Augustine and Aquinas assume that Moses’s law figures Christ. In this piece, I show how their complementary accounts of the old law rest upon other doctrinal emphases, namely providence, God the Father, and created things as participations in divine goodness. By drawing out these themes, I advance reflection on the worth of Moses’s law, unfolding how other doctrines structure loving attention to the law as indicative of Christ.

In 1920, the journal Blackfriars was established ‘to state and defend truth’. Its publications served this mission from 1920 to 1964, during the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), prior to its transformation into the scholarly journal New Blackfriars. Blackfriars was intended for an educated, but not scholarly, audience. Apologetics was near and dear to the original mission of Blackfriars. This article examines some of the apologetical themes and treatments in the periodical’s pages from 1920 to 1964, situating these discussions in the context of the anti-Modernist Catholic culture that emerged after Pope St Pius X’s condemnation of Modernism in 1907. The main areas of apologetical discussion that emerged in the pages of Blackfriars centered on Catholic responses to Protestants, the phenomenological approach to the study of religion, challenges stemming from biological evolution, Modernism (both Catholic and Protestant), and modern biblical studies.

Pascal stressed the importance of ‘reasons of the heart’ in leading us to God, and insisted that the God to whom he turned during his ‘night of fire’ on 23 November 1654 was ‘not the God of the philosophers and scholars’, but the God of the patriarchs and of Jesus Christ. This suggests a very different approach from that of Thomas, who characterises God in seemingly abstract terms, such as ‘being itself’ and ‘goodness itself’. This paper first explores the methodological and epistemological lessons to be drawn from Pascal’s notion of ‘reasons of the heart’ and argues that we have good reason to take them seriously. The second half of the paper discusses Aquinas’s apparently more impersonal conception of the deity, as an ‘infinite ocean of substance’ (John of Damascus) on which all things depend. But it then explores Aquinas’s account of the passage in Exodus where God addresses Moses in personal terms, and argues that this account, together with what Aquinas has to say on the subject of prayer, indicates that the God of his philosophical deliberations can indeed be reconciled with the intensely personal God of Scripture to whom Pascal turned during his night of fire.

Having hope is important for motivation and human agency, especially when it is certain. People with unwavering hope are more likely to succeed in their endeavours than those without. However, in modern debates, hope is usually seen as characterised by vain optimism. Thomas Aquinas, in contrast, argues that the virtue of hope is characterised by certainty – a view that could contribute significantly to these debates. Nevertheless, there seem to be problems with Aquinas’ view. He says that, while certainty essentially concerns the cognitive faculties, it can also concern other faculties by participation, insofar as the cognitive faculties influence them. He adds that hope can only be said to be certain by participating in the certainty proper to faith. But this reference to the certainty of faith and the cognitive faculties seems to imply that faith is endowed with conclusive evidence, since it is this evidence that enables the cognitive faculties to attain certainty. And throughout his writings, Aquinas denies that faith enjoys conclusive evidence. In this article, I will show that one can resolve this difficulty by understanding that for Thomas faith is indeed an intellectual act, but its certainty is different from the certainty of reason. This will enable us to gain an understanding of Aquinas’ view of the certainty of hope, as well as other aspects of his reflections on hope and faith.

This paper explores the enduring tension between rational technique (technē) and creative intuition in art, tracing its origins from Plato’s Ion through Kant’s notion of genius as nature’s unteachable rule-giving via the productive imagination. It then examines Jacques Maritain’s and Étienne Gilson’s complementary Thomistic aesthetics as a unified resolution. Maritain locates creative intuition in the soul’s spiritual unconscious, a pre-conceptual grasp of Being (esse) uniting intellect, imagination, and senses in a metaphysical act mirroring divine creation, where poetry reveals beauty as transcendent radiance. Gilson, conversely, emphasizes art as cognitio factiva: the craftsman’s imposition of intelligible form on matter, producing an ontological entity that manifests Being’s splendor objectively, independent of subjectivity. Addressing modern unbelief, the analysis affirms that beauty depends on Being, not belief; even non-theistic artists intuitively participate in esse through form, yielding works that testify to divine reality despite denial.

This paper develops a new evidential challenge to a contemporary universalist account grounded in the doctrine of efficacious grace. Drawing primarily on the work of John Kronen and Eric Reitan, I argue that if God possesses a morally legitimate and effective means of transforming even the gravest sinners without violating rational freedom, then the continued existence of apparently gratuitous moral evils becomes especially difficult to explain. The challenge does not consist in the traditional claim that evil is incompatible with divine goodness, nor does it attempt to refute universalism as such. Rather, it asks why transformative grace capable of healing distorted agency is reserved for the eschaton if its earlier application could plausibly prevent at least some of history’s worst atrocities. After reconstructing the evidential problem of evil in Rowe and Russell, I examine the universalist account of efficacious grace and develop what I call the Evidential Challenge to Efficacious Grace. I then consider several possible universalist responses, including skeptical theism, appeals to the Fall, and arguments from divine sovereignty. I conclude that efficacious grace intensifies the explanatory burden generated by apparently gratuitous evil and therefore introduces a distinctive internal challenge for one influential form of contemporary universalism.

