Locke's cognitive-ethical norms. The first section examines in detail Newman's strategy against Locke and argues that there are, in fact, two distinguishable strategies, each with a different concept of the nature and epistemic function of “first principles.” The second section retails examples of what Newman considered to be “first principles” and discusses Newman's claim that our acceptance of these principles is “instinctive.” The final section raises the question of the justifiability of “first principles” and, by reintroducing the distinctions drawn in the first section, argues that Newman can distinguish between “first principles” and unwarranted prejudices and, simultaneously, maintain his criticisms of Locke.

This article summarizes and compares the theology of religions propounded by two important modern participants in the Hindu-Christian encounter, Swami Vivekananda and Bede Griffiths. It will be seen that both thinkers construct theologies of religion in the form of hierarchies, and that, moreover, these hierarchies reveal a specifically Hindu and Christian understanding of spiritual truth and of divine presence. The article advocates the view that a comparison of these two understandings of truth can be beneficial to both Hindus and Christians by broadening each's understanding of divine presence and of what constitutes human liberation. At the heart of the comparison is the controversy over the meaning and final goal of creation and history.

I trust that my choice of the topic of christology for an address to a national convention of the College Theology Society needs no explanation. Christology was, is, and, I suspect, always will be the single most important question in Christian theology. Of the three religions of the book, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, we Christians are the only ones who have accepted identification in terms of our stance about a person of history, Jesus of Nazareth. Although Judaism revers Moses as the lawgiver, the designation “Judaism” suggests that primary identity is not in terms of an attitude toward Moses but in terms of relationship to the tribe of Judah and the people of Israel. Westerners persist in calling Muslims “Mohammedans,” but that is by false analogy with the title “Christians.” While Mohammed is the prophet, a Muslim is one who has accepted Islam, that is, submission to the will of Allah, as preached by Mohammed. Christians, however, are those who profess that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah, the Christ. The question “Who do men say that I am?” stands in a central place in the tradition of the Synoptic Gospels, symptomatic of where it stands in our faith; and we Christians are those who think that, whether he understood it fully or not, Peter gave the correct answer to that question.

Recurrent debates about the church and higher education in the United States involve differing understandings of the nature and purpose of the church as well as differing understandings of the university. Catholic colleges and universities remain important but underutilized resources for the American church as it pursues its mission. Institutional, communitarian and servant models of the church must be examined more rigorously before they are used to prescribe changes in higher education. None is without problems. In a pluralistic and free society, a public church,” self-consciously mediating the tensions between Christian integrity, Catholic unity, and civic responsibility, provides an altogether appropriate stance for Catholic colleges and universities as well. It points not to a neat resolution of outstanding difficulties but to ongoing dialogue among the publics to which both church and higher education must address themselves.