Memorial Symposium for Fr. Lawrence Dewan, O.P. (November 5-7, 2015, Ottawa, Ontario)

Dominican University College has issued a call for papers for an upcoming memorial symposium for Fr. Lawrence Dewan, O. P.:

"The Philosophy of Lawrence Dewan: Metaphysics and Ethics. Professor Lawrence Dewan, O.P., enriched the areas of Thomistic metaphysics, natural philosophy and ethics for over forty years. With the outstanding lucidity, depth and comprehensiveness of his work, Father Dewan’s research has become a point of reference for scholars working on various aspects of the legacy of Thomas Aquinas. The specific theme of the Metaphysics and Ethics symposium is intended in part to elicit thinking on the personal contribution of Father Lawrence Dewan to both areas of philosophical research."

On a related note, a memorial notice for Fr. Dewan written by Steven Baldner was just published in The Review of Metaphysics.

CTSA Proceedings 1946-2014 available online

The Proceedings of the Catholic Theological Society of America are available online (for free). You can find them here. The Proceedings archive spans from the foundation of the CTSA in 1946 to the present. As of this posting, the latest available Proceedings are from 2014. You can read the papers online or download them as PDF files.

Deification According to Thomas Aquinas: A New Book From Sapientia Press

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Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University has just published a new volume in its "Faith and Reason" series. The book, The Glory of God's Grace: Deification According to St. Thomas Aquinas, by Dr. Daria Spezzano of Providence College, treats the intelligibility of "the radical claim that God creates human beings with the possibility of sharing, as God's adopted children, in the divine life" (1). The work includes seven chapters, two appendices—that is, 390 pages of Prof. Spezzano's  erudite scholarship and contemplative appreciation for St. Thomas's rich theology of deification.

From the back cover:

The Glory of God's Grace offers the first full-length comprehensive study of Thomas's teaching on deification in its scriptural, patristic, philosophical, developmental, and systematic context. Daria Spezzano traces Thomas's theology of deification throughout the Summa, exploring in depth how the notion of deification links his treatments of the divine missions and image, the journey to beatitude through the moral life, adopted sonship through Christ and his sacraments, and the deiform worship of the beatific vision. Also examined are Thomas's other works, in particular his Scripture commentaries, as well as the evolution of his thought. Spezzano argues that Thomas's theology of deification in the Summa theologiae demonstrates his mature vision of God's loving and sapiential ordering of predestined human persons to communion with himself by a progressive participation in the divine likeness and activity, accounting for both the primacy of divine causality in all its modes and the fullness of graced human freedom. The fruit of this theology is ultimately doxological: the deification of adopted sons gives praise to God's glory by fully manifesting God's gracious plan to share the divine life with rational creatures.

Plagiarism

Corrections of the scholarly record are necessary for maintaining the integrity of the repository of published works. Previous postings have noted retractions issued by publishers for a case of serial plagiarism involving Thomistic studies (here and here).

Retractions for a new, unrelated case of serial plagiarism have recently been issued for articles dealing with late Scholastic economic thought. These articles have appeared under the name Francisco Gómez Camacho S. J. The first retraction for a plagiarized article is found in the latest issue of Journal of Markets and Morality 17.2 (2014): 349–352. Titled “Plagiarism in a Digital Age,” the retraction states:

a number of direct, substantial, and nearly verbatim sections were found that corresponded with places in Marjorie Grice-Hutchinson’s magisterial work, The School of Salamanca [...] without attribution or other normal means of signaling to the reader that the words on the page are not original to the author of record.

The second retraction for a plagiarized book chapter appears on the website of the publisher Brill. The retraction notes that this chapter is:

retracted because of serious citation problems (in some cases the original sources are not mentioned at all). It goes without saying that Brill strongly disapproves of such practices, which represent a serious breach of publication integrity.

