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Full-Text Articles in Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion

Review Of Theology And Catholic Higher Education: Beyond Our Identity Crisis, Joseph Simmons Jan 2026

Review Of Theology And Catholic Higher Education: Beyond Our Identity Crisis, Joseph Simmons

Theology Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.


Enoch’S Measuring, Counting, Weighing, And Balancing Creation In 2 Enoch, Andrei Orlov Jan 2026

Enoch’S Measuring, Counting, Weighing, And Balancing Creation In 2 Enoch, Andrei Orlov

Theology Faculty Research and Publications

In recent years one can see increased scholarly attention to the epistemological dimension of early Jewish apocalyptic writings and, in particular, to the ways by which divine knowledge was harvested and cultivated by the protagonists and antagonists of those early Jewish accounts. The early Enochic booklets have traditionally played a central role in these epistemological probes since they contain the earliest descriptions of the transmission and acquisition of divine knowledge in Jewish apocalypticism.  These accounts deal both with revelations unveiled by God and angels to the patriarch Enoch and with illicit transmission of divine knowledge by the rogue group of …


Lessons From Mysticism For Healthcare Providers: Health Care As A Space For Intersubjective Encounters Of Care, Micaela Plantinga, Alexandre A. Martins Jul 2025

Lessons From Mysticism For Healthcare Providers: Health Care As A Space For Intersubjective Encounters Of Care, Micaela Plantinga, Alexandre A. Martins

Theology Faculty Research and Publications

Society’s deep divisions, fueled by individualism, competition, consumerism, rigid ideologies, and limited dialogue, have impacted health care, leading to weakened connections between providers and patients. In the U.S., heavy reliance on medical technology and the rise of AI have further eroded these intersubjective bonds, reducing empathetic engagement in care. To address this challenge, the paper explores insights from Christian mystics Saint Teresa of Avila and Edith Stein. Teresa’s teachings on self-examination and humility, despite her life as a cloistered nun, influenced both her religious order and the broader Church. Meanwhile, Stein’s phenomenological approach emphasized empathy and "suffering with" others, viewing …


Review Of Viri Dignitatem: Personhood, Masculinity, And Fatherhood In The Thought Of John Paul Ii, Christine Falk Dalessio Jul 2025

Review Of Viri Dignitatem: Personhood, Masculinity, And Fatherhood In The Thought Of John Paul Ii, Christine Falk Dalessio

Theology Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.


Response To Michael Conway’S Review Of Maurice Blondel On The Supernatural In Human Action: Sacrament And Superstition (Boston & Leiden: Brill, 2017) By Cathal Doherty Sj., Cathal Doherty Feb 2025

Response To Michael Conway’S Review Of Maurice Blondel On The Supernatural In Human Action: Sacrament And Superstition (Boston & Leiden: Brill, 2017) By Cathal Doherty Sj., Cathal Doherty

Theology Faculty Research and Publications

This is a brief response (1000 words) to Michael A. Conway’s lengthy book review in Irish Theological Quarterly, Vol. 84, No. 2 (May 2019): 212–218.


Adam As Imago Dei Statue In The Hebrew Bible, Andrei Orlov Jan 2025

Adam As Imago Dei Statue In The Hebrew Bible, Andrei Orlov

Theology Faculty Research and Publications

In recent decades, there has been a significant shift in scholarly perspectives on ancient Near Eastern cultic images. This shift moves away from the traditional view that regarded cultic statues as merely idolatrous representations — an attitude often reflected in certain biblical narratives—toward a more nuanced understanding of these images as paradoxical channels for divine presence. Recent research on polemics against idolatry in the Hebrew Bible and other Jewish texts reveals efforts to recontextualize traditions of cultic statues within the lives of biblical patriarchs and prophets, portraying them as bearers of the sacred.


