'The greatest of all God's works': Justification in Catholic Theology – Prof. Matthew Thomas

The Thomistic Institute

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

4.8 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 11 December 2025

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Prof. Matthew Thomas explains why justification—God’s transformative act of making sinners righteous in Christ by grace through faith and incorporation into the Church—is, for Aquinas, greater even than creation, and explores how Catholic teaching on faith, works, and grace can address Reformation-era controversies and open paths toward Protestant–Catholic reconciliation.

This lecture was given on April 6th, 2025, at Stanford University.

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

About the Speakers:

Dr. Matthew J. Thomas is Associate Professor of Biblical Studies and Theology Department Chair at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology in Berkeley, CA. His research areas include Pauline theology, patristics (particularly the ante-Nicene period), and early Christian interpretation of Scripture. His writings include Paul's 'Works of the Law' in the Perspective of Second Century Reception, Christian Theology: An Introduction with Alister McGrath, "Justification" in the St. Andrews Encyclopedia of Theology, and the 1 and 2 Maccabees commentaries in the Ignatius Study Bible with his wife Leeanne.

Keywords: Augustinian Theology Of Grace, Catholic–Protestant Dialogue, C. S. Lewis Mere Christianity, Divine–Human Causality, Justification By Grace Through Faith, Martin Luther On Justification, Primary And Secondary Causality, Union With Christ, Works Of The Law In Paul, Summa Theologiae On Justification

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Tomistic Institute podcast.
0:06.2	Our mission is to promote the Catholic intellectual tradition in the university, the church, and the wider public square.
0:13.1	The lectures on this podcast are organized by university students at Temistic Institute chapters around the world.
0:19.5	To learn more and to attend these events, visit us at
0:22.4	to mystic institute.org. What I'm going to try to do tonight is I'm going to try to keep this as
0:30.2	conversational as possible, because I know that you guys listen to a lot of lectures, and you get to a point, you know, as a student where it's hard
0:40.3	to keep a whole bunch of words in between your brain and be able to hang on to him.
0:45.6	So I'm going to try to talk to you guys as directly as possible.
0:50.4	Part of that means that it's a two-way street.
0:53.4	So if at any point you got a question, you want to interrupt me or you think, ah, that's wrong.
0:57.6	He doesn't know what he's talking about.
0:58.6	By all means, feel free to stop me at any point.
1:03.3	Our lecture for tonight is titled, The Greatest of All God's Works, justification in Catholic theology. The title itself comes from St. Thomas Aquinas,
1:14.9	who when he's talking about justification, he talks about it as the greatest of all God's works.
1:21.6	And he talks about specifically how what's awesome about justification is this is even better than
1:26.6	God's work of creation.
1:27.9	Because God's work in creation, he is creating from nothing, which is pretty impressive.
1:33.0	But in justification, he's taking what is unrighteous.
1:36.4	He's taking what's wrong.
1:38.2	And then somehow, by his grace, making it righteous, making it right again.
1:41.8	Because of this, this is the greatest of all God's work.
1:44.7	So I think it's a great way for us to start and a framework for us to have them thinking about
	...

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