Following Bernard Lonergan’s lead, a systematic-theological account of the human world in relation to God will have a trinitarian “shape,” inasmuch as finite, contingent realities participate in the divine relations that constitute the three who are God. While Robert Doran has proposed an excellent beginning of such an account, the author argues that this proposal

In response to a recent article by Robert Doran, this article compares and contrasts the systematic coherence of Karl Rahner and Bernard Lonergan—how they interrelate the divine mysteries of the Trinity, incarnation, grace, and beatific vision. It argues that on all grounds Lonergan’s position provides a more satisfying response to relating these mysteries to one

The author accepts two of Charles Hefling’s corrections, but the second in a qualified fashion: Lonergan’s appeal to love as a starting point for the psychological analogy is open to an analogy based in religious love. Christiaan Jacobs-Vandegeer’s article in the March 2007 issue of this journal highlights the distinction of sanctifying grace and charity.

The author aligns the modern structuralist emphasis on the meaning-generating capacity of “oppositional pairs” with Augustine’s penchant for the ancient rhetorical trope of “antithesis.” The resultant rereading of De Trinitate uncovers Augustine’s rhetorical construction of a christocentric theological epistemology that undergirds the work’s structure, polemical agenda, and the classic theologoumenon of the trinitarian image in

The article explores the relationship between theology and metaphysics in the light of Bonaventure’s theology. His trinitarian theology grounded in self-communicative love and ontology of personhood renders new insight into his metaphysics of Christ the center. The emergence of creation ex amore through the centrality of the divine Word enables Bonaventure to recast metaphysics in

The article argues that Pope Benedict XVI’s inaugural encyclical,Deus caritas est, places the Church’s competency in the area of charity, not justice. Achieving justice pertains to the role of the state in the political process. The Church’s role regarding justice is indirect, through her social teaching and the activity of the lay faithful as citizens.

“Wider ecumenism” goes beyond conventional ecumenical and interreligious dialogue to conversation with indigenous religions. While many indigenous theologians today readily employ “Western” thought forms, an additional methodology is needed to articulate aboriginal experience. Cast in the form of a narrative of four decades of field work, this article describes such a methodology, incorporating the symbolic

The nonvowed “secular single lay state” claims many of today’s Catholics, yet is little noticed, even though it was validated by Vatican II and was arguably the first Christian form of life given explicit theological articulation. Insufficient attention and appreciation may prevent the Catholic Church from realizing the full benefits of this form of the

The possibility of formal governance and ministry for women hinges on their admission to the clerical state, which is demonstrably possible by their readmission to the diaconate. Historical exegesis supports the Catholic Church’s present ability to ordain women deacons, and recent official discussion suggests that the readmission of women to the ordained diaconate may be

This article critically analyzes the three distinct forms of political ecclesiology thus far developed by the Radical Orthodoxy movement. William Cavanaugh and Daniel Bell, on the one hand, and Graham Ward, on the other, proffer models that resolve in different ways the contradictions of John Milbank’s affirmation that peace amid diversity is possible only within