In this paper, I argue that shame (verecundia) functions as a key passion, revealing the complex structure of human affectivity and shedding new light on the understanding of Aquinas’s theory of the passions. In numerous passions, such as sadness, fear, or pleasure, the appetitive motion and the accompanying bodily changes follow the same direction – expansion or contraction – according to a common sensory basis. In contrast, shame presents a clear exception: while the appetite contracts inward, vital spirit and heat expand outward, producing blushing. According to Aquinas, passions are motions of the sensitive appetite accompanied by bodily change. Although shame retains this structure, its change is nevertheless formed through the redundantia of the higher faculties, which leads me to argue that it occupies an intermediate position between ‘passions properly speaking’ and ‘purely intellectual pseudo-passions’. By analyzing shame in this light, I demonstrate that human passions should be understood not as purely natural or rational, but as complex intersections of both.

In this paper, I present an analysis of purgatory from an issuantist perspective – an approach that seeks to reconcile the concept of a loving God with the doctrine of eternal hell. Issuantism posits that both heaven and hell originate from God’s love, and I extend this framework to purgatory, offering a new interpretation of its eschatological significance. After examining the views of influential figures such as Joseph Ratzinger and Jerry Walls, I argue that purgatory must be understood as a condition outside of time to maintain theological consistency. I propose a model of purgatory located within an aeveternal dimension – an intermediate state between time and eternity – as a way to resolve tensions concerning temporality, moral agency, and the soul’s orientation toward heaven.

An interesting aspect of the Nicene Creed is that it asks its adherents to not only affirm their belief in God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit but also their belief in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. The call to believe in the Church raises at least two interrelated questions: (1) What does it mean for the Church to be one, holy, catholic, and apostolic? (2) What ought to be the nature of the Christian’s faith in the Church? This paper explores these two questions by drawing on Anselm of Canterbury’s ecclesiology and his well-known approach to the relationship between faith and reason, fides quaerens intellectum. While many have discussed the importance of faith seeking understanding for Anselm as it pertains to God, this paper will focus on how Anselm’s understanding of the interworking of belief and understanding can help us think about what it means to believe in the Church.

The study will focus on the German philosopher, Richard Schaeffler (1926–2019). Schaeffler wanted to create a new transcendental philosophy by developing Kant’s thought and thereby a new form of Christian philosophy. In his texts, he not only sketched the contours of a possible Christian transcendental philosophy, but his philosophy is already just such a philosophy. The aim of the study is to answer two questions: How did Schaeffler understand Christian philosophy, and what is specific about his Christian philosophy? In answering these questions, I will briefly compare Richard Schaeffler and Gianni Vattimo, who considered his philosophy to be Christian. The specific character of Christian philosophy – not only of Schaeffler’s – will be highlighted against the background of Vattimo’s philosophy, and the limits and deficiencies of Vattimo’s ‘Christian philosophy’ will be shown against the background of Schaeffler’s thought.

Two forms of existential proposition are identified, one favoured by analytical philosophers, one by Thomists. It is argued, against objections, that both forms were recognized and used by Thomas. A useful way of labelling this point is to speak of the distinction between esse ut verum and esse reale: being in the sense of the true, the analytical notion, on the one hand, and the Thomist notion of actual or real existence on the other. The former is best expressed by a second-level predicable, the latter by a first-level predicable. Both express a valid notion which is fittingly called ‘existential’, and both are, indeed, analogically connected in meaning.

In the second volume of his Systematic Theology, William Lane Craig raises a number of issues against the traditional doctrine of divine simplicity, along with several criticisms of Aquinas’s notion of existence. We can’t respond to all of his complaints here – but we can respond to what are, in our estimation, the most fundamental to his case.

Our focus will be on two of the main problems he presses against Aquinas’s view of existence: first, whether it makes sense to talk about existence itself as existing; and second, whether existence comes in degrees. These challenges are closely related – both, ultimately, concern the classical theist claim that God is identical to His own existence – and so our answers will be related as well.

We’ll conclude by raising a challenge for Craig.

