Thomas Aquinas, like many other, but by no means all medieval theologians and philosophers, espoused a theory of truth by identity. Truth exists primarily in the mind, but insofar as it realises the truth of things, truth exists in things also. Both truth and meaning are inherent to form, which shines forth in things to render them as things, or as exemplars of universal essences. In the event and act of knowledge, form as species migrates from things into one's mind by a process involving at once passive stamping, active abstraction, and imaginative mediation. To know in this manner is to manifest, and express further the truth of things which is intrinsic to their very being. It is not merely to think logically or coherently, or to judge correctly as to evidence, though these things are certainly involved. Nor is it to ‘represent’ in a detached fashion a supposedly objective reality that is in itself alien to meaning or truthfulness.

On January 6th, 2021 following a ‘Save America’ rally held by President Donald Trump, supporters violently attacked the U.S. Capitol with the aim to stop Congress’ verification of election results certifying President elect Joe Biden. The subsequent press coverage on this tragedy provided a variety of labels for the violence: insurrection, rebellion, riot, protest, etc. To understand what type of act this was, I utilize Thomas Aquinas distinction of ‘sedition’ and ‘rebellion’ as a conceptual model. I argue that the attack on the Capitol was a form of political sedition, which Aquinas held to be an immoral and unjustified attack on proper political authority. In connection with this claim, I discuss Aquinas’ political theory and his criteria of a justified armed rebellion against political tyranny as a way to understand the events at the U.S. Capitol and to help us think clearer about legitimate and illegitimate civilian political violence in the future.

In the Summa Theologiae Thomas Aquinas mentions a kind of judgment of virtue through inclination. He uses it to explain how, through the gift of grace, a finite human being can know an infinite God. His arguments show that his negative judgment of the significatory capacity of speculative likeness, as source of knowing God, does not have to be taken as his last word on the possibility of positive (albeit imperfect) knowledge of Him in this life. Rather, it becomes clear that Thomas thinks that, as the forming of the tendency of the will through pursuit of a natural good can be the ‘remote’ (to use his term), non-discursive, source of judgment of that good, so the divine good of the gift of grace in the essence of the soul can be a remote source of positive (albeit imperfect) judgment of divine things. The differences and similarities of the two kinds of judgment are discussed, and verification issues are examined in conclusion. Thomas’ remarks on the two kinds of judgment deserve more study, since they challenge the almost universal acceptance of relativism as well as the extent of authority given to post-enlightenment methods of verification.

In breaking out from the analytic paradigm of certainty, St John Henry Newman is credited with keeping channels open for new streams of thought to irrigate philosophy in the century after his. Contemporary commentators sometimes see themes in Newman that anticipate ones taken up by Wittgenstein after him. This paper explores some simple convergences and divergences between Newman's and Wittgenstein's tendency of thought. It draws mainly on Newman's philosophical writings, in such as the Oxford University Sermons and the Grammar of Assent, and from Wittgenstein's mid to later writings, from such works as The Blue Book, Philosophical Investigations and, of course, On Certainty. It argues that Newman's attention to speech as distinct from the rest of what might be called language is critical. This paper eventually challenges the assumption that Wittgenstein has provided the last word on approaches to knowledge such as Locke's. Instead, it proposes that within Newman there is already a more powerful critique, one that would cast Wittgenstein as the last protesting exemplar of an approach he is thought to have dismantled.

While the Christian emphasis on creation as a free and gracious gift is often juxtaposed with Neoplatonic notions of world-production as the emanation of being from the First Cause, I argue in this essay that there is no obvious contradiction between the doctrines of creation ex nihilo and emanation ex deo in Aquinas's thought. This is partly because the Christian teaching that the world is created ‘from nothing’ was never intended to deny that it was from God, but to deny that it was made from anything other than God. By drawing on the Liber de Causis to support his explanation of creation as the emanation of all being from the universal cause, Aquinas provides us with a way to foreground a doctrine which belongs to the foundations of Christian faith but which rarely receives sufficient attention in systematic theology – namely, the omnipresence of the God who is in everything.

We are only now, after more than half a century, uncovering the real significance of what the Second Vatican Council means for the Church. The time lapse in reception has many factors not least that distinctive shifts in emphasis take far longer be appreciated in a real way that practical changes which, for good or ill, can be accomplished by fiat. So that the reception, fast or slow, of the Council is not a uniform process. One area where very little change has been seen is in relation to ‘adapting the Liturgy to the Temperament and Traditions of Peoples’. There was a call at the Council for a deliberate dialogical relationship between the liturgy and culture, and it is this relationship, rather than any particular modelling of it, that is the focus of this paper.

In the 20th century, some prominent Thomists questioned whether St. Thomas Aquinas is really committed to a theory of divine ideas. There is no doubt that Aquinas articulates such a theory in his Sentences Commentary, Disputed Questions on Truth, and Summa theologiae. Still, he seems to omit an account of divine ideas in the Summa Contra Gentiles. If St. Thomas thinks divine ideas are necessary for understanding God's knowledge, why would he skip discussing them in this ex professo work? This paper will argue two points. First, St. Thomas does articulate a theory of divine ideas in the Summa Contra Gentiles, even though he changes his terminology. His account of divine reasons (rationes) is equivalent to a theory of divine ideas. Second, Aquinas changes his vocabulary because of the more apologetic aim of the work. Use of the term ‘ideas’ would be less effective in dialogue with his Muslim and pagan interlocutors.

This article argues that, without being reducible to a version of the Free Will Defence, Aquinas' theodicy and philosophical theology can offer contemporary versions of the Free Will Defence stronger metaphysical and theological foundations from which a response to Mackie's compatibilistic challenge – probably the most serious challenge against this defence – can be derived. Mackie's challenge to the Free Will Defence is the argument that the possibility of evil is not a necessary condition for the existence of free will, for God – if He existed and was omnipotent, omnibenevolent and omniscient – could have and would have created rational and free agents such that they would always freely choose the good. I claim, following Aquinas' hylomorphic ontology, that the creation of such a will is logically impossible as it would require the creation of a will containing naturally and invariably the formality of the universal and perfect good, and so the creation of a will indistinct from God's, which is by nature uncreated.