Lumen Christi Institute

Registration is full. Please contact us if you would like to be put on the waitlist.

This master class is open to current graduate students. It will take place online on Zoom. Others interested in participating should contact us.

Are wrong actions wrong only because the law of God forbids them, or does it forbid (at least some of) them because they are wrong in themselves?  Francisco Suárez famously answers this Euthyphro-like question in a way that steers between rationalism and divine voluntarism. He takes it to be Saint Thomas Aquinas’s way, and so do many after him.

In this master class, Fr. Brock will challenge this reading of Aquinas and argue that, on his view, the very question is misleading.  A crucial and neglected factor in Thomas’s position is his conception of the common good of the universe.

ASSIGNED READINGS (TO BE PROVIDED)

• Suarez, Francisco, De Legibus bk. 2, ch. 6.
• Brock, Stephen L., The Light That Binds: A Study in Thomas Aquinas's Metaphysics of Natural Law (2020, Pickwick Publication), selections.