My most recent book is The Tyranny of the Banal: On the Renewal of Catholic Moral Theology. In it, I explore the decline in Catholic moral theology, which I attribute to two things. First, there is the dominance of secular moral categories, which have emerged in the late medieval/early modern world and are hegemonic in the secular West. Second, there is the fact that Catholic moral theology has drifted from its basis in dogmatic theology, especially the doctrine of the Trinity, becoming arid and unconvincing. The Tyranny of the Banal seeks to respond to, and outnarrate, the dominant secular ideology and, in its place, offer a Catholic moral theology whose beauty and coherence are re-established by virtue of it being re-embedded within the doctrine of the Trinity. For more information on The Tyranny of the Banal, see the Books tab above.

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While my first book, Nietzsche and Theology, was very different, the same approach was evident. I saw Christian faith being challenged by Nietzschean thought, by his relativism (which was renewed in French postmodern thought) and his ontology of violence (which I showed was echoed by strands of Neo-Darwinism). My book sought to respond to these challenges. Using Karl Barth, I attempted to show how, without Christ, relativism and will-to-power were indeed, as Nietzsche held, the fate of humanity. Our biology, without God, was directed to nothing else. But Nietzsche's notion of reality as Godless is an impermissible abstraction; it is an error. And in Nietzsche and Theology, I showed how theologians, such as Karl Barth, could offer a convincing account of how, in relationship with Christ, the person could be liberated from the tyranny of relativism and a biological orientation to will-to-power.