In this article – the first Bishop Kevin Dunn Memorial Lecture ‐ I argue that one of the most important resources available for Catholics seeking to understand or teach Trinitarian doctrine is the liturgy of the Mass. I suggest that the text of the liturgy (novus ordo) offers us three patterns of Trinitarian speech that we should emulate. The first ascribes equal glory to Father, Son and Spirit. The second pattern teaches us that the fundamental story of Christian faith is a Trinitarian one. The creation comes from the Father, through the Son and in the Spirit; salvation is a process of being incorporated into the Son by the Spirit so that we may be led to the Father. This narrative is seen particularly clearly in the new eucharistic prayers of the Roman rite. The third pattern is that of using such theological formulae“as one nature and three persons”. These formulae are used sparingly and in contexts which emphasize that the realities of which they speak remain mysterious ‐ and must be the subject of our worship if our understanding is to grow. In our thought, teaching and prayer we should be attentive to the relative priority that these liturgical patterns suggest.

What follows is the text of the 2010 Aquinas Lecture delivered at the church of St Vincent Ferrer, New York. The lecture indicates what makes the so‐called new atheism new. It then offers some defense and critique of three authors: Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens. The chief criticism leveled against them is that their dismissal of theism is based on an ignorance of classical theistic thinking and the mistaken impression that ‘theism’ and ‘creationism’ are equivalent.

The writings of Heloise are examined for their philosophical content, with special reference to the notions of friendship and love. The work of Mews, Dronke, Clanchy and others is cited, and it is concluded that Heloise's gifts as a writer and thinker have been overlooked and merit more careful examination.

While there is a tradition in western religious thought of “contemptus mundi”–hating the world–there is also a tradition of loving the world. Figures as diverse as Augustine, Nietzsche, and Freud have queried whether and how we can love the world: how we can enjoy it for its value. Whereas Nietzsche and Freud thought that a Christian theistic framework prevented us from loving the world, a close reading of Augustine's Confessions shows that this is not true, at least in one sense. For Augustine, this article tries to show, theorizes how it is precisely within a Christian theistic framework that we can love the world most deeply and take the most delight in the world. This vision of Augustine's is not without its own challenges, but it offers at the least a significant “response” to claims by those like Nietzsche and Freud who believe that Christian theism and loving the world are irreconcilable.

This essay seeks to show that contemporary interreligious dialogue, like contemporary theology, best proceeds by way of philosophically erudite ressourcement. As regards Christian‐Muslim dialogue, this requires tapping into the major classical exponents of Muslim philosophy and theology, as exemplified in the work of David Burrell. Inspired by Burrell, the present essay focuses on the contribution of al‐Ghazali to Muslim thinking about predestination, a central theme in the Qur’an and arguably in the Bible as well. In order to set the stage for the engagement with al‐Ghazali, the essay begins by comparing Joseph Ratzinger's concerns that predestination as commonly understood implies a ready‐made web according to which God saves some and damns others, with ‘Umar al‐Ashqar's interpretation of the Qur’an along these lines. Al‐Ghazali's view, while advocating a strong version of predestination, is more philosophically and theologically nuanced, and it provides a basis for Christian and Muslim dialogue about how to characterize the relationships between divine and human agency, faith and reason, and divine wisdom and will. This ongoing dialogue will find in classical Christian theology valuable ways of addressing, with contemporary import, the same problems that concern al‐Ghazali.

Theologians interested in postmodernism and contemporary culture have recently turned to liturgy as a resource. However, these scholars often overlook the rich tradition of philosophically and theologically sophisticated reflection on liturgy of the past few decades. The result is that essential features of liturgy are overlooked. These features include the authoritative nature of liturgy for theology, and the impossibility of fully expressing the content of liturgy in propositional theology. By turning to the work of liturgical theologians, including Alexander Schmemann, Aidan Kavanagh, and Geoffrey Wainwright, I suggest that the attempt to grapple with contemporary issues by appealing to liturgy will always be compromised unless liturgy is understood in a modest, not broad, sense. I argue that recent work by Catherine Pickstock and William Cavanaugh, among others, ignores the authoritative nature of liturgy. These recent enthusiasts of liturgy promote a ‘liturgical culture’, but in the process their work takes away what makes liturgy most potent.

Not only did Pierre Teilhard de Chardin speak about the work of the Holy Spirit in the human heart and see the Holy Spirit as the driving force of evolution, but the human union and community of persons joined by mutual love, in what he called the ‘noosphere’, was clearly analogous in his mind to the Trinitarian union of persons. Yet the Trinitarian dimension of Teilhard's writings has received little attention. On Teilhard's understanding, the Holy Spirit is the power through which evolution becomes the awakening of soul or spirit in matter, rather than being random variation and natural selection. It is also the Holy Spirit who promotes spiritual evolution in the human heart and opens human eyes to the divine presence in the world. Finally, Teilhard's concept of the ‘noosphere’ is analogous to that of the Trinity, understood as a personal unity where neither the individual person nor the Trinity as a whole would be complete without the other.