Augustine and Aquinas Against Skepticism – Prof. Chad Pecknold

The Thomistic Institute

Catholic Intellectual Tradition, Catholic, Thomism, Society & Culture, Religion & Spirituality, Catholicism, Philosophy, Christianity

4.8 • 873 Ratings

🗓️ 16 January 2026

⏱️ 51 minutes

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Summary

Prof. Chad Pecknold explains how Augustine and Aquinas argue against skepticism, defending metaphysical realism and the mind’s capacity to know truth as essential for genuine morality and for leading people to Christ, who is Truth itself.

This lecture was given on October 23rd, 2025, at Franciscan University of Steubenville.

For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.

About the Speakers:

Dr. Chad C. Pecknold earned his PhD in Systematic Theology at the University of Cambridge in England. He is a Catholic theologian and for the last 16 years he has been a professor of theology at The Catholic University of America in Washington DC, teaching in the areas of fundamental theology, Christian anthropology and political theology. Since 2022, he has been named by The Catholic Herald as one of the most influential Catholic thought leaders and authors in the United States.

An internationally recognized scholar of Augustine’s theological and political thought, Pecknold has authored or edited five books — including Christianity and Politics: A Brief Guide to the History and The T&T Clark Companion to Augustine and Modern Theology —and authored dozens of peer-reviewed journal articles. He edits the Sacra Doctrina series for CUA Press with Fr. Thomas Joseph White O.P. He has served the public by educating thousands of students at the Institute of Catholic Culture, and also through his many columns at First Things, National Review, Wall Street Journal, New York Post, and The Catholic Herald. He has been an invited guest on NPR's "All Things Considered," Fox News, ABC News, and has been a frequent guest on EWTN News Nightly, World Over Live with Raymond Arroyo, and various other EWTN programs, such as the celebrated series on Heresies.

Pecknold has also led institutions, serving as Chair of the American Academy of Catholic Theology from 2015-2020, expanding and professionalizing a guild of theologians faithful to the Magisterium. He also serves in non-profit board leadership as Board Director for Americans United for Life, Board Member for Pro-Life Partners, Board Member for the Classical Learning Test, Fellow of the Institute for Human Ecology, and as Resident Theologian at the Institute for Faith and Public Culture at the Basilica of Saint Mary — the oldest Catholic Church in the Commonwealth of Virginia. While currently finishing a short book on the Catholic understanding of Augustine’s Confessions, Pecknold continues to work on a long term project on Augustine’s City of God and the Christian order of things.

He and his wife Dr. Sara Pecknold (who teaches Music History at Christendom College) have five children, including adorably identical twin toddler girls whose names they frequently confuse!

Keywords: Augustine, Aquinas, Conformity of Mind to Reality, Human Desire for Truth, Metaphysical Realism, Obstacles to Faith, Radical Doubt, Skepticism, Thomistic Account of Truth, Trust

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Tumistic Institute podcast. Our mission is to promote the Catholic intellectual tradition in the university, the church, and the wider public square. The lectures on this podcast are organized by university students at Tumistic Institute chapters around the world. To learn more and to attend these events, visit us at
0:21.6	to mystic institute.org. It's no secret that we live in an age in which people are skeptical.
0:31.5	People are skeptical of God. People are skeptical about who they are. They're skeptical about whether or not we can
0:42.5	trust our senses. Whether or not we can tell whether a baby is a boy or a girl. Whether or not
0:52.7	a family is between a man and a woman and their progeny,
0:58.4	we're skeptical about whether or not we can trust what we see on the internet.
1:05.0	Perhaps it's AI.
1:07.0	Perhaps it's produced by something that isn't even human.
1:12.9	Skepticism is something which is sort of rife in our materialist secularizing world.
1:21.0	And most fundamentally, we live in a culture that's skeptical about God.
1:28.6	Charles Taylor, in his book, A Secular Age, announced the question,
1:36.3	why was it in the year 1500?
1:39.5	It was hard not to believe in God,
1:42.3	when in the year 2010 or whenever he was writing, it's difficult
1:49.0	to believe in God. Why has that 500-year span of time created a kind of skepticism in which
1:57.0	we are detached from reality.
2:09.6	Well, I propose that skepticism is a very ancient problem and not a new problem. Skepticism is also on some level a religious problem.
2:15.6	Skepticism is a problem which arises when you do not know who God is.
2:26.4	Skepticism is a problem which arises when you do not know what is the cause for the things
2:33.8	that you have contact with.
2:36.9	When you're detached from God, well, then what do you think everything comes from?
2:44.1	Something like chance?
	...

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