In the Garden of Eden, the serpent convinces Eve to eat fruit from the Tree of Conscience, which she does and shares with Adam. Adam and Eve act in contravention to God’s orders against eating fruit from the tree. Traditional interpretations have suggested that this event—commonly referred to as “the Fall”—is an event where the serpent lied to Eve and that it was entirely negative. Instead, I argue that the serpent was correct to say, in fact, that in eating thisfruit we would become closer to God. The Fall reveals a new mystery to us of God’s love for us and a blessing in disguise.

This paper takes the work of Hans Urs Von Balthasar as a starting point and context for a philosophical recovery of beauty. Balthasar labored to recover a theological aesthetics within contemporary theology. However, his suspicion of modern philosophy with its turn to the subject left him unable to articulate the proper philosophical foundations for a modern recovery of beauty. He acclaimed the achievement of Aquinas but did not move beyond him. Therefore,the paper presents an argument for a transposed philosophy of Aquinas through the thought of Bernard Lonergan. One that can properly ground a theological aesthetics because it reckons with the philosophers of doubt, and allows for the incorporation of other cultural notions of beauty that Balthasar admits are lacking in his own aesthetics.

The paper shares the principal emphases to date in an attempt to begin a contemporary systematic theology and invites the collaboration of others in the development of that theology. Lonergan’s understanding of systematics as the imperfect and analogical understanding of the mysteries of faith is adopted from the outset, but so is his insistence (1) that a contemporary systematic theology must be grounded in interiorly and religiously differentiated consciousnessand (2) that such a theology will be a theology of history. The dogmatic-theological context of such a development is found in a hypothesis that links the four relations in the Trinity to four distinct created supernatural participations and imitations. A brief outline of the author’s work on the theology of history is presented, and then central elements in the ‘four-point hypothesis’ are discussed, especially the relation between sanctifying grace and charity. Thepaper concludes with a suggestion regarding the theological importance of the mimetic theory of René Girard.

The Bible ridicules idolaters for bowing down to sticks and stones. Since idolaters worship what the sticks and stones stand for, not the sticks and stones themselves, isn’t the biblical position confused? At the basis of the Bible’s consistent refusal to observe the preceding distinction are found the conceptual underpinnings of its critique of idolatry. Men and women alone among creatures are inspired with God’s breath. Men and women alone among creatures, that is, are like God. They alone among creatures are persons. Since mere pieces of nature cannot understand prayers, entreaties, etc., and hence cannot respond in the personal way, idolatrous practices are incoherent. But while it is true that (sub-person) elements of nature cannot enter into inter-personal relations, idolatry has a sequel: the scientific interrogation of nature, an interrogation which has been magnificently effective in eliciting responses. Elijah’s dramatic confrontation with the Baalites is a stylized version of the clash between the biblical view of men and women as in an irreducible respect non-natural, and the naturalizing scientific view. On the Carmel, the prophets of the Baal are soundly defeated. Must those who inherit from them lose too? That is a live question. Read closely, the story of Elijah implies that those behind the Bible would defend the view of human distinctiveness against the renascent idolatry.

In Faith, Reason and the Existence of God, Denys Turner defends the possibility of proving God’s existence on Christian and philosophical grounds. He responds to Kantian objections by developing a theory of reason derived from Thomas Aquinas. Turner’s work shifts the debate about God’s existence to the problem of determining which concept of reason is correct. I argue that this problem is extremely difficult and perhaps insoluble, because it requires using reason to resolve a dispute about reason. Consequently, Turner’s claims cannot be accepted without reservation.

In this article, I speak self-consciously as a man of faith addressing both believers and non-believers, but with the latter especially in mind. I suggest that we are currently witnessing (i) a highly significant departure from the ‘old’ model of liberal society that championed a sacred-secular divide, where the state was (only) a neutral umpire with a deliberately cultivated attitude of ‘studied public indifference’ to the ‘inner life’ of the vast host of (private) associations that itwas obliged to impartially regulate, and (ii) a transition to a ‘new’ post-secular model of liberal society that champions and promotes a sacred-secular distinction (a complementary unity of distinct aspects), where the state is obliged to rethink itself and become (also) the state of its society. In this respect, it resembles the state in the era of Christendom. I hold that Rawls and Habermas are handicapped in their efforts to theorise post-secular society as a result of their strong anti-metaphysical posture.

The full extent of the anguish and death suffered by immature humans is scientifically and statistically documented for the first time. Probably hundreds of billions of human conceptions and at least fifty billion children have died, the great majority from nonhuman causes, before reaching the age of mature consent. Adults who have heard the word of Christ number in the lower billions. If immature deceased humans are allowed into heaven, then the latter is inhabited predominantly by automatons. Because the Holocaust of the Children bars an enormous portion of humans from making a decision about their eternal fate while maximizing the suffering of children, the classic Christian “free will” and “best of all possible worlds” hypotheses are falsified.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that Pascal understood God and Reason to be part of a continuum, comprehensible to the understanding, and not radically opposed to one another. The paper situates Pascal in the context of seventeenth-century intellectual history and examines the concept of Dieu Caché from the perspective of seventeenth-century linguistics.

This paper traces the origins of the phrase “God is dead!” back to Hegel and Luther. It proceeds in the following four steps: Section I investigates the appearance of the theme of God’s death in Lutheran theology. Section II elaborates on Hegel’s adaptation of this theme in the context of his early work Faith & Knowledge. In section III, the paper continues on how the theme of the death of God developed from Luther to Nietzsche via Hegel, before concluding, in section IV, by indicating the link between Protestantism and modern atheism.

