In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:INDIRECT METHODS IN THEOLOGY: KARL RAHNER AS AN AD HOC APOLOGIST NICHOLAS M. HEALY St. John's University Staten Island, New York THE PURPOSE of this paper is to discuss Karl Rahner's emarks upon, and use of, what he called ' indirect methds ' in theology.1 To my knowledge there has been little analysis, beyond incidental treatment, of Rahner's scattered references to these methods.2 In the following pages I (...) hope to remedy this gap, and argue for two interdependent theses : First, by construing Rahner's own theological practice in the light of his remarks on the indirect methods, an apologetic method can be discerned which could prove useful for contemporary theology. Second, reading Rahner from this perspective indicates that his apologetic method is much more situation-relative and occasionalist than has generally been recognized hitherto. Two Kinds of Apologetics A quick sketch of some aspects of the present theological scene will help make these theses a little clearer and provide some cate1 My discussion of the indirect methods is based primarily upon the following sources: Theological Investigations (New York: Crossroad, 1961-1982) (cited in the text as TI), vol. 6, " A Small Question Regarding the Contemporary Pluralism in the Intellectual Situation of Catholic and the Church", pp. 21-30; vol. 11, "Reflections on Methodology in Theology", pp. 68-114; vol. 16, "A New Task for Theology". Foundations of Christian Faith (New York: Crossroad, 1978) (henceforth cited as FCF), introduction, pp. 1-23, et passim. 2 See e.g., Anne Carr, The Theological Method of Karl Rahner (Missoula: Scholars Press, 1977), pp. 267-9; Francis S. Fiorenza, Foundational Theology: Jesus and the Church (New York: Crossroad, 1984) (cited as Fiorenza), p. 93. Both these interpreters consider the indirect methods to be synonymous with the transcendental method. They then interpret the former in terms of the latter, misguidedly, I will argue. 613 614 NICHOLAS M. HEALY gories for the following discussion. According to William Placher,8 the contemporary situation in North American theology is often characterized as one in which two rival models of theology are dominant, the revisionist and the post-liberal (Placher, 17-19). Placher discusses many aspects of each model; here I want to look only at those features which bear upon their different conceptions of the nature of apologetics. According to David Tracy, a leading practitioner of the revisionist model, theology in all its forms must be " determined by a relentless drive to genuine publicness ".4 In order to maintain its public character, theology, like any discipline, must develop a preliminary systematic argument by which to ground its possibility and to ·establish its claims to truth and meaningfulness. This initial apologetics uses universal categories and proceeds in accordance with general criteria, functioning in terms, that is, which " all reasonable persons, whether ' religiously involved ' or not, can recognize as reasonable" (Tracy, 57). Usually it takes the form of a foundational explanatory theory of religious discourse which appeals to the universal nature of the deep structures of religious experience. This general theory of religion provides criteria for the subsequent theology, thereby maintaining the latter's relevance for the general, non-Christian public. The theological method considered appropriate is one which attempts systematically to correlate Christian-specific claims with the deep structures of human experience.5 The post-liberal model, by comparison, is more concerned to preserve Christian identity than to maintain the publicness of Christian discourse. The task of theology is not primarily the apologetic one of justifying Christianity to a non-Christian puba Unapologetic Theology: A Christian Voice in a Pluralistic Conversation (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1989) (cited as Placher). 4 David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism (New York: Crossroad, 1981), p. 31 (cited as Tracy). 5 See the analyses in, e.g., George A. Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1984), chapter 2; and Ronald F. Thiemann, Revelation and Theology: The Gospel as Narrated Promise (Notre Dame: U. of N. D. Press, 1985), chapter 4. KARL RAHNER AS AN AD HOC APOLOGIST 615 lie. Instead the theologian should critically " describe and redescribe the character and relationship of Christian beliefs and... (shrink)

In this paper I argue that teleology and a proper teleological analysis of the uterus is important for a comprehensive understanding of the rights of the unborn. I argue that a right to life entails the right to use those organs that naturally function for an individual’s survival. Consequently, an unborn child has a right to his mother’s uterus. If this is accepted, bodily-rights arguments for abortion such as those proposed by Judith Jarvis Thomson and David Boonin are completely undermined. (...) While Thomson and Boonin may be justified in arguing the right to life does not always entail the right to use another person’s body, I argue that the right to life of the unborn does entail the right to use their mother’s body. (shrink)

