In Love Alone is Credible (1963), Hans Urs von Balthasar discusses love in a way that “seeks to be faithful to the theological tradition of the great saints.” Conspicuously missing from the set of “great saints” whom Balthasar praises is Thomas Aquinas. Does Balthasar imply a negative judgment about Thomas's thought on love? If so, what is the judgment? On what grounds is it made? How might Thomas answer? To address these questions, I construct a dialogue between the two, privileging Love Alone and the Questions on charity from the Summa Theologiae. The dialogue begins with a survey of ground common to Balthasar and Thomas. A second step shows how three salient aspects of Thomas's treatment of charity appear from Balthasar's perspective. A third section deepens the critique, showing that for Balthasar, both divine and human love must be conceived as utterly gratuitous in ways that Thomas downplays or denies. A fourth section asks how the account of love given by Balthasar appears from Thomas's viewpoint. A final section asks what to make of these partly overlapping, partly clashing perspectives, and suggests why both are necessary.

The emergence in the 1980s and 1990s of a renewed Thomistic moral theology showed that the same could and should be attempted in dogmatic theology, with full weight given to the biblical, patristic, and spiritual emphases of the Ressourcement movement

Is the world the site of diaphany where one encounters the ‘transparency of God in the universe’ in a Teilhardian fashion, or should one give credit to von Balthasar's insistence that the cosmos can never serve as the final meaning of revelation since divine revelation is best conceived as God's unsurpassable work of art, the epiphany of divine glory over against the cosmos and human history? This paper seeks to explore the contours of two different conceptions of the natural world as God's creation and as the site of revelation. While, in passing remarks throughout his treatment of the form of divine glory, von Balthasar is repeatedly dismissive of the Teilhardian vision, he seems to overlook entirely the real significance of the Teilhardian endeavour, which is directed towards seeing a different and yet essentially similar form, that of the Christiform cosmos. Far from representing a kind of naive ‘new naturalism’ (as von Balthasar contends), Teilhard de Chardin's theology ultimately gets very near the same via tertia heralded by his Swiss confrère.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church speaks of “the ability of human reason to know God [and the Church's] confidence in speaking about him to all men….” Such claims involve both philosophical and theological questions concerning the possibility of transcending cultures. Philosophy can vindicate the capacity of the intellect to speak of God, and despite varying intellectual traditions, the Church has been able to communicate the Gospel across cultural boundaries. In fact, historically Christendom was built up by preaching not to individuals but to cultures. Conversion of a culture means that its fundamental principle has changed, and individuals will usually begin to change with it. This does not necessarily imply an inauthentic or merely formal religious adherence, but highlights the fact that cultures as well as individuals are susceptible of evangelization.

When academically inclined atheists critique arguments for the existence of God, they commonly target arguments of Intelligent Design as proposed by Paley, Dembski, and Behe. In so doing, it is not uncommon for them to include within the scope of their criticisms Aquinas's fifth proof for the existence of God – the proof from final causality. In this essay, I shall argue that there are very significant differences between the Fifth Way and the more modern arguments of Intelligent Design which means that any critique offered in regard to the latter normally leaves the former unscathed. Moreover, I shall also argue that the Intelligent Design approach concedes some of the erroneous premises of the atheists’ own arguments and that these are in no way conceded by Aquinas in the Fifth Way or elsewhere.

The recent movement of apparent restorationism seems to suggest that the Church represents an enclave where people can find a holy place, a narrowing of the universal call to holiness that was the mandate of Vatican II. This is not a task for Christians alone; it is a call for all people to rediscover the true nature of the human being in the world. Such a profoundly worldly vocation makes a radical demand for a holiness grounded on baptism and the charisms with which the Holy Spirit endows the people of God. ‘To be secular is the special characteristic of the laity’ (Lumen gentium, 3). There is a an important rediscovery of the sacred taking place here: Christians are called to transform the world in and through God in a genuine and secular spirituality.

Hans Urs Von Balthasar's lament that coincidence of the theologian and the saint has not been the norm since the Middle Ages can be emblematic of a methodological issue impacting both academic theology and the Church wholly by separation of that which as a faith tenet should be unified—word and witness. Theologians’ intent today to speak from but not be confused with their location, the theological discipline's reach for respectability in an increasingly secular academy, market forces deliberately shrinking theology's influence except in such as interdisciplinary endeavors supporting other publics’ aims, the contemporary narrow specialization of the theologian, and the sometime view that narrow tasks serving theology are theology itself all result in conflations of theology and religion. So “theology” and “spirituality,” as Balthasar identified the breach, will be separate. Yet we hope that theologians, with all others, will be saints. Does this not, particularly to students, transmit the faith? Although Bernard Lonergan's method might seem to exacerbate the separation given its numerous theological specialties and conversion types, it also offers the way of reunification—without threat to academic integrity. The theological method, with its turn to the subject, can ground a theology (and method) of pedagogy.

This article supplements Ralph Martin's recent book, Will Many Be Saved? Our primary thesis is that those who hold double predestination or universalism cannot, if consistent, hope as Christians should for their own and others’ salvation, and therefore can neither live their own lives with a view to reaching the heavenly kingdom nor promote others’ salvation. We also contend that the same disabilities are likely to subvert those who hold certain views that approximate universalism. We go on to set out some positions regarding damnation and salvation that, we believe, all Christians ought to hold and hand on. God wills everyone to be saved, and those who are saved are saved by God's grace. Entirely through their own fault, more than a few people will end in hell. But no one still alive and able to repent need end in hell. While created persons cannot build God's kingdom, insofar as Christians do the Father's will in this world, they prepare materials, beginning with themselves and their interpersonal relationships, for that kingdom.