•  106
    Aquinas and the obligations of mercy
    Journal of Religious Ethics 37 (3): 449-471. 2009.
    Contemporary philosophers often construe mercy as a supererogatory notion or a matter of punitive leniency. Yet it is false that no merciful actions are obligatory. Further, it is questionable whether mercy is really about punitive leniency, either exclusively or primarily. As an alternative to these accounts, I consider the view offered by St. Thomas Aquinas. He rejects the claim that we are never obligated to be merciful. Also, his view of mercy is not restricted to legal contexts. For him, me…Read more
  •  43
    Education as Soulcraft: Exemplary Intellectual Practice and the Cardinal Virtues
    Studies in Christian Ethics 23 (3): 249-266. 2010.
    Gilbert Meilaender argues that universities should eschew efforts to improve students’ moral character. I show that Meilaender’s arguments fail to offer any cogent reason for shunning university-based moral education. I then look to Thomas Aquinas in order to explain the connection between moral virtue and the practices common in university life. Using Aquinas as a guide, I argue that exemplary intellectual practice requires virtues that are subsidiary habits of the cardinal moral virtues themse…Read more
  •  37
  •  36
    Achieving a science of sacred doctrine
    Heythrop Journal 47 (1). 2006.
    Aquinas claims that sacred doctrine is a science, or scientia. All scientiae involve demonstrations containing principles which yield conclusions that are necessary and certain. The principles leading to sacred scientia are the articles of faith. Those articles are contained in Scripture and constitute the premises of demonstrations the conclusions of which form sacred doctrine's content. Because of those articles' divine origin, we can expect them to yield conclusions the truth of which is guar…Read more
  •  28
    I argue that there is an important sense in which God’s love is partial or preferential. In developing this argument, I appeal to Thomas Aquinas’s claim that God’s love for persons has the character of friendship. By its nature, friendship exhibits a considerable degree of partiality. For whether a person prefers to be united to another in friendship depends on whether the latter reciprocates the former’s affection and endorses those commitments conducive to fellowship. If God’s love is expressi…Read more
  •  25
    Aquinas on Temperance
    Modern Schoolman 77 (1): 35-48. 1999.
  •  20
    Revelation: From Metaphor to Analogy. By Richard Swinburne (review)
    Modern Schoolman 72 (4): 357-361. 1995.
  •  17
    Substantial Goodness and Nascent Human Life
    HEC Forum 27 (3): 229-248. 2015.
    Many believe that moral value is—at least to some extent—dependent on the developmental states necessary for supporting rational activity. My paper rejects this view, but does not aim simply to register objections to it. Rather, my essay aims to answer the following question: if a human being’s developmental state and occurrent capacities do not bequeath moral standing, what does? The question is intended to prompt careful consideration of what makes human beings objects of moral value, dignity,…Read more
  •  12
    How to Cure Self-Deception: An Augustinian Remedy
    Logos. Anales Del Seminario de Metafísica [Universidad Complutense de Madrid, España] 7 (3). 2004.
  •  11
    "Aquinas’s Philosophical Theology"
    Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2010.
  •  10
    Violence and the Obligations of Charity
    Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 89 263-275. 2015.
    According to one interpretive strand of the Christian moral tradition, charity requires complete renunciation of violence in all its forms. One should not summarily dismiss this view as extreme or unrepresentative of Christian teaching. After all, sacred Scripture urges us to love our neighbors (including our enemies) and repudiate wanton aggression, hatred, and personal reprisals. Yet while charity would have us disavow all varieties of malicious acts and urges, it is not obvious that it forbid…Read more
  •  6
    How to Cure Self-Deception
    Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture 7 (3): 60-86. 2004.
  •  5
    Violence and the Obligations of Charity in advance
    Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association. forthcoming.
  •  1
    The purpose of this dissertation is to examine how Aquinas's conception of the soul influences his moral psychology. Aquinas adheres to the Aristotelian principle that the human soul is the form of the body. Seen this way, human beings are hylomorphic beings--composites of matter and form. The powers characteristic of the human soul I consider include intellect, will, and emotion. These powers are the means by which human beings engage in practical thought and action. Because Aquinas thinks that…Read more