A new collection of essays by the most influential Catholic theologian of his generation.

Nicholas Lash’s new collection of essays exposes the crisis in our thinking about God which is at the root of our misunderstandings and mistakes about science and politics, ethics and economics, life and death. Opening with a devastating critique of Richard Dawkins, he goes on to discuss the ‘impossibility of atheism’, disentangle faith and reason, retrieve the legacy of the Second Vatican Council, and – amongst many other delights – offer sparkling insights into Diderot and Joseph Conrad.

Theology for Pilgrims exhibits Nicholas Lash’s characteristic exuberance, combativeness and wit, and shows again his unrivalled ability to make the reader ‘come to see the point about Jesus’.

Part One: Thinking of God without losing our way

1. Where does The God Delusion come from?
2. The impossibility of atheism
3. Amongst strangers and friends: Thinking of God in our current confusion
4. Recovering contingency
5. Renewed, dissolved, remembered: MacKinnon and metaphysics

Part Two: Road-signs: Theology and other things we say
6. ‘Visio Unica et Ordinata Scientae’?
7. ‘An immense darkness’ and the tasks of theology
8. Reason, fools and Rameau’s nephew
9. Where does holy teaching leave philosophy? Questions on Milbank’s Aquinas

Part Three: Road-works: Theology and other things we do
10. Conversation in context
11. Sebastiano in Pallara: A pilgrim’s tale
12. Fear of the dark
13. Traveller’s fare
14. The subversiveness of Catholicity

Part Four: The struggle for the Council
15. Vatican II: Of happy memory - and hope?
16. What happened at Vatican II?
17. On re-reading Vatican II
18. In the spirit of Vatican II?