Conventional wisdom has it that thinking on nature and grace among Roman Catholic intellectuals between the sixteenth century and the eve of Vatican II was severely clouded by the work of Cajetan and his fellow Thomistic commentators. Henri de Lubachas rightly been given credit for pointing this out; and to all appearances, de Lubac's influence won the day, as can be seen by the imprint of his thought upon not just the Second Vatican Council, but also the pontifi cates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI. In recent years, however, a new crop of Thomistic scholars has arisen who question whether de Lubac's word on nature and grace should be the last; hence, the debate over the nature-grace relation, so heated in the mid-twentieth century, has been stirred once again. Andrew Dean Swafford here offers a 'third way' by way of the nineteenth-century German theologian, Matthias J. Scheeben, who has been neglected in academic appraisals of the subject until now. Swafford shows that Scheeben captures the very best of both sides, while at the same time avoiding the characteristic pitfalls so often alleged against each.

Jansenism, the view of the world as dark and fallen, enjoyed its heyday in 17th century Europe. Radner explores Jansenism and its response to purported miraculous events, exploring the interior logic and its implications for Christian pneumatology.

In the present century a renaissance in Roman Catholic theology sparked a renewed interest in the theology of nature and grace. Without an understanding of the heated debate that raged in mid-century over the nature/grace dialectic, Vatican Council II is not wholly intelligible, for with this dispute Catholicism turned a corner. The theology of nature and grace that emerged from the debate furnished a theoretical foundation for exorcising the dualisms that for so long had bedeviled Catholic life and thought, and thus legitimated Catholicism's departure from its ghetto and its new openness to the world. The quotidian and the religious were now seen to reside not in separate enclaves, but to suffuse each other. The plain truth of the humdrum was transformed into poetry, and poetry into revelation. This historical and interpretative study chronicles the mid-century debate and analyzes the contributions of the major players and a cast of representative figures.