Irish Theological Quarterly

Against the backdrop of current debates over womb-imagery for God, this article examines the writings of Augustine of Hippo, Gregory the Great, and Thomas Aquinas on Job 38:29 (‘From whose womb did the ice come forth?’). In the works of these Fathers and Doctors of the Church, the ‘womb’ of Job 38:29 is a multivalent symbol that has been interpreted in a variety of ways—including as a reference to the ‘womb of the Creator’ that conceives and gives birth to creatures. These patristic and medieval texts highlight several characteristics of the maternal body, showing that metaphors of pregnancy and birth do not necessarily symbolize dependency, immanence, materiality, or an identity with one’s child: the imagery of a pregnant and birthing God has not always been construed to imply a pantheistic identity between God and the material world, or a divine dependency upon creation.

The article seeks to locate the genealogy of David Coffey’s systematic theology in his original search for a unified account of grace. This led to the recovery of early but forgotten ways of thinking about the central doctrines of the Trinity and Christology related especially to the role of the Holy Spirit in the Incarnation. Coffey’s Spirit Christology, based on the Synoptic Gospels and patristic reflection, complements the traditional Christology of Chalcedon in ways that throw light on Christ’s humanity and the redemptive character of his death and resurrection. It also grounds a theology of grace, Christian anthropology, death and resurrection, the Church, and the salvation of unbelievers. Coffey is a prominent Australian theologian and the discussion of his thought is set within a brief account of the development of theological studies in the Australian context.

The purpose of this article is to explore an aspect of the Catholic theology of the 19th century which is relatively unknown: namely the Roman School and Carlo Passaglia’s position within it. This contribution is focused on presenting the main theological treatise of Carlo Passaglia (1812–87), De Ecclesia Christi (1853–56), an unprecedented work in the context of 19th-century theology, from which a Trinitarian ecclesiology, rooted in the economy of salvation, emerges. The article will be divided into three parts: the first will provide a brief outline of the Roman School, which played a significant role in the theology of the 19th century; the second will offer a biography of Passaglia; finally, the third will focus on the De Ecclesia and will present a basic survey of the whole monograph in order to highlight the most significant aspects of Passaglia’s ecclesiology. Moreover, this contribution will seek to emphasize that several aspects of Passaglia’s Trinitarian ecclesiology went on to be developed by the Second Vatican Council, particularly in Lumen Gentium.

This paper claims that the distinction between therapy and enhancement, which has played a significant role in the discussion of the moral implications of human enhancements, is of only secondary and subordinate importance. Of much greater importance is the distinction between natural and unnatural enhancements, or rather between natural and unnatural means of enhancing. After briefly indicating the moral significance of the distinction between what is natural and unnatural, the paper focuses on the difficult task of discriminating between those means of enhancing that are natural and those that are unnatural.