Although other scholars have pointed out why reading Kant as a compatibilist is superior to interpreting him as a libertarian incompatibilist, the infancy of his unique compatibilism has not been amply addressed. Here I marshal evidence from Kant’s pre-critical works (specifically the Nova Dilucidatio, the Inaugural Dissertation, and “An Attempt at Some Reflections on Optimism”) to demonstrate that what the pre-critical Kant calls ‘freedom’ is consistent with what Kant will later call ‘autonomy.’ Once a pre-critical version of autonomy is acknowledged, one will see that both the positive and negative formulations of freedom that pervade the critical philosophy are latent in the pre-critical period.

Are human beings essentially good or evil? Immanuel Kant responds, “[H]e [man] is as much the one as the other, partly good, partly bad.” Given this, I’d like to explore the following: What does Kant mean by human nature and how is it possible to be both good and evil? What is “original sin” and does it place limits on free will? In what respect might Kant’s views be significant for non-believers? More specifically, is Kant saying that human beings need God in order to be good or is morality possible without faith?

Schutz’s manuscripts on Goethe’s novels show that he approached theological/metaphysical questions with seriousness and in a social-scientific rather than natural-theological vein. Temporality’s passage, issuing in the unintended consequences that intrigue social scientists and economists, opens onto intersubjective structures since the (subjective) meaning of an act for an actor may always be understood differently from another’s later, objective standpoint—even if the other is oneself understanding one’s earlier self. In this micro-level, pretheoretical, temporal/intersubjective matrix, life’s unforeseen, uncontrollable consequences prompt questions about fate. Recognizing that present acts permit later re-interpretation by others is the origin of metaphysical speculation and, paradoxically, fallibilism.

The point of departure of this article is Martin Heidegger’s relation to two core problems of theology today: representation and transcendence. Concerning the first issue, it is known that Heidegger provided a thorough critique on representation as ontotheology. But as for the second problem, transcendence beyond representation, Heidegger remains ambiguous. His concept of Ereignis can be considered as both a transcendent and an immanent event. In the second part of this article, I try to ‘resolve’ this ambiguity in confronting it with Deleuze’s purely immanent ontology. What comes out is a redefinition of transcendence in Heidegger and Deleuze as a ‘transcendence within immanence.’

Alain Badiou is described as a post-continental philosopher to distinguish his work from that of thinkers such as Derrida and Foucault. Indeed he is critical of key strategies characteristic of genealogical and deconstructive critiques, since he wishes to reconnect with fundamental metaphysical and ethical preoccupations of the western philosophical tradition. In Badiou’s work metaphysical, ethical and socio-political concerns are interwoven. In this article Ioffer a critical evaluation of Badiou’s philosophy, moving from an examination of his writing on ethics to the ontological positions which underlie his ethics and socio-political critique. In my critical evaluation I draw attention to the new work going on in metaphysics in analytical philosophy, but, more fundamentally, I draw upon Bernard Lonergan’s critical realist thought.

The central question of Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Theo-Logic is how the infinite truth of God can be manifested in the finite structures of the created world. In the course of answering this question, Balthasar presents a philosophical understanding of expressive form and a theology of Christ as the expression of divine truth in the world. The philosophical discussion of truth provides support for the intelligibility of the theological claim that God’s truth has been manifested in the world in Christ. The fullest expression of divine truth and the highest realization of worldly truth are found together in Christ, whom Balthasar calls the “truth of God.” Balthasar’s philosophical and theological understanding of expression, as set forth in the Theo-Logic, provides helpful insights for comparing his thought to that of Karl Rahner.

After identifying points of agreement between Karl Rahner and Hans Urs von Balthasar on topics raised by Dr. Sain’s essay, this response raises questions about the deeper foundations of the substantial differences between them. It suggests that the appeal to contrast in their starting-points (Goethe versus Kant) as an explanation is not adequate and suggests lines of further inquiry which might be pursued further.

Given the cultural dominance of the empirical sciences, it is perhaps inevitable that theology should seek a self-understanding that emulates them. Yet post-modern thinkers concur in rejecting Enlightenment canons of knowledge as too restrictive for any discipline seeking to fathom our own humanity, a pursuit that theology shares with literature. In both fields, language, as an engagement with symbols, is not the pursuit of an object of knowledge so much as an act ofself expression and an opening to communion. This is illustrated by an examination of the life and work of Virginia Woolf, as she is revivified in Michael Cunningham’s novel, The Hours. Its explication is drawn from the writing of the German Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner, who insisted that St. Thomas Aquinas viewed all of reality as essentially self expressive, and the human person as that spot in creation, ordered toward all that is and achieving self-constitutionthrough symbolic intercourse with others.

Given the cultural dominance of the empirical sciences, it is perhaps inevitable that theology should seek a self-understanding that emulates them. Yet post-modern thinkers concur in rejecting Enlightenment canons of knowledge as too restrictive for any discipline seeking to fathom our own humanity, a pursuit that theology shares with literature. In both fields, language, as an engagement with symbols, is not the pursuit of an object of knowledge so much as an act ofself expression and an opening to communion. This is illustrated by an examination of the life and work of Virginia Woolf, as she is revivified in Michael Cunningham’s novel, The Hours. Its explication is drawn from the writing of the German Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner, who insisted that St. Thomas Aquinas viewed all of reality as essentially self expressive, and the human person as that spot in creation, ordered toward all that is and achieving self-constitutionthrough symbolic intercourse with others.