Cover design for God matters by Herbert McCabe (first published by Sheed and Ward: London, 1968).

Image reproduced by kind permission of Bloomsbury Continuum

Herbert McCabe studied chemistry and philosophy at Manchester University before becoming a Dominican in 1949. A popular preacher and teacher, McCabe was a gifted expositor of Aristotle and Aquinas, but also a theologian who brought St Thomas’s thought into dialogue with Marx and modern philosophical theology. His book on the sacraments, The new creation, appeared in 1964; his account of morality, Law, love and language was published in 1968. He produced a short catechism in 1986, and a collection of papers was published as God matters in 1987. Its title (where the second word is both noun and verb) owes something to an earlier book Logic matters by Peter Geach whose writings on philosophy Herbert McCabe highly regarded. Thanks to the efforts of his literary executor, Fr Brian Davies OP, further writings by Herbert McCabe have appeared since his death in 2001.