David Francis Sherwood

This article examines the total lack of the terminology of 'analogy' in philosophico-theological contexts within the works of Augustine of Hippo. This non-use of the terminology of 'analogy' in Augustine’s theology is contrasted with the later theological tradition’s focus on the doctrine of analogy and the scholarly literature’s significant focus on Augustine’s analogies. This is further confirmed by his similar rejection of the terminology of 'proportion' in philosophico-theological contexts. Augustine’s rejection of this terminology is, furthermore, shown to be consistent with the first 500 years of the Latin theological tradition. Indeed, this avoidance of the terminology of 'analogy' is seen in both Christian and non-Christian authors of this epoch. Seneca, Ambrose of Milan, Marius Victorinus, Jerome of Stridon, Claudianus Mamertus, Bachiarius, and Favonius Eulogius will be specifically discussed in this context. Moreover, Augustine’s non-use of the terminology of 'analogy' is contrasted with the Greek Fathers of the same time-period. Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and Cyril of Alexandria will be particularly considered. However, Chalcidius’s Hellenistic commentatorial work will be singled out as a possible mediating force between these Latin and Greek traditions. The purpose of this essay is the elaboration of the history of the terminology of 'analogy' in Christian thought, helping to fill an apparent lacuna in the scholarly literature within the history of the doctrine of analogy.

This article investigates the esse of the res et sacramentum of the eucharist in the thought of Thomas Aquinas, attempting to fill a lacuna in eucharistic theology. It proceeds from the questions on Christ’s esse in the Disputed Question on the Union of the Incarnate Word and the tertia pars of the Summa Theologiae, with a short synthesis arguing that Christ exists by one esse. Then, it argues that the eucharist exists by this same esse by answering two possible objections, taken from the many instances of the eucharist across the globe and Christ’s unique mode of sacramental presence, to the eucharist only having this one esse.

Within a broadly Thomistic frame, this paper shows how simple apophaticism in the theology of Pseudo‐Dionysius the Areopagite is the more fitting mode of knowing the triune God, beyond the use of all divine names. Specifically, we will proceed using the work of Father Bernard Lonergan, SJ on theological fittingness. After setting forth Father Lonergan's understanding of fittingness, the paper will proceed through Dionysius's cataphatic names, apophatic names, and apophatic silence. The cataphatic and apophatic names, while true, useful, and fittingly said of God, will be shown to be imperfectly applied to God. As such, their fittingness pales in comparison to the simple silence of the intellect orientated towards God, despite such pure apophaticism's dissimilarity to normal human intellectual operations.

In the theological tradition of St. Thomas Aquinas, this paper will argue that the practical actions of studying, contemplation, and teaching sacred theology are acts proper to the infused Christian virtue of religion. To understand this, the framework of Thomistic moral theology and anthropology is necessary. After introducing this background, St. Thomas’s understanding of the virtue of justice is explained alongside the virtue of religion, which is a potential part of this cardinal virtue. The second part of the paper moves into a description of the practical actions of theologizing, as distinguished from the essential nature of sacred theology. The way that these actions are variously elicited or commanded by the infused virtue of religion are then shown to be properly due to God as His just right.

This article is a defense and explication of Aristotelian substance-accident terminology used in the Catholic dogma of transubstantiation following upon Fr. Thomas Reese's denigration of orthodox terminology and theology. It was reworked from a paper entitled “They Must Fall into Being: The Son’s Power as Quasi-Subject of the Accidents of Bread and Wine in the Sacrament of the Eucharist” which I delivered on Feb. 4, 2023, at The Holiness of God and the Mystery of the Eucharist conference at Ave Maria University co-sponsored by the Aquinas Center for Theological Renewal (Ave Maria, FL) and the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology (Steubenville, OH).