Prominent philosophers have argued that contradictions contain either too much or too little information to be useful. We dispute this with what we call the “Paradox of the Two Firefighters.” Suppose you are awakened in your hotel room by a fire alarm. You open the door. You see three possible ways out: left, right, straight ahead. You see two firefighters. One says there is exactly one safe route and it is to your left. The other says there is exactly one (...) safe route and it is to your right. While the two firemen are giving you contradictory information, they are also both giving you the perhaps useful information that there is a safe way out and it is not straight ahead. We give two analyses. The first uses the “Opinion Tetrahedron,” introduced by Dunn as a generalization of Audun Jøsang’s “Opinion Triangle.” The Opinion Tetrahedron in effect embeds the values of the “Belnap-Dunn 4-valued Logic” into a context of subjective probability generalized to allow for degrees of belief, disbelief, and two kinds of uncertainty—that in which the reasoner has too little information and that in which the reasoner has too much information. Jøsang had only a single value for uncertainty. We also present an alternative solution, again based on subjective probability but of a more standard type. This solution builds upon “linear opinion pooling.” Kiefer had already developed apparatus for assessing risk using expert opinion, and this influences the second solution. Finally, we discuss how these solutions might apply to “Big Data” and the World Wide Web. (shrink)

In this paper, I will argue that heterologous embryo transfer (HET) is malum in se because it involves a disordered use of a woman’s gestative faculty. Against most HET opponents, I will argue for and defend the distinction between the generative faculty or procreation and the gestative faculty or gestation, grounded in St. Thomas Aquinas’s explanation for how faculties are distinguished. Against the advocates of HET, I will argue that a thorough analysis of the gestative faculty and its natural object (...) will help us to demonstrate why HET constitutes a disordered (and therefore illicit) use of a woman’s gestative faculty. (shrink)

In a clear account of the mature theology of Thomas Aquinas the author, a theologian himself, reveals the evangelical, pastoral and theocentric character of Aquinas's pre-modern theology.

Given their heterogeneity and lack of defining markers, it is surprising that multipotent mesenchymal stem/stromal cells (MSCs) have attracted so much translational attention, especially as increasing evidence points to their predominant effect being not by donor differentiation but via paracrine mediators and exosomes. Achieving long-term MSC donor chimerism for treatment of chronic disease remains a challenge, requiring enhanced MSC homing/engraftment properties and manipulation of niches to direct MSC behaviour. Meanwhile advances in nanoparticle technology are furthering the development of MSCs as (...) vehicles for targeted drug delivery. For treatment of acute injuries, systemic cell-free exosome delivery may ultimately displace current emphasis on empiric donor-cell transplantation for anti-inflammatory, immunomodulatory and repair-promoting effects. Exploration of potential clinical sources of MSCs has led to increased utilisation of perinatal MSCs in allogeneic clinical trials, reflecting their ease of collection and developmentally advantageous properties. (shrink)

Intentions are an important concept in Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science. We present a formal theory of intentions and beliefs based on Discourse Representation Theory that captures many of their important logical properties. Unlike possible worlds approaches, this theory does not assume that agents are perfect reasoners, and gives a realistic view of their internal architecture; unlike most representational approaches, it has an objective semantics, and does not rely on an ad hoc labeling of the internal states of agents. We (...) describe a minimal logic for intentions and beliefs that is sound and complete relative to our semantics. We discuss several additional axioms, and the constraints on the models that validate them. (shrink)

The consent process for publication of clinical images in medical journals varies widely. The extent of this variation is not known. It is also not known whether journals follow their own stated best practices or the guidance of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. We assessed consent requirements in a sample of 10 top impact factor general medicine journals that publish clinical images, examining variability in consent requirements for clinical image publication and congruence of requirements with the recommendations of (...) the ICMJE. Clinical image consent requirements varied widely from journal to journal. None of the studied journals, even amongst n = 4 ICMJE members or n = 8 journals who self-report adherence to ICMJE guidelines, comply with all of the recommendations of the ICMJE. Half of studied journals require a journal-specific consent form. Among top medical journals there is significant heterogeneity in consent requirements for clinical images. Variability of consent requirements is neither practical nor rational; inconsistent requirements create uncertainty for authors, present impediments to dissemination of scholarship, and undermine a shared professional understanding of how best to protect patient privacy. We propose adopting a standardized consent form and process for publication of identifiable images in medical journals, with uniform elements and explicit definitions. (shrink)