William Blake’s theology is expressed in a strange, idiosyncratic idiom that is difficult to pin down. Sometimes Blake is even read as an anti-Christian, proto-Nietzschean thinker. However, in 1910, Chesterton noted Blake’s unusual ‘tenderness’ toward the Catholic faith and even suggested that he was already on the path toward Catholicism. In this paper, I present an interpretation of Blake’s theology, focusing on his early work The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and on the ‘fetters’ that he attributes to Milton, implying that he is free of them. I argue that Blake is a sincere Christian – and, as Chesterton suggested, far closer to Catholicism than one might expect. Blake’s profound and insightful reflection on the epistemological and psychological effects of original sin forge a middle way, akin to that of Catholicism, between a ‘Pelagian’ belief in the ability of human beings to redeem themselves through their own efforts and a Calvinist insistence on humanity’s total postlapsarian depravity.

For the most part, the ongoing Thomistic debate over the nature of lying presupposes that speech has one primary end: to reveal the speaker’s mind or soul. Within this framework, a lie is disordered speech. In this paper, I formulate a polyvalent Thomistic theory of speech acts that affirms that human vocalizations have multiple ends in the order of nature, including functions that do not involve signification, a claim supported by evidence from studies of primate vocalization and by evidence from studies of contemporary speech act theory in the philosophy of language. With this theory in hand, I propose that not every deliberately willed spoken falsehood constitutes a lie, including false claims made to enemy spies and Nazi officers, because not every spoken falsehood involves disordered speech.

This article explores how AI-generated music challenges traditional theological understandings of creativity, spirituality, and the soul. By engaging the theological traditions of analogy and participation developed by Thomas Aquinas, Thomas de Vio Cajetan, and Francisco Suárez, this article reconsiders whether AI-generated music generates emotions and spiritual significances in listeners and whether it might disclose something meaningful about the nature of divine creativity. Rather than arguing AI music is either a technological innovation or artistic threat, this article suggests various frameworks of analogy, participation, and pneumatology to create a better theological discernment on how divine creativity works through secondary causes within creation. The exploration concludes in proposing a ‘theology of digital transcendence’ – a framework for understanding how computational creativity participates in the broader economy of divine creation.

Augustine and Aquinas assume that Moses’s law figures Christ. In this piece, I show how their complementary accounts of the old law rest upon other doctrinal emphases, namely providence, God the Father, and created things as participations in divine goodness. By drawing out these themes, I advance reflection on the worth of Moses’s law, unfolding how other doctrines structure loving attention to the law as indicative of Christ.

Regarding proofs for the existence of God, two things are well known of St John Henry Newman. First, he was chary about aspects of the Christian Evidences, a great accumulation of Christian apologetics in which Paley’s writings occupied a central place. Second, that he favoured an argument from conscience as ‘a proof common to all, to high and low’. This paper examines what might have been behind Newman’s convictions. It argues that metaphysical and epistemological emphases of early modern philosophy had semantic repercussions for ‘standard’ apologetics such as St Thomas’ Five Ways. In a new social imaginary, they suffer distortion and lose vitality as they begin to be reprogrammed to operate according to modern epistemological canons. Similarly, Paleyan arguments from design as they appear in the Christian Evidences were built on an evidential standard perhaps notionally compelling but in reality false to how a person really comes to conviction about belief in God. In the end, this paper argues that there is an odd kinship between Newman’s argument from conscience and St Thomas’ Five Ways, if these latter are read in their intended medieval light rather than in a modern light.

Recent debates in moral philosophy have placed significant emphasis on personal conscience, often elevating individual autonomy above all other considerations. This overemphasis has paradoxically led to the suppression of another’s conscience in situations where two moral agents must act together toward a shared goal, as in the physician–patient relationship. Critics of conscientious objection argue that recognizing its legitimacy fosters moral relativism or subjectivism. How, then, can conscience be properly formed and understood in a way that safeguards against relativism while upholding its rightful role in conscientious objection? This article argues that Aquinas’s integration of natural moral law, conscience, prudence, and virtue offers the most coherent and original framework for addressing these challenges. By grounding conscience in truth and sustaining it through virtue, Aquinas provides a robust basis for defending conscientious objection while safeguarding human dignity and moral integrity. While primarily theoretical, this study also draws practical implications for healthcare and institutional ethics, showing how a Thomistic understanding of virtue and conscience can inform dialogue and policy in pluralistic contexts.

The disciples of St Thomas Aquinas have organized their enquiries in diverse ways throughout the history of Thomism. The surge of reinvigorated interest in Thomas Aquinas following Leo XIII’s Aeterni Patris inspired a wide variety of purported types of Thomism in the twentieth century. What should Thomists of the twenty-first century learn from their inheritance of past centuries of Thomism? How can they take up Leo XIII’s call vetera novis augere et perficere. I aim to address two issues in this essay. First, to identify a more principled demarcation of approaches to Thomistic enquiry, which eschews the commonplace but problematic and merely sociological classifications of the last century’s ‘schools’ of Thomism. I argue that a more principled and agenda-setting criteria distinguishes “defensive-constructive commentary Thomism” and “tradition-constituted-enquiry Thomism”. The first stresses fidelity to the conclusions found in careful readings of Aquinas’s texts. The second emphasizes fidelity to Aquinas’s systematic forms of enquiry directed to the truth. Second, I then probe the resources these two forms of Thomism have for addressing the epistemological crises facing Thomism, focusing on those concerning how to engage the nova of the sciences and rival philosophical traditions.

Recent years have seen increased interest in Aquinas’s account of perception, its connection to other aspects of his thought and its relation to other theories, such as Kantian and empiricist ones. The present essay begins by discussing contributions to the understanding of Thomas’s position advanced by David Hamlyn and Anthony Lisska and later engages with Aquinas’s writings directly. It poses the question, ‘What sort of a theory does Aquinas offer?’ and suggests it is akin in type if not in substance to Quine’s ‘naturalised epistemology’. Aquinas holds that all human knowledge derives from experience, but I argue that this does not imply (as it would with a strict empiricism) that it is reducible, directly or indirectly, to the contents of immediate sense experience. This is because of the role of two capacities: the cogitative power and the active intellect in constructing contents that transcend immediate experience but which are expressed in perception. Also, some concepts are non-empirical. This leads to a consideration of the sense in which Aquinas is or is not a metaphysical and epistemological realist.

This essay examines Aquinas’s views on necessity in the created world. Although Aquinas holds that all created being is contingent upon God’s free act of creation, he nevertheless maintains that there are aspects of the created world that cannot be otherwise. This raises difficult questions about how such necessities arise in a contingent world and how they relate to God’s power. Aquinas’s analysis is complicated by his view that “necessity” is said in many ways. In various contexts, he distinguishes between absolute, natural, material, conditional, intrinsic, and extrinsic necessity. The essay offers a roadmap through these diverse kinds of created necessity, clarifying their sources and interrelations. It also considers the diverse ways Aquinas deploys the term “absolute necessity” in different contexts and explores how created necessities relate to God’s power.