By the early 1200s the Roman Catholic Church had ruled that angels are incorporeal. However, debate persisted as to what exactly that meant. Universal hylomorphism (UH) (i.e., the idea that all created beings are composites of form and matter) played a role in that debate, as it implies that even angels are, in a sense, partly material. Among the motivations for UH was the need to preserve angelic mutability, yet some of its advocates (notably St. Bonaventure) thought that the only kind of change angels could undergo is accidental change. What about angelic substantial change? I argue that once UH is on the table, it is difficult to rule it out as impossible. I conclude with the suggestion that affirming the possibility of angelic substantial change provides new support for strict universalists in the domain of soteriology (i.e., those who affirm that even the demons will one day be saved).
This article argues that C.S. Lewis offers a grammar for thinking the spiritual stakes of technics. Reading The Abolition of Man alongside That Hideous Strength , the authors propose that Lewis reframes technicity's peril not merely as “demonic” autonomy but, at its limit, as a Satanic revolt against the Tao, an inversion that clarifies why power severed from objective value becomes magic in the pejorative sense. Attending to the novel's polarity of magia/goeteia, Merlin's ambiguous vocation, and the technocracy of N.I.C.E., the article develops a framework for discerning how social technique bends moral orientation. A coda tests this grammar against contemporary artificial intelligence (AI), where the seductive neutrality of predictive systems offloads judgment and diffuses responsibility. The article also registers limits within Lewis's account—its fatalism, its tendency to elide technology and its technique—and situates his claims alongside mid-century critiques (Martin Heidegger, Jacques Ellul, Leo Strauss) and recent papal reflections (Pope Leo XIV).
This article brings Dietrich Bonhoeffer's christological conception of “natural life” into critical theological conversation with the natural law tradition. After briefly examining why Bonhoeffer critiques Protestant thought for omitting the category of the natural altogether and Roman Catholic thought for underappreciating the natural's christological determination, I explore Bonhoeffer's creative attempt to recover the concept of the natural “from the gospel itself.” I argue that while Bonhoeffer shares with natural law reasoning a teleological structure, he departs from it by locating the telos of natural life in the future coming of Christ (eschatology) rather than in a prelapsarian human condition (protology). Finally, I suggest that Bonhoeffer's mature account of the natural, though firmly grounded in Protestant commitments concerning justification by faith alone, nevertheless opens a limited but significant space for ecumenical cooperation in the penultimate sphere, where Christians and non-Christians alike discern and defend the material goods of human life.
Charles Wesley's doctrine of Christ has long been regarded as “paradoxical” by commentators such as John Lawson, S.T. Kimbrough, Paul Chilcote, and Jason Vickers. This paper will propose an alternative reading of Wesley's hymns on the nativity, suggesting that such poetic contrasts do not constitute paradox but are best read in light of the theology of Chalcedon and its subsequent debates. The paradoxical reading of the hymns bears a formal resemblance to two historically troublesome positions: the conjunction of irreconcilable natures as found in Nestorius, or the idea that a hypostasis corresponds to a singular physis as found in Severus of Antioch. This paper will read a selection of Wesley's more “paradoxical” claims alongside the christology of Cyril of Alexandria and Maximus the Confessor to show that what appears as paradoxical—the contrasting predicates of Jesus Christ's two natures—is precisely the form of utterance that the hypostatic union enables.
Near the end of his book on holiness, John Webster writes that “a crucial aspect of holiness is an increase in concentration: the focusing of mind, will and affections on the holy God and his ways with us.” In this article, I briefly explore a few ideas in Thomas Aquinas’ exegetical work (chiefly in his commentaries) that constellate around the idea of holiness as concentration. I suggest that “concentration” offers a fruitful way to speak of a saintly analogy to divine simplicity. Not even saints are simple in the strict sense, but they can be sincere and pure, with their energies gathered together in a unified pursuit of a single, divine object. I then offer a reading of the famous Milanese garden scene in the Confessions , arguing that Augustine's conversion is paradigmatic of concentration, before concluding with an amendment and a commendation.
Steven Duby repeatedly insists on a conception of divine aseity that maintains God's being is complete without reference to another, such that his being neither entails nor precludes the existence of the world. He argues that the “specification” of God's decretive “tendency” toward creation cannot be considered an ingredient of the divine actus purus , lest it render creation absolutely necessary, or result in some divine composition. This article argues that this way of framing the issue presents a false dilemma. In dialogue with several of Duby's Reformed interlocutors, the article suggests the dilemma may be resolved when the decretive act of God is parsed synchronically through an “instants of nature” framework. This way of conceiving the divine will ensures that God's innate indifference is upheld alongside his actual non-indifference towards creation, in a way that poses no threat to his aseity or eternally actualized perfection, nor to the genuine contingency of creation.