“Tormented By Difficulties Of Every Kind”: Catholic Teaching On Contraception In Social Context, Kathleen Cavender-Mccoy, Conor M. Kelly Dec 2024

“Tormented By Difficulties Of Every Kind”: Catholic Teaching On Contraception In Social Context, Kathleen Cavender-Mccoy, Conor M. Kelly

Theology Faculty Research and Publications

The Catholic Church notably condemns all forms of artificial birth control and advocates natural family planning as the only morally licit means of spacing births. This teaching is presented as the quintessential pathway to the fullness of human sexuality, but many Catholics struggle with it, and the magisterium itself recognizes that this path is not an easy one to follow. This article uses recent developments in Catholic moral theology around the notion of structural sin to examine the structural constraints complicating ordinary Catholics’ pursuit of their tradition’s vision for marital sexuality, demonstrating that larger structural forces can considerably affect the …


Review Of The Afternoon Of Christianity: The Courage To Change By Tomáš Halík, Ryan G. Duns Dec 2024

Review Of The Afternoon Of Christianity: The Courage To Change By Tomáš Halík, Ryan G. Duns

Theology Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.


No Orthopathy Without Orthoaesthesis: On The Necessity Of Negative Effort, Ryan G. Duns Jan 2024

No Orthopathy Without Orthoaesthesis: On The Necessity Of Negative Effort, Ryan G. Duns

Theology Faculty Research and Publications

Theologians have become increasingly attentive to the role emotion and experience must play in theological reflection. Several thinkers have recently done so by appropriating and developing Jon Sobrino’s understanding of orthopathy, or “right affect.” A close examination of these efforts, however, reveals inconsistencies in the way the category is understood and deployed. This article redresses these inconsistencies by complementing orthopathy with orthoaesthesis, or “right perception.” The article opens by considering various appeals to orthopathy before suggesting how William James’s theory of emotion might provide the category with clarifying content. The second stage engages Simone Weil and Iris Murdoch as practitioners …


Absolution: Divine And Human, Cathal Doherty Oct 2023

Absolution: Divine And Human, Cathal Doherty

Theology Faculty Research and Publications

This article is a contribution to an ecumenical theology of the Word, examining how divine absolution is realized in concrete human experience. It addresses both the scriptural and sacramental mediation of divine absolution, emphasizing the commonality of both resting on the power of God's word spoken in human concrete actuality. The philosophical literature concludes that human beings, in order for forgiveness to be real to them, need to hear and know that they are forgiven. In other words, for forgiveness to be complete, the wrongdoer requires an act of “absolution” (even in a secular sense), which may be verbal or …


Family Welfare And Pernicious Property: White Womanhood And Catholic Social Thought In The United States, Kate Ward Jun 2023

Family Welfare And Pernicious Property: White Womanhood And Catholic Social Thought In The United States, Kate Ward

Theology Faculty Research and Publications

A significant literature presents the Catholic social thought tradition (CST) as a resource for combating racism and white supremacy, and an equally important body of work critiques the documentary tradition for the ways it fails to adequately address these pernicious social sins. This essay will combine elements of both approaches to address a topic relatively modest in scope: showing how attention to the historical and contemporary operation of white womanhood, exposed by sociologist Jessie Daniels in her book Nice White Ladies, informs, critiques, and presents opportunities for Catholic social thought on gender and family, both in the ecclesial documents and …


Dragon's Atonement: Eschatological Yom Kippur In The Book Of Revelation, Andrei Orlov Jan 2023

Dragon's Atonement: Eschatological Yom Kippur In The Book Of Revelation, Andrei Orlov

Theology Faculty Research and Publications

There are striking differences between the classic description of the scapegoat ritual found in Leviticus 16 and later renderings of this rite in rabbinic and early Christian authors. For instance, several enigmatic additions to the Levitical blueprint of the scapegoat ritual appear in later interpretations of this rite found in mishnaic, targumic, and talmudic accounts, especially in the description of the conclusion of the scapegoat ceremony. Some of these accounts insist that in the final moments of the ritual in the wilderness the crimson band of the scapegoat was removed and then placed back onto the animal. The scapegoat was …


Eschatological Consumption Of Leviathan And Behemoth As Revelation Of The Messianic Torah, Andrei Orlov Jan 2023

Eschatological Consumption Of Leviathan And Behemoth As Revelation Of The Messianic Torah, Andrei Orlov

Theology Faculty Research and Publications

The notion that the righteous would one day feast on Behemoth and Leviathan occupied a prominent place in early Jewish pseudepigraphical accounts, including testimonies found in the Book of the Similitudes, 4 Ezra, and 2 Baruch. Thus, from 1 Enoch 60:24 one learns that “two monsters, prepared according to the greatness of the Lord, will provide food for the chosen and righteous.”