This now-retracted chapter, which covers such figures as the Dominicans Francisco de Vitoria and Domingo de Soto, has been frequently cited in discussions of scholastic economic thought. For a third case of plagiarism, the publisher Rowman and Littlefield has suspended sales of the volume containing a chapter that is nearly identical to abovementioned article retracted for plagiarism by Journal of Markets and Morality. (The publisher has not, however, corrected the scholarly record by issuing a statement of retraction for this chapter.) 

The three abovementioned works are: 

• Francisco Gómez Camacho, “Introduction: Luis de Molina, S. J.: Life, Studies, and Teaching,” Journal of Markets & Morality 8.1 (2005): 167–198.

• Francisco Gómez Camacho S. J., “Later Scholastics: Spanish Economic Thought in the XVIth and XVIIth Centuries,” in Ancient and Medieval Economic Ideas and Concepts of Social Justice, ed. S. Todd Lowry and Barry Gordon (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 503–561.

• Francisco Gómez Camacho S. J., “Introduction: Luis de Molina, S.J.: Life, Studies, and Teaching,” in Sourcebook in Late-Scholastic Monetary Theory, ed. Stephen J. Grabill (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books / Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), 111–135.

Roger Nutt's translation of the De unione verbi Incarnati

Roger Nutt has just published a translation of Aquinas's De unione Verbi incarnati with Peeters. The volume is part of the Dallas Medieval Texts and Translations series that Peeters publishes. Dr. Nutt is a professor of theology at Ave Maria University and the editor of Thomistica.net. Here is the blurb from the Peeters' site:

This volume contains the first publication in book form of an English translation of Thomas Aquinas’s controversial disputed question De unione Verbi incarnati. This disputed question is a remarkable portal into the Angelic Doctor’s theology of the hypostatic union, which is recognized as an area in which Aquinas forged some of his most original and penetrating articulations of the Christian faith. In the De unione Verbi incarnati Aquinas presents in five articles material that occupies more than eighteen questions in the third part of the Summa theologiae. The attribution of an esse secundarium to Christ, in the fourth article of the De unione, has been the object of intense debate, for it seems to contradict the account of the Summa.

In addition to Professor Nutt’s English translation, the volume includes the critical Latin text published by Barbara Bartocci, Klaus Obenauer, and Walter Senner, as well as a substantial introduction. Professor Nutt’s introduction carefully unfolds the historical background, technical concepts, sources, and speculative claims needed for understanding the breadth of the biblical and metaphysical contemplation represented in this work; it also includes a detailed exploration of the debate over the fourth article.

Here is the book's page at the Peeters site and here is its page at Amazon.

Bilingual (Latin/English) Hardcover Editions of Aquinas -- Update

As many readers will already know, The Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred Doctrine, headquartered in lovely Lander, Wyoming, still nurtures the ambition -- with the help of Divine Providence and the support of Thomists (and other people who still read books) -- of publishing the Complete Works of the Angelic Doctor in a uniform, hardcover, bilingual edition. Lest this sound like an absurd prospect, it seemed a good time to issue a reminder of the volumes already produced (and ALWAYS in print!) as well as volumes currently in production or in the final stages of editing.

IN PRINT:
vol. 13 -- Summa theologiae, Prima Pars, qq. 1-49
vol. 14 -- Summa theologiae, Prima Pars, qq. 50-119
vol. 15 -- Summa theologiae, Prima Secundae, qq. 1-70
vol. 16 -- Summa theologiae, Prima Secundae, qq. 71-114
vol. 17 -- Summa theologiae, Secunda Secundae, qq. 1-91
vol. 18 -- Summa theologiae, Secunda Secundae, qq. 92-189
vol. 19 -- Summa theologiae, Tertia Pars, qq. 1-59
vol. 20 -- Summa theologiae, Tertia Pars, qq. 60-90
vol. 33 -- Commentary on Matthew 1-12
vol. 34 -- Commentary on Matthew 13-28
vol. 35 -- Commentary on John 1-8
vol. 36 -- Commentary on John 9-21
vol. 37 -- Commentary on Romans
vol. 38 -- Commentary on 1 & 2 Corinthians
vol. 39 -- Commentary on Galatians & Ephesians
vol. 40 -- Commentary on Phil, Col, 1-2 Thess, 1-2 Tim, Titus, Philemon
vol. 41 -- Commentary on Hebrews

(These volumes are available at Amazon either singly or as sets: the Summa theologiae; the Matthew & John; the Pauline letters.)

