A prolonged (yet telescoped) rendition of the chequered history of relations between Christianity and Islam, as each religious community operated out of different political contexts, illustrates diverse modes of interaction, from disputation to mutual illumination via a shared Hellenic philosophical tradition. A theological probe takes us to the heart of Christian teaching—the triune God—only to unveil remarkable affinities with Islamic developments regarding divine unity. The key to our entire exploration—intellectual humility—functions specially well here: recognizing the comparable logics of revelation, as well as acknowledging the power of these revelations to transform human beings into holy men and women, should motivate us to attempt to reconcile apparent contradictions between Abrahamic faiths in a manner similar to the way philosophical theologians of these traditions proceeded in the Middle Ages to reconcile their respective revelations with reason. A tactic axial to this analysis compares Qur'an with Jesus, rather than Qur'an and Bible, to show the fruitfulness of this more coherent approach. Support from both traditions for a pervasive attitude of intellectual humility shows how to open ways forward.

The presence or lack of certain philosophical or religious preoccupations at any period has a great deal to do with the prevailing attitude towards children and their education.

In primitive or spontaneous forms of human society the child is not a special subject of study. Children are naturally and roundly brought up in the large circle of the home, with its traditional wisdom and salutary rough and tumble.

In many of the Greek states, where political life was allpervasive, it was inevitable that educational theories should emphasize the primary importance of education for citizenship—a phase reproduced for us in modern states such as Italy and Germany.

A Jansenistic theology once darkened men’s outlook on human nature and, in consequence, on its budding period. This gloom and the severity which harmonized with it persisted throughout the Victorian age. It was a time when children were habitually treated as criminals latae sententiae, an evil and perverse generation, to be repressed and chastized without mercy and without truce. For men of this epoch the child was, before all, a nuisance. It had no proper place in an adult world. A child (as Maria Montessori points out) was not to sit on the grown-ups’ chairs. Nor was it to sit on the stairs. Hence, having no chair of its own, it could sit down only when some big person condescended to offer it the hospitality of a pair of knees.

While there is a tradition in western religious thought of “contemptus mundi”–hating the world–there is also a tradition of loving the world. Figures as diverse as Augustine, Nietzsche, and Freud have queried whether and how we can love the world: how we can enjoy it for its value. Whereas Nietzsche and Freud thought that a Christian theistic framework prevented us from loving the world, a close reading of Augustine's Confessions shows that this is not true, at least in one sense. For Augustine, this article tries to show, theorizes how it is precisely within a Christian theistic framework that we can love the world most deeply and take the most delight in the world. This vision of Augustine's is not without its own challenges, but it offers at the least a significant “response” to claims by those like Nietzsche and Freud who believe that Christian theism and loving the world are irreconcilable.

Chesterton never gave a systematic account of what he meant by Distributism anywhere in his writing, but the outline of this sociopolitical philosophy is clear to anyone who is familiar with his work and that of the circle of writers to which he belonged. As the name implies, Distributism meant first of all that property should be distributed in the widest possible way. Belloc stated the case for this policy in The Servile State, which he published in 1912 and which became the text-book of the movement. He argued that Socialism and State Capitalism were helping to create the same kind of society in which power would be concentrated in the hands of a small ruling-class and security would be given to a permanent proletariat whose econonomic position would be fixed by law. The only alternative to the ‘slave’ state was the Distributist state of small peasant ownership and workers’ guilds. The nearest approximation to this simple society was found in medieval times. Consequently Distributists must be prepared to repudiate modern industrialism in its present form and work for a return to the past. The way in which this theory was interpreted among Belloc’s followers is best illustrated by a quotation from a Distributist manifesto published twenty-five years later:

The aim of this essay is to bring the philosophical theology of St Augustine, and in particular his anthropology, into fuller dialogue with contemporary psychology, and to examine how psychology and theology might benefit from such an engagement. A further aim is to show that intra-psychic accounts of Augustine's Confessions are insufficient on cultural-psychological, philosophical and theological grounds. To the extent that the modern concept of ‘pure nature’ is incompatible with Augustine's philosophical theology, attempts to develop naturalistic intra-individual, psychological accounts of spiritual change will necessarily be limited once the full ‘ecstatic’ orientation of human existence is factored out. The picture of the person that emerges from naturalistic accounts of any mystical theologian may be plausible within the framework of a classical modern, post Cartesian concept of scientific rationality, and potentially useful for some purposes, but it will be over simplified and never wholly sufficient to account for the potentialities of human existence.

Søren Kierkegaard told a story about a powerful king who truly loved a humble maiden. The king’s problem was: how was he to elicit from her a true love not based on mere homage or less genuine motives? He could make her a princess—but that would be an artificial and external act, testifying more to his power than his love. He could, as in the fairytales, disguise himself as a beggar and win her love as such—but true love cannot be based on deception. After much thought he realized that if the union could not be brought about by the elevation of the maiden or by his own pretence, there was only one possibility: he must resign his kingdom, and humbling himself to her station, become a slave. And this he did. God became man. No mere jest. No mere outer garment humanity. God must suffer all things, endure all things, experience all things—because God’s love is genuine.

