“The Careful Rationality of Monotheism: Thomas Aquinas on Analogical Knowledge of God”
Thomas Joseph White, O.PPontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas
Co-sponsored by the Medieval Studies Workshop
How can philosophers speak about God in a reasonable fashion? Does speech about God exceed the capacities of human reason? In responding to these questions, Thomas Aquinas develops a path between the extremes of apophaticism (rejecting the applicability of human language to God) and rationalistic optimism. This lecture will argue for the validity of Thomist doctrine of divine naming and its relevance to contemporary debates in analytic theism and to Heidegger's critique of onto-theology (the theology of being).
Thomas Joseph White, OP is rector of the Angelicum, the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome. He most recently served as Associate Professor of Systematic Theology at the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C. Fr. White is an expert in Thomistic metaphysics and Christology and is the author of Wisdom in the Face of Modernity: A Study in Thomistic Natural Theology (Sapientia Press, 2009), The Incarnate Lord: A Thomistic Study in Christology (The Catholic University of America Press, 2015), Exodus (Brazos Press, 2016), and The Light of Christ: An Introduction to Catholicism (The Catholic University of America Press, 2017), His newest book, The Trinity: On the Nature and Mystery of the One God, is set to be published March of 2022 through the Catholic University of America Press.
