Volume 86 Number 2 | Theological Studies Journal

From the Editor’s Desk

The journal’s readers are likely aware of the controversy created by Vice President JD Vance’s defense of the Trump administration’s “America First” policy. In an interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity,1 he appealed to the idea of an ordo amoris (introduced by Augustine and developed by Aquinas). Some Catholic voices defended Vance’s interpretation,2 while others criticized it as misguided, particularly in regard to how it ignored the priority that Christianity gives to the urgency and desperation of our neighbors’ needs. As Stephen Pope put it, “No true Catholic ethic relegates mass numbers of distant suffering neighbors to the outer periphery of our moral concern.”3

Christopher Steck, S.J. June 25, 2025

Daring After Hart: Lonergan, Blondel, and Balthasar on the Problem of Human Freedom

This article reconsiders the problem of human freedom in the wake of David Bentley
Hart’s That All Shall Be Saved. It renews and reasserts the crisis of every human
freedom’s eternal destiny. With insights from Maurice Blondel, Bernard Lonergan,
and Hans Urs von Balthasar, the article makes a case for distinctive conceptions of
human freedom, divine agency, and the problem of hell. The article closes by reading
Theo-Drama as a map marking places for further theological exploration.

Anne M. Carpenter June 25, 2025

The Ghost of Modernism: Evocations of Anti-Modernist Doctrinal Documents at Vatican II

This article argues that Modernism was the pivotal “ghost” at Vatican II. Evocations
of Modernism and anti-Modernist doctrinal documents on the council floor were
numerous and often heated. Such evocations occurred in virtually every debate
where the development of doctrine was at stake. The council majority’s dismissal,
indeed rejection, of the anti-Modernist paradigm constituted a kind of revolution of
theological methodology. Understanding how anti-Modernist doctrinal documents
were evoked at Vatican II sheds important light on the council and its achievements,
compromises, and failures.

Shaun Blanchard June 25, 2025