Aquinas's views about the morality of lying are well known and often discussed by commentators. But his views about the nature of lying have yet to receive the attention they deserve. In this article, I take some of the first steps necessary to correct this state of affairs by clarifying and offering a limited defense of the account of lying that Aquinas presents in in his Summa Theologiae—more specifically, in that portion of it known as the treatise on truth (Part 2-2, Questions 109–113).

In a number of texts throughout his career, Thomas Aquinas identifies different senses of the term ‘esse’. Most notably, he notes that according to one sense, the term signifies the act of existence (actus essendi), which he famously holds is really distinct from essence in all beings other than God. Perhaps surprisingly, he also notes on a number of occasions that according to another sense, the term ‘esse’ can signify that very principle that he says is distinct from the act of existence, namely, essence. In light of Aquinas's semantic theory, this paper investigates how he coherently holds within his metaphysical system that this term ‘esse’ can signify in different ways both essence and the act of existence. More broadly, what it shows is how, for Aquinas, the metaphysician can look to the modes of signification (modi significandi) of terms and as well as their modes of predication (modi praedicandi) to draw careful conclusions about the modes of existence (modi essendi) of real beings. These considerations reveal that in Aquinas's view, although the grammarian and logician in their way are also concerned with these semantic modes, it is not their job to employ them to discern the various senses of the term ‘being’ or the fundamental modes of being. In the end, this is a task for the metaphysician.

Aquinas holds that after death, the human soul can no longer change its basic orientation either toward God or away from him. He takes this to be knowable not only from divine revelation but by purely philosophical reasoning. The heart of his position is that the basic orientation of an angelic will is fixed immediately after its creation, and that the human soul after death is relevantly like an angel. This article expounds and defends Aquinas's position, paying special attention to the action theory underlying it.

The idea of ‘connatural knowledge’ is attributed to Aquinas on the basis of passages in which he distinguishes between scientific and affective experiential knowledge of religious and moral truths. In a series of encyclicals beginning with Leo XIII's Aeterni Patris, popes have celebrated and commended Aquinas as the supreme guide in philosophy and theology and in some of these cited his discovery of connatural knowledge. The course and context of his ‘elevation’ are explored before proceeding to a discussion of moral knowledge in which different forms of non-theoretical cognition are identified. This leads to an examination of work by Elizabeth Anscombe on the factuality of ethical judgement and connaturality. Aquinas and Anscombe offer important insights but more work remains to be done. Moral knowledge is a many-faceted thing. More accurately, it is not one thing but many things analogously related both by their modes and by their objects.

This essay argues the image of the ‘Mystical Body’ or ‘Body of Christ’ is fully intelligible only in light of the Cross. The Body of Christ is a cruciform Body. As the Body of Christ crucified and risen, it is presently being configured to Christ in the world through self-sacrificial love. The essay traces the place of the Cross in some representative twentieth-century Catholic theologies of the Mystical Body, in light of the perspective of Thomas Aquinas. I first survey four theologians from the first half of the century who, in their understandings of the Mystical Body, gave a place to the Cross: Emile Mersch, Fulton Sheen, Charles Journet, and Pius Pasch. Here I also examine Pope Pius XII's encyclical Mystici Corporis. Second, I explore the approach of some notable Thomistic theologians or interpreters of Aquinas from the early 1960s onward: Jerome Hamer, M. J. Le Guillou, George Sabra, Jean-Pierre Torrell, and Herwi Rikhof. In this section, I also examine Vatican II's Lumen Gentium. My third and final section treats Aquinas himself, in order to reflect upon the place of the Cross in his understanding of the Mystical Body, as found in his biblical commentaries and the Summa theologiae.

From 1923 to the present day, various studies have increasingly analysed the beginnings of the cult of Thomas Aquinas, as well as the authenticity of his works. Over the last century, the reception of Thomas Aquinas between these two poles of sanctity and the authority accorded to his works has shown itself to be a significant pairing, of which this article unpacks some important stages.

The topic of wisdom attracted much less attention in modern thought than in ancient and medieval times. However, there has been a renewal of interest in it in recent psychology and philosophy, and a variety of questions has emerged from this current work. Aquinas has a detailed and elaborate account of the wisdom which pervades his oeuvre. This paper explores that and seeks to answer some of these contemporary questions from Aquinas's perspective.

Many questions have been raised concerning the logical validity of Aquinas's Fourth Way. Some commentators judge the Fourth Way to be problematic while others find it delightful. In this paper, the Fourth Way is understood as a reflection on what it is to attribute to things around us scalar predicates. Does the Fourth Way not resemble what Wittgenstein observes when speaking about ‘the standard meter’? If so, is the Fourth Way significantly different from what might be called a ‘mystical’ line of thinking? If not, it would be this mystical meaning that is used in the Way with respect to ‘God exists’. How should we understand this mystical meaning? By noting that beauty appears as a response-dependent property and by stressing that in order to attribute it to something we must possess certain virtues. Beauty would then be relative to virtues which are linked to the mystical meaning of ‘God’. Why could such a use, concerning the predicate ‘beautiful’ (even if that is not mentioned in the Fourth Way) not constitute an explanation of ‘what we call God’? This is a question to which the reading of the Fourth Way might lead.

Why celebrate Thomas Aquinas? Three eras that celebrated Aquinas in unique ways—the Fourteenth century that canonized him, the Sixteenth century that declared him a doctor of the Church, and the nineteenth century that made him patron of the schools—all struggled with the corrosive effects of nominalism and voluntarism on Western culture. With the help of G. K. Chesterton and C. S. Lewis, this essay suggests that these eras were drawn to Aquinas because his theology offers an antidote against these twin diseases. Specifically, Thomas Aquinas's theology can help us confront the ills of nominalism and voluntarism by encouraging us to celebrate nature, grace, and Christian apprenticeship in virtue as the perennial gifts of God's love.

Aquinas's virtue-based ethics is grounded in his metaphysics, and in particular in one part of his doctrine of the transcendentals, namely, the relation of being and goodness. This metaphysics supplies for his normative ethics the sort of metaethical foundation that some contemporary virtue-centered ethics have been criticized for lacking, and it grounds an ethical naturalism of considerable philosophical sophistication. In addition, this grounding has a theological implication even more fundamental than its applications to ethics. That is because Aquinas takes God to be essentially and uniquely being itself. Consequently, on Aquinas's view, God is also essentially goodness itself. Aquinas's metaphysical grounding for his ethics is thus meant to be understood in connection with his more fundamental views regarding God's nature, and in particular his views of God's simplicity. This metaphysical grounding confers significant philosophical and theological advantages on his ethics.

Broadly drawing on the writings of Thomas Aquinas, this article is a systematic-theological (rather than historical-theological) engagement with the theme of providence and divine causality. It aims to dispel some modern misunderstandings of these topics by highlighting how pre-modern approaches differ from today's perspective. It does so by arguing, firstly, that Thomas, given his teleological focus, construes divine causality not so much as efficient causality but rather in terms of final causality. I will also make the point that Thomas's calling God a ‘universal cause’ should not be construed in terms of omni-causality, as if God predetermines every event (be it necessarily or contingently). In the final part of this contribution, I make some observations on the arbitrariness of afflictions and the connection with the gratuitousness of charity within the providential ordering.