We do not know much about Jesus’ particular temperament. We can glean from the Gospels that he liked periods of solitude, was prayerful, and had a strong sense of mission. He hated hypocrisy and had a special affection for the down-and-outs. One aspect of his personality that has not received much attention in traditional spiritual writing is that Jesus was a great party-goer.

It has been shown that the thirteenth-century Dominican friar, St Thomas Aquinas, was an important theological influence on John Owen, the seventeenth-century English puritan theologian, chaplain to Oliver Cromwell, and Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University, especially in the areas of the divine being, grace and Chalcedonian Christology. Suzanne McDonald has argued that, while Aquinas is unmistakably a source for Owen's doctrine of the beatific vision, Owen surpassed Aquinas's doctrine in a manner she judges to be correct, theologically speaking, and which exposes the deficiency of Aquinas's account. Owen achieved this particular ‘Reforming’ or rather ‘re-forming’ of Aquinas's doctrine, she argues, by way of a ‘Christological re-orientation of the doctrine’ in terms of what is seen in the beatific vision and how it is seen, that is, its content and means. This article replies to McDonald from a Catholic and Thomist perspective, in response to her suggestion that Owen's account of the beatific vision opens up possibilities for ecumenical dialogue. The article attempts to achieve this first by reassessing the Christological contrasts McDonald draws between Owen and Aquinas in terms of content and means, and then by offering several suggestions as to why one might want to prefer Aquinas's account over Owen's.

‘What is my licence to say what I say?’ You ask and prompt me to answer a question which, I must admit, I’ve never put to myself. I’m not given to self-reflection. I live. Life is its own certainty and justification. But now that you have asked me, I've put the question to myself and so I’ll tell you why I practise theology, what theology I practise, and how.

In what name, in virtue of what? I myself see two decisive elements: on the one hand, my vocation as a friar preacher, which shapes and fills my life; on the other hand, circumstances and appeals. I’ll start with this second element, because it’s easier to explain.

I never had a plan. I’ve tried to respond to appeals, requests, circumstances. Most appeals came from outside, in the shape of requests. I receive them every day, often two or three times a day ... If anything, I’ve accepted too many. That accounts for the quite ridiculous list of my articles, whether long and learned, or brief and popular. They amount to date to some 1630 or 1640 titles! But there are also the interior appeals, inspirations. These can range from the humble enough idea to read this, follow up that reference - yes, that’s how I operate, I think that our lives are shaped even in these tiny ways - right up to the first great appeal, in the years 1928 - 1929, to dedicate myself particularly to the Church and ecumenism. Two things intimately inter-twined. Here I very soon saw what I had to do. It got more complicated as time went on, of course, but the through-line always remained the same. And I have to admit that I was filled to overflowing. I wanted to change something and I saw very clearly what it was. My brethren and friends, my comrades in arms.

The election of Giacomo Della Chiesa as Pope Benedict XV coincided with the outbreak of the First World War. His pacifism led to vigorous attempts to halt the war, which failed because of the Vatican's isolation and poor diplomatic prestige. The most notable attempt was Benedict Peace Note of 1917 that set out seven proposals for negotiating peace. Despite Benedict's failure to alter the course of the war, his diplomatic efforts were matched by humanitarian action on behalf of prisoners of war and famished children. Benedict's legacy has been greater diplomatic resources for the Vatican and an energetic search for peace.

In a topic as controversial as the Turin Shroud, it is always surprising to note that there remains a large area of consensus among scholars who hold opposite opinions on the origin of this piece of fabric. According to the consensus view, neither science nor history can prove that the Turin Shroud shows signs of the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. However, the reasons provided for this important claim are not convincing, especially in light of recent developments in historiography and analytic philosophy.

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 in Theology 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 programme Any Questions, his attendance at the Council as that rare bird a theological peritus with 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.

‘The members of the Holy Office use methods which, if they were in Great Britain, would soon land them in court. The Holy Office ruins reputations and destroys people’s careers.’ The English Jesuit, Archbishop Tommy Roberts, formerly Archbishop of Bombay, made these grave allegations in a full session of the Second Vatican Council. They are well illustrated by the way the French worker-priest crisis was dealt with between the sumrtier of 1953 and the spring of 1954. Obviously I can only record such a richly complex period in summary form—almost telegraphically. But even such a résumé gives an eloquent demonstration of the way the hierarchical authority of that time functioned, particularly in regard to the human rights of the baptised.

The loss of the working classes to the Catholic Church in France in the nineteenth century had for a long while made social issues prominent in French ecclesiastical thinking. The spiritual humanism with socialist leanings to be found, for example, in the influential periodical Esprit (founded by Emmanuel Mounier in 1932) was gradually accepted even by some members of the hierarchy. The publication in 1943 of the book by A. Godin and Y. Daniel La France, pays de mission?—the question mark was included at the request of the ecclesiastical authorities— helped to spur concrete attempts to bridge the gap between the Church and the working class. By far the most outstanding among these was the decision by the bishops to permit some of the clergy to combine their priestly ministry with day-to-day sharing in the lives of manual labourers, in other words working beside them, joining their trade unions and living among them in working-class fiats.

