Seeing Both Sides: St. Thomas Aquinas

By |2024-01-27T23:06:54-06:00January 27th, 2024|Categories: Christendom, Joseph Sobran, St. Thomas Aquinas, Timeless Essays|

St. Thomas Aquinas has the rare quality of wanting to know all that can be said for the other side. He understands that you can’t find good answers. Before I discovered Shakespeare, the writer I most admired was St. Thomas Aquinas. Dazzling as Shakespeare is, I think I was right the first time. Apples and [...]

Should Beauty Have a Purpose?

By |2023-09-15T19:49:21-05:00September 14th, 2023|Categories: Art, Books, Culture, Featured, Literature, Philosophy, St. Thomas Aquinas, T.S. Eliot, Timeless Essays|

The love of beauty as such is one of the things that can attract men to the God who is infinitely beautiful. But is it the case that we ought to pursue beauty only to the extent that it is joined to some function? A previous essay of mine published in this journal made passing reference [...]

The Priority of Peace & the Problem of Power

By |2023-07-30T11:13:04-05:00June 12th, 2023|Categories: Catholicism, Christianity, New Polity, Politics, St. Thomas Aquinas, War|

As the father guides the son deeper into virtue through the son’s obedience, through his good inclinations, his particular instantiation of the virtues, so the prince serves as a father to the city itself. The collapse of liberal moral and political order has led to a welcome revival in Catholic political thought. This revival, however, [...]

The​ ​Shattered​ ​Image of the Thirteenth Century​

By |2023-05-14T15:53:05-05:00May 14th, 2023|Categories: Art, Christianity, Culture, History, Science, St. Thomas Aquinas, Timeless Essays|

We did not discard most of the image of reality from the Middle Ages. The lovely whole image was smashed like stained glass under the hammer of zealots, but later people recovered fragments and used them to create the world in which we live. C.S. Lewis wrote a book of profound scholarship, The Discarded Image, [...]

The Harrowing of Hell

By |2023-04-07T20:13:30-05:00April 7th, 2023|Categories: Catholicism, Christianity, Easter, Gospel Reflection, Hope, St. Thomas Aquinas, Timeless Essays|

Christ descended into hell to deliver His loved ones from their exile. He came to reward those who, from our first father, Adam, to His own foster-father, St. Joseph, had fought the good fight and had finished the race. The second reading from the Office of Readings for Holy Saturday is taken from an ancient homily on Christ’s [...]

Aquinas & the Theology of Grace in Michelangelo’s “The Last Judgement”

By |2024-01-28T07:51:09-06:00January 27th, 2023|Categories: Art, Christianity, Culture, Heaven, St. Thomas Aquinas, Theology, Timeless Essays|

Portraying the souls of the faithful and those of the damned, “The Last Judgement” of Michelangelo serves as a powerful reminder of the theology of grace and of the importance of one’s own volition in accepting and actively cooperating with the grace which God so freely gives to men. The Last Judgement When [...]

Anthropology & the Death of the Individual

By |2023-06-26T17:51:17-05:00October 27th, 2022|Categories: Catholicism, Christianity, Death, Friedrich Nietzsche, History, Philosophy, St. Thomas Aquinas, Timeless Essays, Truth, Walker Percy|

Do you believe in a higher power, something that transcends the “human organism”? If this question is trivialized or ignored, we enter the very sound and soul of despair. Anthropology is the scientific study of human beings. Philosophy, literally translated, is the love of wisdom. Philosophical anthropology, then, is the scientific study of humans for [...]

Thoughtful Theism: Redeeming Reason in an Irrational Age

By |2022-05-18T16:23:53-05:00May 18th, 2022|Categories: Books, Catholicism, Christianity, Faith, Featured, Reason, St. Thomas Aquinas|

Contrary to conventional wisdom, this age’s crisis is not one of faith. If anything, there is plenty of faith around, in both good and bad things. What we lack is that which since the Middle Ages has been seen as a complement to faith: reason. Thoughtful Theism: Redeeming Reason in an Irrational Age by Fr. [...]

On Nature and Grace: The Role of Reason in the Life of Faith

By |2022-03-22T18:57:00-05:00March 22nd, 2022|Categories: Christianity, Essential, Faith, Nature, Peter Kalkavage, St. John's College, St. Thomas Aquinas|

We may say that the world for Thomas Aquinas does not merely have but is blessed with intelligibility, just as man is blessed with reason. Nature’s beauty is not confined to the senses but extends to the mind. “Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has [...]

The Political Relevance of St. Augustine

By |2022-02-25T11:54:04-06:00February 25th, 2022|Categories: Aristotle, Christendom, Christianity, Essential, Politics, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, Timeless Essays|

St. Augustine observed, “To begin with, there never has been, nor, is there today, any absence of hostile foreign powers to provoke war.” Evil men lusting after power—aggressors—are endemic to human history, and noted Augustine, “When they go to war what they want is to make, if they can, their enemies their own, and then [...]

The Enchanted Cosmos With Thomas Aquinas

By |2024-01-28T08:05:50-06:00January 27th, 2022|Categories: Education, Paul Krause, Philosophy, Senior Contributors, St. Thomas Aquinas, Timeless Essays|

Thomas Aquinas’ cosmology and doctrine of the soul are vitalistic. Everything has a particular soul to it, and these souls have particular life-forces destined for particular ends. As a whole, the cosmos is meant to reflect and embody the graces of God: his beauty, love, and goodness. Such is to what all things are ultimately [...]

“The Very First Thing”

By |2024-01-28T07:53:01-06:00September 26th, 2021|Categories: Christianity, Poetry, St. Thomas Aquinas|

The Very First Thing (S.T. I, q1, a1) The Angelic Doctor began with it. Hundreds followed, yes; but first, this question. For us, though? Now? Oh, it’s not even fit To consider—at best, a digression. He called it philosophical science. His first videtur is our modern creed. We shout it loud in angry defiance: “Of [...]

Faith, Reason, and Eternal Happiness

By |2021-04-02T15:04:16-05:00April 2nd, 2021|Categories: Christianity, Faith, Michael De Sapio, Reason, Senior Contributors, St. Thomas Aquinas|

In “Theology: Mythos or Logos?” John Médaille accuses Thomas Aquinas of posing a quarrel between faith and reason, a separation that has had baleful consequences in Western culture. However, the problem that troubles Mr. Médaille appears not to be a problem if we examine the text of the “Summa” more closely. In a previous essay [...]

On Nightmares, Crowds, and Getting It Wrong

By |2020-10-06T16:49:03-05:00October 6th, 2020|Categories: Culture, Music, Nature, Philosophy, St. Thomas Aquinas|

If the universe were a swarm, there would be no universe. That swarm, that self-caused changing unit, that Godless movable infinite thing would destroy the necessary condition of its own existence and persistence: the individuals that constitute it. Why, then, does modern man insist on not seeing this? Why does he choose rage over reality? I [...]

Go to Top