While the First Vatican Council (1869–70) decreed that for Catholics it is a dogma of faith that we can have certain knowledge of God by the natural light of reason it was only in the Anti-Modernist Oath (1910) that this knowledge was defined as rationally demonstrable by cosmological arguments.

This article analyses three of Taylor's principal theoretical moves: his basic account of secularity and related rejection of secularist ‘subtraction stories’; his comprehension of historico-empirical realities in the light of a sort of philosophy of history; and his presentation of the transcendental quality of the experience of ‘fullness’. Motivated to contest Taylor's framing of the ‘unbeliever’ as spirituality deprived and intellectually complacent, the coherence, content and rhetorical overkill of his argumentation in each of these areas is questioned.

After an earthquake destroyed the Cathedral of Oakland, California (pop. 450,000) in 1989, it was decided to erect a new one on a different site. After much planning a new, quite striking building was constructed, but one that was to be the centre of a complex of building hosting other church ministries. The building and plan has been much admired by architects, liturgists and theologians. This short article explores how well this building complex will help parishioners to pray and serve needs of the local church.

‘Losing one's faith’ usually refers to ceasing to believe in God and in doctrines. But what changes—and losses—are experienced in the moral life when there is loss of faith? With reference to Aquinas, changes in moral understanding related to the loss of faith are discussed. Next, changes in the life of virtue and so in moral knowledge are examined, and finally changes in the inner moral life—particularly, the loss of moral certainty. The paper suggests that when they experience loss of faith Christian societies can suffer the same sorts of moral losses as Christian individuals. Such loss has inevitable effects upon identity, happiness and capacity to communicate with others.

In the early 1930s the artist Stanley Spencer committed himself to working on the never-achieved Church-House project. It was intended to reflect his understanding of God and religion as love, and, furthermore, of the sacred being fully integrated in secular times and places. The first painting he finished for the project was Villagers and Saints (1933), now in the collection of the University of Hull. This paper uses Villagers and Saints as a way into a reading of Spencer's work, drawing on insights from Charles Taylor's A Secular Age to explore how Spencer sacramentalises the material world. The first part of the paper contextualises Villagers and Saints, and the second part identifies its vision with what appears to have been a conversion experience, discussed by Spencer in his public writing.

At this juncture in history, viewed as either the dusk of modernity or the dawn of its overcoming, questions of faith and reason are continually cast up anew. The questioning of faith and reason raise familiar binaries and oppositions: Is faith for or against, internal or external, before or after, above or below reason? Does faith perfect or overcome, complete or destroy, add or subtract from reason? This essay will pass through two figures representative of the contested field of Thomistic scholarship en route to a discussion of how the French philosopher Alain Badiou might intervene within the contemporary discussions of faith and reason. It will first engage Denys Turner's recent work which could be characterized as a dogmatic faith in reason attempting to repel the dispositional faith which he attributes to Fergus Kerr. These competing conceptions of faith will set the backdrop for a presentation and application of Badiou's understanding of faith as discerning fidelity.

The legacy that Paul received was the Jewish scriptures that he quoted extensively in Greek from the Septuagint. This was a legacy not widely appreciated, for various theological reasons, until relatively recently. However, a count of Paul's citations, quotations from and allusions to scripture comes to over 250. Paul's thinking was framed by his re-reading of scripture and emphasises how Jewish was his historical context and theological frame of reference. How this affects our interpretation of Paul's theology is illustrated by four examples from Wisdom, the Psalms in general, Ps 78 in particular, and Paul's rewriting of the Shema Israel in 1 Cor 8.6. There are some brief comments on the difficulties that Paul's use of scripture leaves us with.

This essay surveys a range of claims that Aquinas is a foundationalist, along with the rarer position that he is not. It suggests the arguments for holding he is a foundationalist are fundamentally flawed, and that he cannot be considered to hold a foundationalist epistemology, although for reasons more radical than those hitherto suggested. It examines the account of scientia and sacred doctrine in Summa theologiae I.1, with particular attention to its account of metaphor. Sacred doctrine, often taken to be based on scripture, is in fact based on God's self-knowledge, which is mediated by scripture. Aquinas acknowledges that scripture is riddled with figurative language and that metaphor is necessary to sacred doctrine. He emphasises the propensity for human reasoning to go astray, and in virtue of its processes of inference, to be incapable to representing the simplicity of divine knowledge with complete accuracy. Both with respect to its structures of argumentation and the figurative base from which it argues, Aquinas’ account of sacred doctrine is remote from foundationalist accounts of knowledge. Aquinas’ account of sacred doctrine, the most sure of all scientiae, emphasises its fragility and provisionality; its purpose is not to provide certitude, but to provoke reflection.

Ethics has captured the attention of many today—for a variety of reasons. However, different conceptions and expectations of what is involved in addressing the ethical challenge have also arisen. Clarifying the nature of the ethical task, this essay argues for the need to think through the judgments we make and the decisions we take on ethical situations and to investigate more critically the basis of such judgments and decisions. Furthermore, it claims that in ethics, as well as in other areas of life, it is important to have an overall vision that should ground, inform and support any judgment or decision we make. Maintaining that ethics is a rational activity undertaken by rational agents, it shows how ethical thinking, particularly when it draws on philosophy, can help one to develop a moral sense and enable one to take a moral stance.

Following the fall of mainstream secularization paradigms, this article suggests opportunities arise for considering social and political life as ‘religious’ phenomena and, specifically, for using Taylor's pregnant notion of ‘social imaginaries’ as a bridge between ‘secular’ and ‘post-secular’ social science. Thus, themes implicit in A Secular Age are made explicit and used to challenge how social science is done in ‘post-secular’ times.