Christian theologians’ ruminations on the relationship between the commands to love God and neighbour in the New Testament traverse a broad spectrum. Some posit a unity or even the identity of loving God and the neighbour. Others insist on a clear distinction or disjunction between loving God and loving the neighbour, sometimes pointing to the variance of the scriptural formulations: we are to love God “with all our heart, soul, mind and strength,” whereas we are enjoined to love our neighbour “as ourselves” (cf. Mt 22: 34-40; Mk 12: 28-34; Lk 10:25-29).1 In the Summa Theologiae, Thomas Aquinas deals with this issue under the rubric of charity (caritas) and the respective merits of the active and contemplative life (Il.n. 25-27; II.II. 179-182, 185.2, 188). In the following essay, I will analyze Aquinas’ thought on the relationship between the love of God and neighbour by examining these parts of the Summa. These articles will be the focus of my analysis as they represent the heart of Aquinas’ writing on this issue. However, I will occasionally refer to other parts of the Summa, which either reinforce, clarify or perhaps obfuscate his position.2 I will argue that Aquinas clearly emphasizes both the love of God and neighbour as constitutive elements of the moral life. However, his conception of the relationship between the two remains nebulous in various places. This essay will attempt to elucidate as far as possible the nature of the relationship between the love of God and neighbour according to Aquinas. As we shall see, his thought provides fertile ground for scholarly debate and various interpretations of the precise nature of the relationship between the love of God and neighbour. This essay will offer one possible interpretation.3

One of the problems confronting the doctrine of the Incarnation concerns Jesus’ apparent limitation in knowledge. This paper assesses various constructive proposals by modern theologians and philosophers, focusing on three of the most widely discussed solutions, namely Ontological Kenoticism, Two Consciousnesses Model, and Divine Subconscious Model. I argue that despite recent work done on the first two, the difficulties of avoiding the implication that the Logos ceased to be divine (for the first) and the implication of Nestorianism (for the second) remain. I conclude that the most promising solution is to defend Functional Kenoticism and develop the Divine Subconscious Model.

This essay falls into two parts. In the first I offer a panorama of my book, In Defence of War (Oxford University Press, 2013), highlighting its main features. These comprise: its rhetorical position; its opposition to the “the virus of wishful thinking”, pacifism, legal positivism, and liberal individualism; and its promotion of the early Christian tradition of just war reasoning and of three kinds of realism – moral-ontological, Augustinian-anthropological, and practical. Then in the second part, I consider four controversial issues that the book raises: love, proportionality, Britain's entry into the First World War, and the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

In speaking of the divine ideas or God's creative act in general, Aquinas's favorite analogy is that of the artist. Hence, understanding the finite artisan, especially in the way his idea functions as an exemplar, is key to understanding the mentem Thomae on a whole host of issues most especially exemplar causality. This paper asks a question seeking specificity on the causality of the artist's idea and thereby exemplar causality in general. Is an exemplar cause in its primary instance (the idea) an instrument? Does an exemplar idea always cause in an instrumental mode? This paper, after delineating exemplar and instrumental causality separately, argues the affirmative. All ideas which function as exemplars also necessarily function as instruments, the objections of mediation, temporality, the relation of intellect/will, and efficient causality notwithstanding. In concluding the paper identifies three possible implications for this finding including a slight qualification of Aquinas's mature rejection of instrumental creation.

It is probable that the most serious obstacle in the way of a rapprochement between Thomism and much ‘modern thought’ is the widespread misgiving that Thomism ignores or rejects ‘value-perception’ and ‘value-experience.’ This misgiving is impressive both to the layman and to the professional philosopher. To the layman, because it is supposed that the embracing of the principles of a system so frigidly rational and so rigidly scientific involves a repudiation of the ‘appreciative,’ ‘humanistic’ attitude to life, and with it the denial of the validity of one’s most cherished and intimate personal experience. To the philosopher, because, in the words of Professor Pringle-Pattison, ‘At the present time philosophy is carried on more explicitly in terms of value than at any previous time.’

That ‘experience,’ ‘value-perception,’ ‘intuition,’ ‘instinct,’ ‘real’ or ‘affective’ knowledge—call them what you will—have in great measure come to claim the place which of old was ascribed to logical reasoning is a commonplace which calls for no proof. Even among those whom the Romanticist revolt from reason has not led to an admitted abandonment of logical, hard-headed thinking, there has come about a divorce of ‘experience’ from ‘thought’ whose effects can be scarcely less disastrous. ‘Description’ and ‘appreciation’ come to be regarded, not merely as distinct and independent ways of approach to the same reality, but as terminating in diverse realities.