In a letter to Fr Bede Jarrett, dated 17 July 1925, Basil Blackwell refers to the financial instability of Blackfriars, this journal, which he had published since 1922: ‘The policy of safety, no doubt, is to cease publication at the end of this volume’ — volume VI.

On his father’s death, in 1924, Basil Blackwell, then aged thirty five, took over the bookshop in Oxford. At this distance, it looks as if he decided to focus on building up the bookshop, rather than the publishing house he had founded in 1921. Not until the 1950s did his become a significant name in academic publishing, with such books as Elizabeth Anscombe’s Intention, a classic as it turned out, never out of print. By then, Blackwell’s was the leading academic bookshop in the United Kingdom.

According to the letter asking Bernard Delany to resume the editorship, Fr Bede says that Basil Blackwell had come to regard Blackfriars as ‘little more than respectable’, whereas he expected it to be ‘fresh, daring and sane’ when he took on the job of publishing it.

Thomas states in the Prologue to the Summa theologiae that he intends to teach beginners (incipientes). This description of the Summa’s intended audience might lead us to ask what qualities identify beginners (incipientes) as beginners. Alternatively stated, we might ask what deficiencies these beginners must overcome in order to become proficient.

The Prologue itself suggests one answer to these questions. Beginning students, or as Thomas describes them in the Prologue, “novices in this doctrine” (hujus doctrinae novitios) are impeded in their efforts to learn sacred doctrine by a multiplication of useless questions, articles, and arguments. In addition, things which are necessary to a sound grasp of sacred doctrine are presented according to the order required for the exposition of a text rather than according to the order of learning. Finally, frequent repetition of material bores and confuses the student.

In his reading of the Prologue, Marie-Dominique Chenu suggested that Thomas would have understood beginners as those who lack a sufficient grasp of the intelligible principle that pervades sacred doctrine. Chenu argued that with the influx in the West of the Aristotelian corpus in the 13th century, theologians were forced to ask anew the question, “Is sacred doctrine a science?” It was in part to show that sacred doctrine is truly a science that Thomas sought to construct his Summa theologiae according to an intelligible order. This effort to show the scientific nature of sacred doctrine was no mere academic exercise, though. Effective learning required that the material taught be presented in such a way that the student might grasp the unifying principle of the material itself.

Religion has not fared very well under psychoanalysis. Freud is construed as reducing religion to a form of obsessional neurosis or wish- fulfilment; Jung had little respect for tradition offering up only universal archetypes, while today’s trendy psycho-dynamic counselling dispels the question altogether. What about Lacan? I think Lacan offers the theologian some valuable tools not only for the analysis of theological debate, in particular the theology of religions, but also and not unrelated, sorting out just what it is we name when we name religion. I suggest that a Lacanian view of religion refuse the pluralist stance that religion is a universal genus, thereby allowing traditions differences to be taken seriously. However, he also refuses an exclusive position suggesting that there are only separate traditions and no common meeting points.

I shall begin by outlining the thought of Lacan. I shall then argue that the subject positions diagnosed by Lacan, psychosis, obsessional neurosis, and hysterical neurosis correspond to the three positions delineated in the theology of religions debate, the pluralist, the exclusivist, and the inclusivist. I suggest that Lacan’s strategy in the psychoanalytic situation be used with regard to the debate between religions. In the final part I shall draw on the work of Slavoj Zizek. I shall use his Lacanian working of ideology to give a Lacanian definition of religion.

Presupposing that science and religion can share dialogue, can this be informative and come to bear fruit in the future? As a Catholic Christian who studies social evolution and Christian ethics, I shall answer “yes”, notwithstanding the challenge mounted by conflicts inherent in this debate. My interest lies in the dialogue between Christian moral philosophy and the theory of Darwinian evolution, as first published in On the Origin of Species (1859). The information flow arising out of a shared understanding of knowledge from these disciplines may be mutually beneficial. By contextualizing Jesus within evolutionary history, I shall argue that evolutionary theory can inform the Christian conception of human nature in relation to the world and equally, that Christian thinking can contribute to the ethics of scientific and secular engagements with the world. Despite the continued confrontation between science and religion, I hope to negotiate some of the impasses so as to trace a path towards conflict resolution and reconciliation.

Early on, Creationism impeded the improvement of relations between science and religion. Creationists (they are not yet extinct!) support a literalist reading of Creation as described in Genesis. In short, they hold that God, from intelligent design, created all species separately. Hence, for Creationists there is no genetic relatedness between species and no need to invoke evolution as an explanation for life on Earth. Yet, thanks to Darwin, the theory of natural selection radically undermined the notion of intelligent design—and with it the pre-evolutionary alternative of life as an outcome of random physical processes.