IN THE WORKS:
vol. 7 -- Commentary on the Sentences IV, dd. 1-13
vol. 8 -- Commentary on the Sentences IV, dd. 14-25
vol. 9 -- Commentary on the Sentences IV, dd. 26-42
vol. 10 -- Commentary on the Sentences IV, dd. 43-50
vol. 11 -- Summa contra gentiles I-II
vol. 12 -- Summa contra gentiles III-IV
vol. 21 -- Supplement to the Summa theologiae (part 1)
vol. 22 -- Supplement to the Summa theologiae (part 2)
vol. 32 -- Commentary on Job

Of these, the one closest to completion is the Job commentary, which we are very excited about. To anticipate some other likely questions:

(1) We have a three-year grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to complete a translation of Book IV of Aquinas's Sentences commentary, with introduction and notes. This project is humming along nicely, and, unsurprisingly, dovetails nicely with the edition of the Summa Supplement that we will be rolling out, for those who want to be able to refer to the latter. It will soon be possible to consult easily the original setting from which all the text of the Supplement was lifted almost verbatim, namely, Super IV Sententiarum, which will include a clear chart of the correspondences between the two works.

(2) We do intend to move ahead into Books I, II, and III of the Sentences commentary, as we wrap up Book IV and as more funding becomes available. Indeed, translators are already at work on the translations, but it's a massive project, as anyone who has ever spent time with the Sentences commentary knows.

(3) The Aristotelian commentaries are on the backburner, but we intend to bring those forward as soon as we get some other volumes launched.

(4) Lastly, we print our books in fairly small batches so that we can keep our immediate costs down and, at the same time, make corrections of typos or mistranslations that we discover or others bring to our attention. (Our translations have mostly been obtained from public domain sources and, as readers of the familiar English Dominican edition are aware, these translations are not free of all flaws.) Our goal is to improve these books with persistence so that they will remain not only the most attractive and convenient editions but will become the most accurate and authoritative.

We do rely on people like you buying these books, spreading knowledge of them, recommending them to professors or scholars, ordering them for courses or bookshops, and, in general, helping us to stay in business so that we can continue the publishing project for many, many years to come. Thanks and God Bless!

ACPQ Rising Scholar Contest - $3000

The ACPQ is holding its Rising Scholar Contest again:

“The American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly (ACPQ) is pleased to announce its third annual Rising Scholar Essay Contest. Any scholar who will not have attained the rank of associate professor by September 1, 2015, is invited to submit a paper that contributes to the development or elucidation of the Catholic philosophical tradition. The winning essay will be published in the ACPQ and specially designated in the journal as winner of the contest.

The author of a single-authored winning paper will receive a $3000 award and a free one-year membership in the American Catholic Philosophical Association (ACPA). Each co-author of a co-authored winning paper will receive a share, equal to that of the other co-author(s), of a $3000 award, together with a free one-year membership for in the ACPA. All co-authors of the winning paper must be below the rank of associate professor at the time of the submission deadline, September 1, 2015. Author(s) need not be members of the American Catholic Philosophical Association. ”

Saint Thomas & Eschatology in Toulouse

A symposium, “Saint Thomas et l’Eschatologie,” sponsored by the Revue Thomiste and the Institut Saint-Thomas d’Aquin in Toulouse, France, will take place April 24-25, 2015. The event will feature over a dozen presenters (full disclosure: including moi) from institutions of higher learning in France, the United States, Belgium, Italy, and Israel.

