Thomism
Thomism is the philosophical and theological school that arose from the work and thought of Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), the Dominican philosopher, theologian, and Doctor of the Church. In its broadest sense, Thomism denotes any system that follows Aquinas in philosophy and theology; in a narrower sense, it refers to the specific set of opinions held by the "Thomistic School," principally among Dominican writers, that have been contested by other thinkers who nonetheless profess to follow Aquinas. The Second Vatican Council described Aquinas's system as the "perennial philosophy," and Pope John Paul II called Thomas "a master of thought and a model of the right way to do theology."
Aquinas's philosophy is characterized by a distinctive set of metaphysical doctrines: the real distinction between essence and existence (the actus essendi), act and potency as the fundamental principles of change, the four causes, and the analogy of being. In theology, his Summa Theologiae remains one of the most influential documents in medieval theology and continues to be a central point of reference for Catholic thought. The "Five Ways" (quinque viae) are his classical a posteriori arguments for the existence of God, grounded in sensory experience.
The history of Thomism spans more than seven centuries, evolving through several distinct periods. After Aquinas's death, his ideas faced opposition from the Condemnations of 1277 but were vindicated by his canonization in 1323 and the Council of Vienne (1311–1312). The Dominican Order adopted his teaching as its own, and by the mid-14th century the Summa Theologiae had supplanted Peter Lombard's Sentences as the standard theology textbook. The School of Salamanca in the 16th century developed Thomistic thought in new directions, making foundational contributions to international law, just war theory, and economic thought.
After a period of decline in the 18th century, Thomism experienced a major revival following Pope Leo XIII's encyclical Aeterni Patris (1879), which mandated the restoration of scholastic philosophy in Catholic education. This Neo-Thomist revival flourished for nearly a century, producing major figures such as Jacques Maritain, Étienne Gilson, and Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange. The Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) marked a turning point, leading to Thomism's loss of its exclusive status in Catholic intellectual life. The 21st century has seen a notable resurgence of interest, with diverse schools including Ressourcement Thomism, Analytical Thomism, and renewed engagement with Aquinas's metaphysics.
2026 Developments
The year 2026 marked the culmination of the trilogy of Thomistic anniversaries—700 years since canonization, 750 years since death, and 800 years since birth—with a major international conference titled "Thomas Aquinas as Philosopher" held at the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei in Rome.[^c1] The Nova et Vetera Winter 2026 issue featured a symposium for the 700th anniversary of Aquinas's canonization with contributions from Gilles Emery, Thomas Joseph White, and others.[^c5] The centenary of the death of Cardinal Désiré-Joseph Mercier (January 23, 1926) was observed with a comprehensive retrospective of his role in the Neo-Thomist revival, his wartime resistance, and his Mariological campaigns.[^c15] Alasdair MacIntyre, whose After Virtue (1981) reintroduced virtue ethics as a viable alternative to Kantian and utilitarian moral philosophy, died in 2025 aged 96.[^c53] The contemporary rediscovery of Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange continued to gain momentum with a new English translation of his 1934 work The Sense of Mystery.[^c54]
The same year saw the publication of the T&T Clark Handbook of Biblical Thomism, the first systematic presentation of Aquinas's biblical hermeneutics,[^c2] and the Cambridge University Press volume Thomism Revisited, examining the tradition's relevance to contemporary philosophy, theology, and political theory.[^c3] Matthew Levering's Reconfiguring Thomistic Christology (paperback edition 2026) reintegrated biblical typology with metaphysical Christology, and Rik Van Nieuwenhove's Providence, Evil and Salvation (November 2026) addressed providence and original sin from a Thomist perspective. Peng Yin's Persisting in the Good brought Thomistic ethics into dialogue with early Chinese thought.[^c8] Kevin E. O'Reilly, OP, argued in Thomas Aquinas's Cruciform Theology of the Natural Law that Aquinas's natural law account is thoroughly theological in inspiration, challenging the predominantly philosophical reading of the tradition.[^c26] Kevin White's Thomistic Considerations explored perennial themes through Aquinas, Aristotle, Augustine, Dante, and Eliot, while Leslie J. Kelley's A Thomistic Introduction to Modern Psychology applied Thomistic anthropology as a framework for integrating modern empirical psychological research.[^c9][^c10] Peter Furlong's Aquinas on Moral Responsibility (University of Notre Dame Press, 2026) presented the first systematic study of Aquinas's account of moral responsibility, defending an incompatibilist reading and examining the roles of ignorance, character, luck, and passions.[^c22]
