This article shows how the modern category of religion largely shapes the horizon of many contemporary theological appropriations of the finality of Christ, and how the influence of this category creates serious problems. Though affirming Christ’s finality often seems to pose theological difficulties in religiously pluralistic contexts, I argue that it is not at all

While Hans Urs von Balthasar has been often criticized for a failure to deeply engage cultural and religious diversity, this essay argues his theology proves an excellent resource for comparative theology. After clarifying and explaining Balthasar’s own shortcomings in interreligious and intercultural engagement, the article presents his theological aesthetics as a paradigm for forming the

Blending the science of acknowledged mystics—Dostoevsky, Weil, Péguy, Pascal, Hölderlin, and Augustine—with the insights of social scientists over the course of a long and distinguished career, René Girard contributed to an understanding of the mysticism of social life through focusing attention principally on the ersatz mysticism of metaphysical desire and mob behavior, but also on

The Christian Platonic tradition affirmed that human flourishing involves conjunction with the realm of eternal divine ideas. The account developed by Thomas Aquinas in effect denied this, rendering ideas contingent, unknowable and impossible as direct objects of attainment. Although no longer ideals for human aspiration, a role within spiritual or ethical striving might still be

The author suggests that there may be a primal, underlying reality common to the universe and to its creator, something essential to what is both divinely infinite and creaturely finite. Do the structures of the cosmos suggest that being in all its variety is essentially communal? Astronomy suggests that clustering is a dominant dynamic and

Astrophysicist and theologian, William Stoeger, SJ argued that evolutionary processes manifest an immanent directionality toward increasing complexification and diversification. Though he did not explicitly prioritize full relationship to God as the end of all creation, a priority on relationality does permeate his analysis of the natural order. A more explicit emphasis upon relationality would bring

William Stoeger, SJ, a highly influential proponent of theistic evolution, maintained that scientific understanding of the three major phases of evolution—cosmic, prebiotic, and biotic—all indicate that the universe is marked by an intrinsic tendency to produce novel kinds of entities, greater and greater organized complexity, intensified interconnectedness between organisms and their environments, and an unimaginable

The influence of Vatican II and the conciliar era on Virgilio Elizondo’s theology is insufficiently acknowledged. In particular, he contended Dei Verbum teaches that the Scriptures and Christian tradition not only testify to the past words and deeds of God, but also instruct us in divine pedagogy. He further insisted that the poor and marginal

Karl Rahner had a pivotal influence on Vatican II during the preparatory phases, at the Council itself, and subsequent to the Council. This article asks how Rahner shaped the ecclesiology of the Council. It shows how many of the council’s emphases bear the hallmark of Rahner: the church as sacramentum mundi, the importance of the

Nostra Aetate inaugurated a new era of interreligious dialogue in the Catholic Church, but the theological foundation it provided for such dialogue is complex. This article traces two different heuristic trajectories: a universalist trajectory revealed in Nostra Aetate 1–2 and reflected in the work of Bernard Lonergan, and a particularist trajectory in Nostra Aetate 4