St. Thomas Aquinas On Divinisation | Fr. Andrew Hofer, OP

The Thomistic Institute

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

4.8 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 7 February 2020

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This lecture was given at the University of Oxford on 21 November 2019.

The Hand Out for this lecture can be accessed here: tinyurl.com/r5t948s

Fr. Andrew Hofer, O.P., grew up as the youngest of ten children on a farm in Kansas, and studied history, philosophy, and classics at Benedictine College. He then went to St Andrews, Scotland for a Master of Letters in medieval history. He entered the Order of Preachers as a son of the Province of St. Joseph, and was ordained a priest in 2002. After finishing his S.T.L. and serving as an associate pastor for a brief time, he was sent to Kenya as a missionary for two years. He taught at the Tangaza College of The Catholic University of Eastern Africa and other institutions in Nairobi. He returned to the U.S. and completed the Ph.D. in theology at the University of Notre Dame, with the primary area of history of Christianity (specializing in patristic theology with additional studies in medieval theology) and the secondary area of systematic theology. His research appears in such journals as Vigiliae Christianae, Augustinianum, International Journal of Systematic Theology, New Blackfriars, Nova et Vetera, Pro Ecclesia, The Thomist, Communio, and Angelicum and in books published by Catholic University America Press and Ignatius Press. He is the author of Christ in the Life and Teaching of Gregory of Nazianzus (Oxford Early Christian Studies), Oxford University Press, 2013, and the editor of Divinization: Becoming Icons of Christ through the Liturgy, Hillenbrand Books, 2015.

For more information on this and other events go to thomisticinstitute.org/events-1

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	So all sorts of people desire to have a different kind of life. Christians propose that Jesus Christ
0:06.7	offers the grace to have a life very different from what we have at birth. St. Thomas Aquinas, following
0:12.5	scripture and witnesses in the Christian tradition, uses deification language to describe this
0:17.8	different kind of life. For example, Aquinas says, the gift of grace
0:22.6	surpasses every capability of created nature since it is nothing short of partaking of the divine
0:28.5	nature which exceeds every other nature. He also says, the good of grace in one is more than the good
0:35.5	of nature in the whole universe.
0:42.2	Do non-Christians realize that the Christian invitation is that radical?
0:43.8	Do Christians?
0:49.2	This talk explores what deification means for Aquinas and what it can mean for us.
0:54.1	First, we'll look at the contemporary significance of the claim of deification with recent literature.
0:55.0	Then we will consider St. Thomas on deification in three steps.
0:59.0	First we go to God, so the Trinity and incarnation.
1:03.0	Then we look at the grace of the Holy Spirit and the Church's communion.
1:07.0	And then finally, that creatures worship God in loving union forever.
1:11.9	So the first is this preliminary context, the claim of deification in recent literature.
1:17.5	Father Simon Gain here at Blackfires introduces his chapter on Aristotle's philosophy
1:22.8	and Aquinas' theology of grace in this way.
1:26.5	Recent accounts of Aquinas' doctrine of grace have been principally shaped by the recent
1:31.3	realization of the importance to him of 2. Peter 1.4, partakers of the divine nature,
1:37.5	together with his appropriation of the father's teaching on deification and the platonic
1:41.9	notion of participation. Father Gain continues with a list of other
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Thomistic Institute, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The Thomistic Institute and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.