The Routledge volume Aquinas, Natural Law, and Social Ontology, edited by Ana Marta González, bridged Aquinas's natural law doctrine with contemporary social theory through eighteen chapters by scholars including Robert Barron, Gyula Klima, Hans Joas, Vittorio Hösle, Jean Porter, and Jeffrey D. Sachs, spanning social ontology, economics, law, and political theory.[^c31] The originating workshop of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences issued a final statement identifying four converging aspects between Aquinas's thought and contemporary social science — the sacredness of the human person, the intentional structure of human actions, the ontological status of relationships, and natural law as a contribution to moral universalism.[^c50] Dominic Legge, O.P., Ambrose Little, O.P., and Andrew Hofer, O.P., edited Thomas Aquinas Today: Still the Common Doctor? (CUA Press, September 2026), whose fifteen essays assessed Aquinas's abiding authority across philosophy and theology.[^c32]
A growing body of scholarship in 2026 addressed Aquinas and disability from multiple angles. Catherine Peters's "Aquinas and Disability" chapter in Thomism Revisited proposed a Thomistic model of disability grounded in Aquinas's anthropology, aiming to incorporate insights from prevailing medical, social, and identity models.[^c28] Richard Cross's foundational 2017 study of Aquinas's taxonomy of bodily defects as punishments for original sin received renewed attention as background to these debates.[^c29] Niamh Eilis White, whose 2023 article "Heavenly Bodies and Earthly Identities" critically examined Aquinas's hylomorphism from a disability perspective,[^c40] developed a systematic disability Christology using Aquinas alongside Jürgen Moltmann, arguing that a non-competitive Thomistic understanding of Christ's two natures avoids curative logic toward disability. Philip Diaz-Lewis, writing in New Blackfriars, developed a Thomistic route to affirming the goodness of physical deformity as an aid to abstraction through David Oderberg's framework of "goodness by approximation."[^c19] Miguel J. Romero's 2024 Thomist article on Aquinas on disability, deification, and beatitude provided the eschatological framework for these discussions.
The Angelicum Thomistic Institute Project for Science and Religion hosted an "Artificial Intelligence: A Tool for Virtue?" conference on March 5–6, 2026, applying Aristotelian-Thomistic virtue ethics to AI.[^c4] Dominican scholars engaged directly with Anthropic's claims about Claude as a virtuous agent: Fr. Alejandro Crosthwaite, O.P., argued that "virtue is not correct output" but "right reason embodied in a self-determining agent,"[^c41] while the Vatican AI representative Fr. Jean Gové acknowledged that while Claude could not be recognized as truly virtuous under Thomistic criteria, it might serve as "a safer tool" with proper governance.[^c43] The conference also featured Dr. Angela Knobel warning that AI could displace human moral formation and Sr. Catherine Droste, O.P., raising concerns about technology's "zombie effect" on human connection. The conference came after the Vatican's 2025 document "Antiqua et Nova" on AI.[^c42] The institute's 2026 programming also included a "Divine Action" online series engaging Aquinas's metaphysics of providence, a seminar on "The Transcendentals: Testing and Contesting a Perennial Theme" in Regensburg, a summer seminar on Asian philosophy and scholasticism, and a student seminar on "Goodness and God." The special issue "Aquinas and the Sciences" published by Religions formally defined "Science-Engaged Thomism" (SETh) as a research program in which the sciences serve as a source of theological and philosophical knowledge — a locus theologicus — demonstrating the tradition's capacity for fruitful dialogue with contemporary science.[^c6][^c23] A further study by Martinho Moura argued that human knowledge surpasses the capacity of any machine, and that even in its most advanced forms AI cannot comprehend essences, reflect on universals, or experience self-awareness.[^c45] The Veritas 2026 conference on "Study and Sanctity" assembled campus chapter leaders for three days of theology, philosophy, and fellowship at the Dominican House of Studies.[^c12]
The Dominican House of Studies launched a new PhD in Theology (Thomistic Studies) program beginning in fall 2026, offering specializations in dogmatic or moral theology with Thomistic Institute doctoral fellowships providing full tuition waivers and stipends.[^c20] An inaugural ecumenical Thomistic conference, Aquinas KC, was announced for October 2026 at Donnelly College in Kansas City, co-sponsored by the Dominican House of Studies and aimed at gathering Catholics and Protestants around Aquinas for a "fresh ecumenism" addressing societal division.[^c21] The Oxford Aquinas Summer Seminar (June 1–4, 2026), led by Thomas Joseph White, Bruce Marshall, and Daniel Gordon, focused on Aquinas's Trinitarian theology at Blackfriars Hall. A conference on "Theology After Fergus Kerr" at Blackfriars Oxford in July 2026 assessed the legacy of the Scottish Dominican theologian who died in November 2025.[^c7] The Jacques Maritain Center at the University of Notre Dame launched an "Aquinas at 800" series gathering scholars to promote fruitful interchange on the importance of Aquinas in the world today,[^c48] and an international round table on "Thomas Aquinas and Thomism: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow" was held at the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv in December 2025,[^c51] drawing interest from Ukrainian, French, and Polish researchers.[^c47]
