Lumen gentium described biblical Israel as a preparation and figure of the church, the new people of God. Jews do not belong to this people but are ordained to it. In light of Nostra aetate and the ensuing Catholic-Jewish dialogue, the article supplements Lumen gentium’s typological account of biblical Israel as a prefiguration of the

The article proposes, contrary to much of contemporary Thomistic scholarship, that according to Thomas Aquinas’s categorizations of virtue, the person in a state of grace cannot possess the acquired cardinal virtues. Arguing from Aquinas’s theory of virtue as to why this is the case, the article examines texts that are commonly interpreted to say otherwise,

In response to recent charges that creatio ex nihilo imposes a dubious metaphysics upon biblical theologies of creation, with the result that divine power is valorized at the expense of a creation in process, the author argues that such criticisms misrepresent the doctrine’s logic that illuminates those biblical theologies while making explicit in philosophical terms

The article argues that Paul’s use of dikaio- terminology, the language of “justification,” has been too narrowly construed by N. T. Wright in his latest monograph on the subject. Wright’s position, that Paul employs the language of justification to signify a divinely bestowed change in status, tells only part of the story. This language also

Occasioned by current challenges facing the Catholic Church, the article explores the role of lamentations and impasse in the life of the church. By drawing on resources in the Scriptures, Augustine’s Expositions on the Psalms, and classic texts in spirituality, the author advances the claim that ways must be developed in ecclesiology and pastoral practice

The article is a reply to one by Kenneth Himes and James Coriden published in our September 2004 issue. Except for minor sylistic changes, the article is published as it was received.

The author mines William Spohn’s notion of the grace of indirection as it relates to the potential impact of the arts on the moral imagination. The article moves beyond exposition of Spohn’s idea, first, by showing how the grace of indirection is a concept with deep connections to long-standing Christian convictions about God, Jesus, and

The article examines Maximus the Confessor’s reaction to the ArabMuslim invasion of the Byzantine Roman Empire. It also appraises Islam’s place in the 7th century as presenting a view of divinehuman relations as an alternative to the views of Christian confessions. The article concludes by advancing a hypothesis about the antithetical relationship between Islam and

An ethics of disinterested goodness governs the testimony of Auschwitz survivors Primo Levi and Jean Amery. For Emmanuel Levinas, ethical goodness such as we find in Levi’s and Amery’s disinterested testimony to the German people leaves the only possible trace of the divine. Levinas proceeds to dismiss mysticism as an interested, self-serving, a-ethical search for