The Thomistic Institute

Purifying the Imagination: Iconoclasm and the Incarnation - Fr. Irenaeus Dunlevy, O.P.

Fr. Irenaeus Dunlevy argues that the Exodus prohibition on graven images was a purification of Israel's imagination from false imaginings of the invisible God, and that t

Iconoclastic and Incarnational Church Architecture - Fr. Irenaeus Dunlevy, O.P.

Fr. Irenaeus Dunlevy argues that church architecture is "incarnational" when it corresponds to a true cosmological vision of reality ordered through and toward the Logos

Aquinas on Conscience as the Application of Knowledge to Practice - Fr. David Goodill, O.P.

Fr. David Goodill explains that, for Aquinas, conscience is not a power of the soul but an act of the intellect rooted in the natural habit of synderesis and formed by th

Aquinas on Conscience and the Inner Act of the Will - Fr. David Goodill, O.P.

Fr. David Goodill expounds Aquinas's treatment of conscience in Summa theologiae I-II, q.19, arguing that conscience is the inner act of the will and that, even when erri

Conscience First, and to the Pope Afterwards - Prof. Lewis Ayres

Prof. Lewis Ayres presents Newman's account of conscience as, not a private inner voice, but the echo of God's voice within the human being, that although refracted by si

Newman Against Hitler: Reflections on Ratzinger - Prof. Lewis Ayres

Prof. Lewis Ayres draws on Newman's Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent and Essay on the Development of Doctrine to argue that conscience must be educated through a long

Imagination and Conscience - Prof. Medi Volpe

Prof. Medi Volpe argues that conscience is formed through the imagination, which is nurtured and filled by stories, so that discerning right action is less a matter of we

Conscience in Everyday Life - Prof. Medi Volpe

Prof. Medi Volpe argues that conscience is not an abstract faculty but an everyday moral sense that must be awakened and nurtured, and that grace works through ordinary c

Aquinas' Epistemology with Reflections from a Friar-Medical Doctor - Fr. Chris Gault, O.P.

Fr. Chris Gault, O.P. lays out Aquinas's epistemology of moderate realism, in which all knowledge begins with the senses and the agent intellect abstracts universal forms

Sanctity and the Discipline of Study - Fr. Ambrose Little, O.P.

Fr. Ambrose Little, O.P. argues that the natural human desire to know, though it draws the mind toward the contemplation of God, can only reach its fulfillment when purif

Justification According to St. Thomas - Prof. Erik Dempsey

Prof. Erik Dempsey explains St. Thomas Aquinas’s account of justification as God’s free gift of grace, which heals sin, moves human freedom, and forms believers in faith

Shakespeare and Aquinas on Kinds of Knowing - Sr. Maria Frassati Jakupcak, O.P.

Sr. Maria Frassati Jakupcak shows how Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure exposes the limits of abstract knowledge and reveals why some truths can only be known through lov

Shakespeare and Aquinas on Prudence, Part Two - Fr. Jordan Zajac

Fr. Jordan Zajac takes Shakespeare’s most morally charged characters and Aquinas’s deepest insights on love, hatred, and prudence to show why holiness sometimes means not

Shakespeare and Aquinas on Prudence, Part One - Fr. Jordan Zajac

Fr. Jordan Zajac uses Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Aquinas’s account of prudence to show how a person can know the good, reject it in imagination, and still fall into action

The Priesthood of Christ and Your Beatitude - Fr. Thomas Aquinas Pickett, O.P.

Fr. Thomas Aquinas Pickett, O.P., explains how Christ’s eternal priesthood fulfills the human desire for beatitude by reconciling humanity to God through his self-offerin

St. Leo the Great on Love of the Poor and the Weak - Fr. Andrew Hofer, O.P.

Fr. Andrew Hofer, O.P., presents St. Leo the Great’s theology of mercy, showing how love for the poor and weak flows from Christ’s Incarnation, affirms the dignity of eve

Words Matter: Thomas Aquinas on the Philosophy of Language - Prof. Catherine Peters

Prof. Catherine Peters unpacks Thomas Aquinas’s philosophy of language and reveals how the words we use do more than describe reality: they shape what we understand, how

If God Doesn’t Exist, Science is Impossible - Dr. Wes Siscoe

Dr. Wes Siscoe tackles a big question in science and philosophy, arguing that the very fact that nature follows stable, intelligible laws points beyond brute fact and tow

Thomas Aquinas on Vocational Discernment - Fr. Irenaeus Dunlevy, O.P.

Fr. Irenaeus Dunlevy brings Aquinas into the urgent modern conversation about vocation, showing why the path to a call is not endless hesitation but a grace-filled, coura

Can Computers Think? - Prof. Steven Jensen

Prof. Steven Jensen asks whether computers can really think, and he argues that while machines can imitate reasoning and behavior associated with thought, they lack the a