Scholarly production included significant interventions in Thomistic metaphysics, moral theology, and natural law. A substantial essay delivered in Oxford examined the concept of ens morale — the distinctive metaphysical status of a moral act — defending the mature Thomist position that it consists in a real transcendental relation of conformity to right practical reason.[^c11] Aimeric Jardin, writing in Revue Thomiste, examined Aquinas's distinction between medium rationis and medium rei in the virtue of justice, showing that the real (rather than rational) mean of justice explains why one can act justly without being just — a specificity unique to justice among the virtues.[^c36] C.F.J. Martin, writing in New Blackfriars, identified two forms of existential proposition — one favoured by analytical philosophers, one by Thomists — and argued that both were recognized and used by Thomas Aquinas.[^c46] Gerald P. Boersma, in Modern Theology, traced Aquinas's use of divinus instinctus as the principal term for the movement of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, arguing that Aquinas radically transformed Aristotle's deterministic concept into an account of grace that elevates rather than undermines human freedom.[^c33] Raymund Snyder, O.P., writing in The Thomist, showed how Aquinas implicitly used Proclus's Elements of Theology in his late work De substantiis separatis to harmonize Plato and Aristotle.[^c37] Stewart Clem examined the Decalogue as an expression of natural law in Aquinas, arguing that the Ten Commandments function as a covenantal charter rather than being simply identical to natural law.[^c38] Melanie Susan Barrett explored the moral meaning of suffering in Aquinas's theology, arguing that suffering can function medicinally within providence, oriented toward personal moral improvement.[^c39]
Brett W. Smith, in The Thomist (July 2026), addressed the longstanding puzzle of how the command to love God can be a self-evident first principle of natural law when God's existence is not self-evident in this life, building on the work of Lawrence Dewan and Randall Smith.[^c35] John M. Meinert, also in The Thomist, argued that Aquinas's virtue ethics can incorporate ecological virtues through the mechanism of the partes virtutum without altering fundamental principles, extending "Green Thomism" from metaphysics into moral theology.[^c34] The movement's foundational text is Christopher J. Thompson's The Joyful Mystery (2017), which coined "Green Thomism" as a contemplative ecology rooted in Thomistic thought.[^c49] The term itself predates Pope Francis's encyclical Laudato Si' (2015): it entered circulation in 2011, when Thompson proposed it after discovering that none of the 244 U.S. Catholic universities had an agriculture program.[^c55]
Philip Neri Reese, the newly appointed Director of the Angelicum Thomistic Institute, published an analysis of the Owens-Dewan dispute over the role of esse in Thomistic metaphysics. His Cambridge University Press monograph Aquinas on Metaphysics as a Science (2026) presents a new account of Aquinas's metaphysics, approached from the perspective of his theory of science and knowledge.[^c30][^c52] Thomas Davenport delivered a lecture on Aquinas's account of artifacts and artificial forms, proposing principles for engaging Thomistic hylomorphism with modern technology and engineering. Giovanni Ventimiglia presented a paper at the University of Lisbon arguing for an Aristotelian reading of Aquinas on being as truth over the Fregean interpretation dominant in analytic Thomism.[^c13] A 2026 study in Religions defended Grammatical Thomism — the reading of Thomas through a Wittgensteinian grammatical method developed by David Burrell and Herbert McCabe — as an authentic extension of the Thomist tradition.[^c44]
Roberto Di Ceglie published two works in 2026: an article in New Blackfriars on Aquinas's account of the certainty of hope as a theological virtue that shares in the certainty of faith by participation,[^c24] and a Cambridge Element engaging medieval Christian thought with John Schellenberg's divine hiddenness argument, proposing a response centered on spiritual transformation rather than evidence assessment.[^c25] A 2026 article in Pastoral Psychology developed a Thomistic approach to the cognitive dimension of religion, arguing that the Thomistic synthesis of faith as an act of the intellect provides resources for epistemic resilience against digital misinformation and deepfakes.[^c27]
A new article proposed a "Mixed View" on whether the separated soul is a person in Aquinas's metaphysics, arguing that after death Socrates survives and remains a person but is no longer a human person, while his soul is not itself a person.[^c16] [[Daniel De Haan]] published a major methodological intervention arguing that twentieth-century Thomist schools are unprincipled sociological cohorts rather than genuine philosophical divisions, and proposed "tradition-constituted enquiry Thomism" as an alternative to defensive-constructive commentary.[^c17] [[Jordan McFadden]], writing in The Thomist, argued that Aquinas's attribution of responsibility for the effects of human acts entails a commitment to resultant moral luck.[^c18]
Matthew Levering was recognized as the 2026 commencement speaker at the Dominican House of Studies, with over forty books and seven published volumes of his multi-volume quasi-dogmatics.[^c14] Ongoing engagement with Aquinas's thought appeared across journals including The Thomist, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, and New Blackfriars, covering topics from analytic Thomism's development, the metaphysics of esse, hylomorphism and contemporary biology, moral luck, and the Thomistic critique of neoclassical theism.