Anselm's argument for the salvific necessity of the Incarnation in his Cur Deus Homo is justly famous and elegantly simple: only man ought; only God can; therefore, only a God-man both ought and can (atone for sin). Unfortunately it is a paralogism, trading on an equivocal use of ‘ought’. It is not difficult, however, to reconceive the meaning of the terms ‘ought’ and ‘can’ in a way that both renders the argument formally valid and deepens our christology. Sin may be conceived, per Anselm's own insistence, as a condition of the human soul in its relation to God, a failure of the human will to establish itself in harmonious union with the divine will. If the integrity of created human nature requires that its psychological conditions are propagated together with it, then one who has both the duty and ability to atone for sin must be descended from Adam but must enjoy the original justice of the soul that Adam rejected and deformed in himself. Thus, systematically reconstructing Anselm's argument has the surprising consequence of enabling us to posit an argument for the salvific necessity of the Immaculate Conception as a preparatory stage in the hypostatic union of the Incarnation.

This article joins others in assessing the role of Christ in the moral theology of Thomas Aquinas. It investigates one specific phrase in the Summa Theologiae in four stages. First, there are some foundational considerations of Aquinas's overall framework. Second, I examine the evidence supporting Aquinas's original description of Jesus as our ‘dearest friend’ and as further disclosed in the Tertia Pars, specifically in His Passion and in His role as Teacher. Third, this leads to a consideration of Jesus as ‘wisest’ as the Incarnate Word and Wisdom. Fourth, I probe this sapiential aspect further in terms of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, specifically, that of wisdom, and, in particular, as construed in recent work on the second person perspective and Joint Attention. By investigating this phrase of Aquinas, it emerges that its sapiential, soteriological and inter-personal character is illuminated further by its Christological and ecclesial dimensions.

Beginning with Mark C. Taylor's Crisis on Campus, and its critique of the structure and delivery of contemporary higher education, this essay argues that if there is a crisis in education, it is not technical, not reducible to the delivery of education. If there is a crisis, it lies in the contemporary world's misunderstanding of the goals or ends of the university. Borrowing Antonin's Sertillanges’ account of reading from the Intellectual Life, the essay concludes by suggesting that the goal of university education is formation of the mind, not mastery, edification, of entertainment.

Kierkegaard is well known for being critical of a scholarly reading of the bible. It is generally understood that his primary concern was that “objective” biblical scholarship was undermining the possibility of a reader's subjective life being affected, challenged and provoked by its message. That is, it encourages an overly detached reading of Scripture that distracts persons from responding to its call to discipleship. It is indeed the case that Kierkegaard devoted himself to challenging the fact that the nominal Christians in Denmark were not actively responding Scripture. However, I shall argue that there is something much more fundamental to his critique of biblical scholarship. For Kierkegaard, the faithful reader is not primarily called to respond to the message of Scripture but to the living God who communicates to persons through Scripture. This paper will look at how Kierkegaard sought to remind Christians that Scripture is not an end in itself but a witness to the living God (who is the primary focus of the Christian life).