Holy Smoke: 800 years on, why is Aquinas Gen Z’s favourite philosopher?
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The Spectator
4.4 • 785 Ratings
🗓️ 21 September 2025
⏱️ 28 minutes
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Summary
This year marks 800 years since the birth of the theologian St Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas, best known for his theory of natural law and his magnum opus the Summa Theologia, argued for the existence of God through faith-based reason. The influence of the 13th Century theologian on the philosophy of religion is unquestionable, but what is curious is his resurgent popularity amongst Generation Z – particularly in America. Is this part of the recovery of the sacred seen across the global west?
Fr Gregory Pine OP, professor of dogmatic and moral theology at the Dominican House of Studies, joins Damian Thompson to talk about Aquinas’s legacy, unpack some of the philosopher’s more complicated arguments and describe his own personal journey within the Order of Preachers.
Produced by Patrick Gibbons.
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Transcript
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| 0:44.8 | Welcome to Holy Smoke, the Spectator's Religion podcast. I'm Damien Thompson. This year marks the |
| 0:58.2 | 800th anniversary of the birth of arguably the most influential thinker in the history of |
| 1:05.1 | Christianity, St. Thomas Aquinas, a Dominican friar whose monumental synthesis of theology and philosophy has |
| 1:13.3 | done so much to shape the way Catholics and other Christians think about the relationship |
| 1:18.9 | between faith and reason, science and revelation, antiquity and modernity, and such fundamental |
| 1:26.0 | questions as the existence of God. But the author of the mighty |
| 1:30.2 | summer theology remains for many, including me, an intimidating figure. So rich and dense is his |
| 1:37.9 | thought. So today I'm delighted to be joined by Father Gregory Pine, like St. Thomas, a member of the Order of Preachers, |
| 1:46.0 | or Dominicans, and indeed an intellectual and one of the most popular exponents of Aquinas' |
| 1:53.7 | thought on YouTube, where indeed it flourishes. Such is the impact of the modern Dominican |
| 2:00.5 | order in the Catholic Church and the |
| 2:03.5 | renewed popularity of Aquinas' apparently intimidating thinking among many young Catholics. |
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