Israel's Scriptures In Philo And The Alexandrian Jewish Tradition, Michael B. Cover Jan 2023

Israel's Scriptures In Philo And The Alexandrian Jewish Tradition, Michael B. Cover

Theology Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.


An Interdisciplinary Theological Method From The Knowledge Of The Forgotten, Alexandre A. Martins Jan 2023

An Interdisciplinary Theological Method From The Knowledge Of The Forgotten, Alexandre A. Martins

Theology Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.


Dialogue After Dobbs: Introduction, M. Therese Lysaught, Mari Rapela Heidt, Mary Doyle Roche, Kate Ward Jan 2023

Dialogue After Dobbs: Introduction, M. Therese Lysaught, Mari Rapela Heidt, Mary Doyle Roche, Kate Ward

Theology Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.


Worthless Secrets: Corruption Of Cosmological Knowledge In The Enochic Tradition, Andrei Orlov Jan 2022

Worthless Secrets: Corruption Of Cosmological Knowledge In The Enochic Tradition, Andrei Orlov

Theology Faculty Research and Publications

The article explores the fallen Watchers’ cosmological secrets and their connection with the cosmological law or the “law of the stars.” It argues that the Watchers’ cosmological expertise is closely connected with their roles in relation to the “law of the stars” as the former participants and guardians of this reified cosmological covenant.


Organizational Implications Of Pope Francis’ Integral Ecology, Frank J. Barrett, Ryan G. Duns Jan 2022

Organizational Implications Of Pope Francis’ Integral Ecology, Frank J. Barrett, Ryan G. Duns

Theology Faculty Research and Publications

We explore Pope Francis's “integral ecology” in the encyclical Laudato Si (Francis, 2015) as it provides us with an agenda for a planetary virtue ethic that should inspire the field of Organizational Development to reconsider the moral implications of our work. We begin by offering the framework of virtue ethics as a way of understanding Laudato Si (LS). We then summarize the argument in LS as it focuses on four ecological issues—climate change, pollution, water, and the plight of the poor as we tease out the document's implicit virtue ethic. Finally, we propose how OD practitioners can become more aware …


Venerating Earth: Three Sacramental Perspectives, Jame Schaefer Jan 2022

Venerating Earth: Three Sacramental Perspectives, Jame Schaefer

Theology Faculty Research and Publications

three prominent ways in which the sacramentality of creation has been nuanced over the centuries are explored: (1) Experiencing the presence of God in the world with focus on Ignatius of Loyola’s final contemplation in his Spiritual Exercises; (2) reflecting on manifestations of God’s goodness, power and wisdom that eminent patristic and medieval theologians discerned when studying the world and novel attributes that are discernible today when informed by current scientific findings; and (3) receiving the Eucharist as a heightened encounter with God that can strengthen individuals and communities to act cooperatively. These three ways of perceiving the world within …


Living Mysteries: Embodiment Of Divine Knowledge In Jewish Apocalypticism, Andrei Orlov Jan 2022

Living Mysteries: Embodiment Of Divine Knowledge In Jewish Apocalypticism, Andrei Orlov

Theology Faculty Research and Publications

The study explores the early Jewish understanding of divine knowledge as divine presence, which is embodied in major biblical exemplars, such as Adam, Enoch, Jacob, and Moses. It demonstrates that the personification of divine knowledge in early Judaism and, especially, in the Jewish pseudepigrapha reveals a distinct “cultic” way of mediating the divine presence and, consequentially, the divine knowledge that can be designated as the “divine presence’s epistemology.”


Review Of Layer By Layer: A Primer On Biblical Archaeology By Ellen White, Deirdre Dempsey Dec 2021

Review Of Layer By Layer: A Primer On Biblical Archaeology By Ellen White, Deirdre Dempsey

Theology Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.


Erich Przywara On Nature-Grace Extrinsicism: A Parallax View, Aaron Pidel Oct 2021

Erich Przywara On Nature-Grace Extrinsicism: A Parallax View, Aaron Pidel

Theology Faculty Research and Publications

This article argues that Erich Przywara’s analogical understanding of the nature-grace relationship, though sometimes thought to align with the anti-extrinsicist positions of Blondel, de Lubac, and Balthasar, differs from these by virtue of its “parallax” view. The standard bearers of the nouvelle théologie hold that Aquinas teaches a natural desire for the beatific vision and deny, more generally, the utility of the concept of pure nature for safeguarding the gratuity of the supernatural. Przywara, by contrast, holds that Aquinas, like the Christian tradition more broadly, alternates between theoretical lines of sight, with the result that the capacity for the beatific …


Desafíos Éticos De Una Crisis Mundial: Una Crisis Latente, Su Manifestación (Covid-19) Y Consideraciones A Partir De La Ética Social Católica, Alexandre A. Martins Jun 2021

Desafíos Éticos De Una Crisis Mundial: Una Crisis Latente, Su Manifestación (Covid-19) Y Consideraciones A Partir De La Ética Social Católica, Alexandre A. Martins

Theology Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.


