[Today theologians are as often lay as cleric. Vatican II reshaped the nature of this vocation as a charism located with the prophetic office of the people of God. Originally theologians were bishops, then monks, then Scholastic thinkers. Prior to Vatican II, changes in theology affected the theological vocation: a shift in the understanding of

[Jonathan Edwards perceived the natural world as a school of desire. He thought that by carefully attending to the sensory splendors (and terrors) of creation, believers learn to apprehend God’s glory, which is itself more sensory than anything we can imagine. The human task of bringing the world to a consciousness of its beauty in

[The author examines the response to educational reforms in France at the end of the 19th century by Pope Leo XIII, modernist Alfred Loisy, and liberal Protestant Auguste Sabatier. He argues that Loisy resembled Sabatier more than Leo in his specific reactions to these educational reforms, but that he also exhibited a “mystical faith” in

[The author notes that serious discrepancies apparently exist between Rahner’s initial and later formulations of his theology regarding the supernatural existential. Such a conclusion, if correct, would present a problem because Rahner’s first formulation has commonly been deemed to be a corrective to a serious weakness in de Lubac’s theology which underpinned the nouvelle théologie

[Catastrophic events, both personal and collective, raise the question of divine Providence. How can an infinitely good Creator allow the kind of evil that puts the divine goodness in doubt? The question has been faced since patristic times. Theories of predestination have been proposed. Spirituals have adored God in the mystery of divine Providence. There

[The basis of Christian ethics is a balance of the doctrines of creation, sin, redemption, and fulfillment which are at the heart of all human situations. Applying these four doctrines to human genetics leads to: recognizing a creative human role that respects the inner constitution of the human creature; being alert to the human capacity

[The author explains Fuchs’s two distinct notions of moral goodness and their relationship to salvation. By linking moral goodness with the performance of right actions, the early Fuchs unwittingly made it more difficult for some people to become morally good, and thus to accept God’s gift of salvation. The later Fuchs overcame many of these

[After reviewing various proposals concerning the structure of Augustine’s De Trinitate, the author presents a structural analysis of that work using the notion of “realms of meaning” found in Bernard Lonergan’s Method in Theology. It suggests that Augustine’s treatise comprises four distinct sections which present an account of the Trinity from the perspective of a

[Readers of Miguel Sanchez’s Imagen de la Virgen María, which contained the first published account of Our Lady of Guadalupe’s acclaimed apparitions to the indigenous neophyte Juan Diego, rarely recognize that he was trained in the theology of the Church Fathers, particularly in the writings of St. Augustine. Here the author illuminates the influence of

[Forgiveness and justice need not be understood as diametrically opposite moral responses to human evil. The murder of the Jesuits in El Salvador indicates ways in which truth-telling contributes to justice, and both of these to forgiveness and reconciliation. If the Church is to play a leadership role in reconciliation, it must encourage truth-telling and