Free will is a perennial theological and philosophical topic. As a central dogmatic locus, it has been implicated in debates about core Christian doctrines, such as grace, salvation, sin, providence, evil, and predestination. Despite its venerable history in both philosophy and theology, it...
This article explores the meaning of mortality defined as a fundamental quality of human existence, in its scriptural, premodern, and modern Christian understandings. While the scriptural description of a basic human liability to death was both definitive for Christian self-understanding fo...
Utilitarianism is one of the most straightforward ethical theories: it simply calls for the greatest welfare for the greatest number. Despite its early links to theological reasoning, this moral view has often been sharply contrasted with the outlook of Christians. This entry presents the k...
This article emphasizes the particular contours that define the Franciscan theological paradigm as a distinct contribution to the discipline of Roman Catholic theology. Grounded in the lives of Francis and Clare of Assisi, the tradition unfolds as a Wisdom tradition, both christocentric and...
This entry considers the relation between literature and Christian theology in twentieth- and early twenty-first-century Europe, with attention principally given to those writers whose oeuvre takes up questions central to theology (in particular soteriology, eschatology, ecclesiology, creat...