Thoughts On My Time At Tst, Joseph Ogbonnaya Apr 2021

Thoughts On My Time At Tst, Joseph Ogbonnaya

Theology Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.


The Streaming Era Ruined Our Free Time. Is It Too Late To Reclaim It?, Conor M. Kelly Jan 2021

The Streaming Era Ruined Our Free Time. Is It Too Late To Reclaim It?, Conor M. Kelly

Theology Faculty Research and Publications

During the Covid pandemic, my young children discovered "The Jetsons," thanks to a meme suggesting that the futuristic TV cartoon from the 1960s was "more accurate than expected" (see online yoga, virtual doctor visits, etc.). Television is an intrinsically passive medium, which means it can never generate what psychologists deem an "optimal experience"-the state of enjoyment that emerges when an activity perfectly balances our skills with the challenges of the task at hand. Major changes in the sphere of work, from the living minimum wage advocated by Catholic social teaching to guaranteed vacations and paid parental leave, could give us …


Face As The Image Of God In The Jewish Pseudepigrapha, Andrei Orlov Jan 2021

Face As The Image Of God In The Jewish Pseudepigrapha, Andrei Orlov

Theology Faculty Research and Publications

From a Jewish text, known to us as 2 Enoch,we learn interesting details about Adam’s creation. Both recensions of 2 Enoch 44 tell us “the Lord with his own two hands created humankind; in a likeness of his own face (в подобии лица своего), both small and great, the Lord created [them].” It is intriguing that 2 Enoch departs here from the traditional reading attested in Genesis 1:26–27, where Adam was created, not in a likeness of God’s face, but after His image (tselem).  In view of this departure, the author of one of the English translations …


Twentieth-Century Orthodox Reception Of Aquinas, Marcus Plested Jan 2021

Twentieth-Century Orthodox Reception Of Aquinas, Marcus Plested

Theology Faculty Research and Publications

The reception of Aquinas in the twentieth century must be understood in the context of the experience of political instability, exile, and Communist oppression that affected, in one way or another, virtually all the theology of the period. In this century, the anti-Westernism of the Russian Slavophiles reaches something of a peak, with Aquinas routinely held up as an archetypal representative of a theological tradition quite foreign to that of the Orthodox Church. That said, there are a number of examples of a more nuanced and less polemical approach to Aquinas that serve to provide hope for a less confrontational …


Global Bioethics In A Pandemic: A Dialogical Approach, Alexandre A. Martins Jan 2021

Global Bioethics In A Pandemic: A Dialogical Approach, Alexandre A. Martins

Theology Faculty Research and Publications

In this short essay, I present a work in progress of a research project on the COVID-19 pandemic and the ethical issues that this pandemic and the way it has been handled have raised for clinical practices and public health measures.


Review Of Catholic Perspectives On Sex, Love, And Families, Conor M. Kelly Jan 2021

Review Of Catholic Perspectives On Sex, Love, And Families, Conor M. Kelly

Theology Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.


From Quandary Cases To Ordinary Life: New Opportunities To Connect Social Ethics And Health Care Ethics, Conor M. Kelly Jan 2021

From Quandary Cases To Ordinary Life: New Opportunities To Connect Social Ethics And Health Care Ethics, Conor M. Kelly

Theology Faculty Research and Publications

In Christian bioethics, the call for a greater integration of social ethics and medical ethics is a popular refrain, yet lasting progress toward this goal has been elusive, in part due to the traditional emphasis on quandary cases in medical ethics. This article develops an alternative approach to moral discernment in health care, employing a theological interpretation of solidarity to promote greater social consciousness in ordinary health care decision making. This shifts the ethical analysis from abstract scenarios to everyday choices, elevating the moral significance of seemingly mundane concerns like antibiotic use and diet and exercise.