Albertus Magnus Summer Course Registration

All lovers of St. Thomas, his theological school and method, and his way of life should take note of this wonderful (and pretty affordable -- 675 Euro, ca. $728) summer opportunity based in Norcia, Italy, home of the Benedictine monks who sing beautifully and make a killer beer.

The 2015 Albert the Great Summer Program will take place this summer from July 12th-25th. The theme for the 2015 Summer Program is St. Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians. We will be undertaking a thorough reading of the Letter, following St. Thomas's commentary upon the epistle as our guide. The Epistle offers the opportunity to explore in depth the subject of grace as it is found principally in the sacraments. In particular, St. Paul's letter focusses on the sacraments of Baptism, Matrimony, and the Eucharist, and so participants will gain a greater understanding not only of these sacraments, but also an understanding of how grace works through the sacraments so as to order man to his end.

Calendar and Schedule

May 16. Deadline for applications for 2015 Summer Program. 200 Euro deposit due upon acceptance.

June 1. Deadline for remainder of payment for 2015 Summer Program.

July 12. Sun. Arrival Day.
July 13. Mon. Normal Program Schedule.
July 14. Tues. Normal Program Schedule.
July 15. Wed. Normal Program Schedule.
July 16. Thur. Optional Excursion (Location to be announced).
July 17. Fri. Normal Program Schedule.
July 18. Sat. Normal Program Schedule.
July 19. Sun. Optional Excursion to Cascia.

July 20. Mon. Normal Program Schedule.
July 21. Tues. Normal Program Schedule.
July 22. Wed. Modified Program Schedule.
July 23. Thur. Modified Program Schedule.
July 24. Fri. Optional Excursion to Rome.
July 25. Sat. Optional Excursion to Rome.
July 26. Sun. Departure Day.

Normal Program Schedule

06:00-06:45. Lauds.
07:00-08:15. Breakfast.
08:30-09:45. Seminar 1.
10:00-11:00. Holy Mass.
11:30-12:30. Lecture.
12:45-14:15. Lunch.
14:30-15:45. Seminar 2.
16:00-17:15. Open for reading, etc.
17:30-18:15. Vespers.
18:30-19:30. Dinner.
19:45-20:00. Compline.

For more detailed information, visit http://www.albertusmagnuscss.org/p/summer-program-2015.html.

Aquinas, metaphysics, and morals at NYU

The Thomistic Institute of the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception is sponsoring a conference entitled "Aquinas on Metaphysics and Morals" at the Catholic Center of New York University on April 18. Papers will be given by Reinhard Hütter, John O'Callaghan, Eleonore Stump, and Candace Vogler. You can find more information here.

December 2015 conference in Utrecht: call for papers

In from Harm Goris is news of a December, 2015 conference in Utrecht on "The Virtuous Life: Thomas Aquinas on the theological nature of moral virtues." The conference takes place from 16–19 December 2015, and abstract submissions are due by June 1, 2015. Here's a short scrape from the conference's site:

The teachings of the moral part of Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae continue to inspire and to enlighten theologians and ethicists. Especially for those who are interested in a specifically Christian account of human moral and spiritual life, Aquinas’ ethical investigations in the Summa are an inexhaustible source. In his rich and detailed treatment of both the moral and the theological virtues, however, Aquinas fails to explain unambiguously to what extent the Christian faith determines human moral life. As a result, this topic is the subject of an ongoing debate in the literature.

For more information on this excellent opportunity, go to the conference's website.

The Critical Leonine Edition of Aquinas's Sermonesis Now Complete!

On March 20th, 2015, the Leonine Commission will celebrate the release of the next critical edition of Aquinas's opera omnia. The celebration will take the form of a day-long conference in Rome which will include presentations by members of the Commission who participated in the preparation of the volume. For more information click here.