Welcome to Theological Studies
Founded and sponsored by the Society of Jesus, Theological Studies is a Catholic scholarly journal that serves the Church and its mission by promoting a deeper understanding of the Christian faith through the publication of research in the theological disciplines and through reviews of noteworthy books. The journal has been in continuous publication since 1940.
About This Website
In keeping with the Society of Jesus’s commitments to serve the global Church, the journal is pleased to provide this site as a resource for scholars who do not have ready access to our journal. It contains articles and book reviews from 1940 up to the last five years, which can be accessed here free of charge. Articles or reviews published in the last five years are available by subscription, or a per article charge, at SAGE Journals. Article submissions by authors must be made via SAGE, where you will also find the latest formatting and style guides. For your convenience, they are also available on this website.
In the Current Issue
From the Editor’s Desk
Two years ago, in June of 2022, I wrote this in my editor’s note:
As this issue goes to press, the world watches in heart-wrenching dismay the violence being inflicted upon the people of Ukraine, staggering violations of human dignity reported in disturbing textual detail and hauntingly graphic images. Over fifty years after Paul VI’s 1965 exhortation to the United Nations, “No more war, war never again,” Pope Francis has cuttingly condemned this most recent conflict as “a cruel and senseless war,” where “the powerful decide and the poor die.” War is “a barbarous and sacrilegious act!”1
In February of this year, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) put the number of civilian casualties of the war at more 30,000. A US intelligence report declassified in December 2023 estimated that casualties among Russian troops are around 315,000. Meanwhile, a new horror is unfolding in the Middle East. Gaza officials report that at least 30,000 people have been killed in the Israel–Hamas war. A statement from the Jesuit Curia in Rome mourned the inability of the parties involved and the international community to end the crisis:
Almost six months of war in Gaza, and the guns have not fallen silent. We, the members of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits), like so many other Catholics, Christians, men and women of all faiths and non-believers, refuse to be silent. Our voices continue to be lifted up in prayer, in lament, in protest at the death and destruction that continue to reign in Gaza and other territories in Israel/Palestine, spilling over into the surrounding countries of the Middle East. . . .