Recent debates in moral philosophy have placed significant emphasis on personal conscience, often elevating individual autonomy above all other considerations. This overemphasis has paradoxically led to the suppression of another’s conscience in situations where two moral agents must act together toward a shared goal, as in the physician–patient relationship. Critics of conscientious objection argue that recognizing its legitimacy fosters moral relativism or subjectivism. How, then, can conscience be properly formed and understood in a way that safeguards against relativism while upholding its rightful role in conscientious objection? This article argues that Aquinas’s integration of natural moral law, conscience, prudence, and virtue offers the most coherent and original framework for addressing these challenges. By grounding conscience in truth and sustaining it through virtue, Aquinas provides a robust basis for defending conscientious objection while safeguarding human dignity and moral integrity. While primarily theoretical, this study also draws practical implications for healthcare and institutional ethics, showing how a Thomistic understanding of virtue and conscience can inform dialogue and policy in pluralistic contexts.

The thesis of this article is that the understanding of the vocation of an artist in the writings of Jacques Maritain emerges as to develop habitus (practical virtues of the intellect) in order to direct their inspirations in order to make beautiful things that convey the spiritual heritage of the nation and the civilization and inspire others to contemplate God. This vocation to be an associate of God in creating beautiful works is a powerful reminder of the close relationship between all personal vocations and the common good. First I explore Maritain’s conversion to Catholicism, including through the arts. I next clarify Maritain’s Thomistic understanding of art as one expression of the illuminating intellect. I then review Maritain’s writings about the arts in education. I conclude with theological and pastoral reflections on the vocation of an artist.

Theology has traditionally been understood as a speculative discipline centered on God. However, the increasing dominance of historical methods in modern theological inquiry raises a fundamental question: Has theology shifted from being a science of God to a study of historical documents? This article examines how four early 20th-century Dominicans from the Saulchoir—Antoine Lemonnyer, Mannès Jacquin, Marie-Benoît Schwalm, and Ambroise Gardeil—responded to this challenge. Writing in the context of the Modernist crisis, they defended the primacy of speculative theology while integrating historical studies within a Thomistic framework. Their work articulated a synthesis in which historical research serves theology without displacing its speculative and supernatural character. These insights remain relevant for contemporary theological discourse, offering a model for balancing historical inquiry with the contemplative and systematic study of God.

For the most part, the ongoing Thomistic debate over the nature of lying presupposes that speech has one primary end: to reveal the speaker’s mind or soul. Within this framework, a lie is disordered speech. In this paper, I formulate a polyvalent Thomistic theory of speech acts that affirms that human vocalizations have multiple ends in the order of nature, including functions that do not involve signification, a claim supported by evidence from studies of primate vocalization and by evidence from studies of contemporary speech act theory in the philosophy of language. With this theory in hand, I propose that not every deliberately willed spoken falsehood constitutes a lie, including false claims made to enemy spies and Nazi officers, because not every spoken falsehood involves disordered speech.

This paper defends a broadly Thomistic understanding of simplicity against a range of contemporary criticisms. Critics of divine simplicity argue that simplicity leads us to identify God with an abstract property and that it renders theological language semantically vacuous because divine simplicity cannot ground a plurality of true intrinsic predicates. I defuse these criticisms by employing some central Fregean distinctions – specifically, the distinctions between object and concept, predication and identification, and sense and reference. While these Fregean distinctions help to dissolve initial logical difficulties, they do not by themselves explain how theological predicates can have determinate content or truth-conditions. I therefore situate the relevant Fregean diagnostics within the Thomistic metaphysical framework of analogy. This framework supplies principled constraints on theological predication without reintroducing composition into God. I conclude by arguing that the Thomistic doctrine of analogy does not eliminate semantic openness but renders theological language sufficiently determinate for meaning and practice, grounding meaningful God-talk in both metaphysics and the formative practices of religious life.

Classical philosophy listed art as a virtue perfecting the intellect’s practical activity (recta ratio factibilium). As virtuous, human art or skill must follow a measure or mean of its activity. For classical thought, the natural order provided this measure. This is the origin of the dictum that ‘art imitates nature’. Yet, the claim that the work of creative artists must imitate nature has not gone unchallenged in modernity. This essay claims that a retrieval of the robust notion beauty as integrity, proportion, and clarity not only provides an anchor to tether the work of the creative artist to the natural order but also liberates the artist’s creative intuition from the isolation of mere taste and into the realm of the transcendent. For the creative artist, the integrity, proportion, and clarity of the natural world opens a window into a beauty that unites into one community all those who see it.

Aristotle’s views about the female body are commonly held to be an insurmountable obstacle to aligning his philosophy with feminism. Sarah Borden Sharkey, however, has attempted a robust Aristotelian feminism that alters only the minimum. She argues that to succeed it must give positive and detailed reasons for sexual equality, a task that she leaves open. Building on Sharkey’s work, this essay argues that Thomas Aquinas’ view of the will allows such a position, by combining it with Aristotle’s notion of thumos as the main dividing factor between the sexes. The result is an Aristotelian–Thomistic view that keeps female biological difference, while allowing equality in attaining virtue and prudence.