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12Do Everything for the Glory of GodReligions 9 (12): 754. 2021.St. Paul writes, “whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10: 31 NABRE).” This essay employs the work of St. Thomas Aquinas and the recent philosophical work of Daniel Johnson (2020) on this command to investigate a series of questions that the command raises. What is glory? How does one properly act for glory and for the glory of another? How is it possible to do everything for the glory of God? I begin with Aquinas’ account of glory and the pursuit of glory for God’s…Read more
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25Faith and Virtue Formation: Christian Philosophy in Aid of Becoming Good (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2021.Edited by Adam C. Pelser and W. Scott Cleveland * Includes interdisciplinary essays on underexplored issues in virtue formation * Provides fresh perspectives on neglected virtues including honesty, graciousness, intellectual humility, and accountability * Features profound insights from first-rate Christian philosophers in aid of moral and spiritual formation * Advances philosophical, psychological, and theological understanding of virtue formation by drawing on ancient philosophical/theological…Read more
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“Humility from a Philosophical Point of View”In Everett Worthington, Don E. Davis & Joshua N. Hook (eds.), Handbook of Humility: Theory, Research, and Applications, Routledge. 2016.
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32A Marriage of Faith and Reason: One Couple’s Journey to the Catholic ChurchIn Brian Besong & Jonathan Fuqua (eds.), Faith and Reason: Philosophers Explain Their Turn to Catholicism, Ignatius Press. pp. 205-242. 2019.
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30The Virtual Presence of Acquired Virtues in the ChristianAmerican Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 93 (1): 75-100. 2019.Aquinas’s doctrine that infused virtues accompany sanctifying grace raises many questions. We examine one: how do the infused virtues relate to the acquired virtues? More precisely, can the person with the infused virtues possess the acquired virtues? We argue for an answer consistent with and informed by Aquinas’s writings, although it goes beyond textual evidence, as any answer to this question must. There are two plausible, standard interpretations of Aquinas on this issue: the coexistence vi…Read more
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10Aquinas and the Nicomachean Ethics, edited by Hoffman, Tobias, Jörn Müller, and Matthias Perkams (review)Journal of Moral Philosophy 14 (6): 773-776. 2017.
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190The Problem of EvilOxford Bibliographies. 2014.This is a reference guide to contemporary work on the problem of evil with Oxford Bibliographies Online.
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453The Distinctiveness of Intellectual Virtues: A Response to Roberts and WoodProceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 86 159-169. 2012.Robert Roberts and Jay Wood criticize St Thomas Aquinas’ distinction between intellectual and moral virtues. They offer three objections to this distinction. They object that intellectual virtues depend on the will in ways that undermine the distinction, that the subject of intellectual virtues is not an intellectual faculty but a whole person, and that some intellectual virtues require that the will act intellectually. They hold that each of these is sufficient to undermine the distinction. I d…Read more
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807The defeat of heartbreak: problems and solutions for Stump's view of the problem of evil concerning desires of the heartReligious Studies 52 (1): 1-23. 2016.Eleonore Stump insightfully develops Aquinas’s theodicy to account for a significant source of human suffering, namely the undermining of desires of the heart. Stump argues that what justifies God in allowing such suffering are benefits made available to the sufferer through her suffering that can defeat the suffering by contributing to the fulfillment of her heart’s desires. We summarize Stump’s arguments for why such suffering requires defeat and how it is defeated. We identify three problems …Read more
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65The Emotions of Courageous ActivityRes Philosophica 92 (4): 855-882. 2015.An apparent paradox concerning courageous activity is that it seems to require both fear and fearlessness – on the one hand, mastering one’s fear, and, on the other, eliminating fear. I resolve the paradox by isolating three phases of courageous activity: the initial response to the situation, the choice of courageous action, and the execution of courageous action. I argue that there is an emotion that is proper to each of these phases and that each emotion positively contributes to the performa…Read more
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University of MaryAssociate Professor
Areas of Specialization
Moral Psychology |
Moral Character |
Moral Emotion |
Philosophy of Religion |