Paper on Aquinas earns Brandon Wanless ACPA Young Scholar's Award

This is coming a little late but better late than never.

This year's winner of the American Catholic Philosophical Association's Young Scholar's award is Brandon Wanless. The award is given to the best paper submitted for the ACPA's annual conference by a scholar 35 years old or younger.

Mr. Wanless's paper is entitled “St. Thomas Aquinas on Original Justice and the Justice of Christ: A Case Study in Christological Soteriology and Catholic Moral Theology.” Here's the abstract from the ACPA conference program:

This paper discusses the theme of “personal justice” in the Summa theologiae, a concept inherited from the Nicomachean Ethics wherein Aristotle says that a man is just toward himself only metaphorically, insofar as the parts of man are appropriately ordered with the higher ruling the lower and the body subjugated to the soul. This paper demonstrates how Aquinas extensively utilizes this concept of metaphorical justice across the tripartite division of the Summa in his accounts of original justice in the prima pars, the humanity of Christ in the tertia pars, and justification of the sinner in the secunda pars. As a response to critiques that Thomistic moral theology is not properly centered in the person of Christ, I will show that, for Aquinas, Christ’s personal justice both fulfills the right ordering of humanity lost through sin and restores that integrity to mankind in the grace of justification—the root of the Christian’s entire moral life.

There are two things worth noting. First, the Young Scholar's Award is a philosophy award and the paper is, as you see, on a theological topic. Second, Mr. Wanless is completing his PhD in theology at Ave Maria University. (Full disclosure: I teach at AMU. But I teach philosophy, not theology.)

But these two things, in a way, shouldn't be surprising. After all, there's an awful lot of philosophy in Aquinas's theology (materially speaking). And there's a significant amount of philosophy in Mr. Wanless's paper (materially speaking). It should also be noted that justice was the theme of this year's conference.

Mr. Wanless received the award last month in San Francisco, where this year's ACPA conference was held. His paper will be published in the next issue of the Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association.

Call for papers: Neo-Thomism in Action

From the Documentation and Research Center for Religion, Culture and Society at the Catholic University of Louvain comes this Call for Papers for an International Workshop entitled: "Neo-Thomism in Action. Law and society reshaped by neo-scholastic philosophy, 1880-1960" to be held October 8-10, 2017 at the Irish College in Louvain (Belgium). Abstracts of maximum 500 words should be submitted by February 1, 2017.

For further information check out the webpage or download the CFP.

Call for papers: Conference on biblical Thomism in Poland

Our distinguished contributor Jörgen Vijgen has informed us of a call for papers for an upcoming conference entitled: "Towards a Biblical Thomism: Thomas Aquinas and the Renewal of a Biblical Theology." The conference will take place April 24-26, 2017 at Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun, Poland. Abstracts of approximately 300 words should be submitted by January 31, 2017 to Piotr Roszak at piotrroszak@umk.pl. It is preferred that papers be in English.

The conference's keynote and other main lectures will be given by Michael Sherwin OP (University of Fribourg, Switzerland), Matthew Levering (Mundelein Seminary, United States), Enrique Alarcon (University of Pamplona, Spain), Giuseppe De Virgilio (Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, Rome), Stefano Zamboni SCJ (Alphonsianum, Rome) and Michele Mazzeo OFM (Antonianum, Rome).

For further information check out the conference blog or download the CFP flyer.

Aquinas on Beauty - in Berkeley

Fran O'Rourke, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy from University College Dublin, will present "Aquinas on Beauty" on Tuesday, Nov. 1, 7:30 pm at the Dominican School of Philosophy & Theology, 2301 Vine Street, Berkeley, California. Visit www.dspt.edu/aquinas-on-beauty for information and to RSVP; seating is limited.

Thomistic Institute on Soundcloud

The Thomistic Institute at the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception (DC) now has many lectures and workshops on Soundcloud.  Check it out here: 

https://soundcloud.com/thomisticinstitute

Upcoming Conference: 52nd International Congress of Medieval Studies

The 52nd International Congress of Medieval Studies will be held at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan, from May 11th to the 14th, 2017.

The Kalamazoo conference is the largest congress for Medieval Studies in the world.  The cost of room and board is quite moderate, and the atmosphere is congenial to those interested in Aquinas.

There will be a total of 6 sessions devoted to Medieval philosophical and theological thought, especially that of Aquinas, sponsored by:

• The Center for Thomistic Studies, c/o S.J. Jensen, Center for Thomistic Studies, University of St. Thomas (TX), 3800 Montrose, Houston, TX77006-4696. FAX: (713) 942-3464. email:  jensensj@stthom.edu. Three sessions will be devoted to any topic about the philosophy of Aquinas, his sources, or contemporary applications of his thought.
• The Thomas Aquinas Society, c/o John F. Boyle, Department of Catholic Studies, 55-S, University of St. Thomas, 2115 Summit Ave, St. Paul, MN 55105.  Fax: (651) 962-5710, email: jfboyle@stthomas.edu. For these three sessions, proposals on any topic dealing with Aquinas are welcome.

Those interested in submitting proposals for papers may send them to either Dr. Steven Jensen or Dr. John Boyle. The submission details:

• Papers are 20 minutes in length
• Paper submissions must include a 300 word abstract and a completed Participant Information Form (which may be downloaded here).
• The Deadline for submissions is September 15, 2016.

Be sure to act quickly if you wish to have your proposal considered!  

New Translation of Lombard's Sentences, Book 1

A new translation by Becket Soule, O.P. of the first book of Peter Lombard's Sentences is now available from Sapientia Press. See below for details. 

New Translation of St. Thomas's Commentary on Job

A new Latin-English facing-page edition of St. Thomas Aquinas's Commentary on the Book of Job, translated by Fr. Brian Mullady, OP, is now available from The Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred Doctrine, Lander, Wyoming.

Free access to the first 43 years of the Revue thomiste

There are a lot of good things that you can access for free at Gallica, a digital text archive of the Bibliothèque National de France. Two years ago I reported that the first 14 volumes of the Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Âge are available there.

A month or so ago I discovered that you can also access all of the volumes of the Revue thomiste from 1893 to 1936 at Gallica. This is incredibly useful. Go here for the complete listing of the available volumes.

While you're there, you might want to spend a little time exploring the rest of Gallica to see what other treasures it yields.

UPDATE: I just realized that there are some gaps in the Revue thomiste volumes at Gallica. Three of those gaps (1915, 1916, 1917) I assume are due to suspension of publication during a part of World War I. I don't know what the explanation is for the other two gaps (1920, 1926). I had originally put "first 39 years" in the title of this post. 39 is the actual number of years that Gallica has volumes for between 1893 and 1936. 43 is simply the number of years between 1893 and 1936. I've decided to go with 43 but with the qualification about the gaps that I mention in this update.