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Winter 2025
800 Years of Thomas Aquinas
Introduction: 800 Years of Thomas Aquinas
The year 2025 marks the eighth centenary of the birth of St. Thomas Aquinas, whose thought continues to stand at the center of the Christian philosophical and theological tradition. Few thinkers have articulated with greater clarity the intelligibility of being and the mind’s natural orientation toward the knowledge of God. Yet the enduring significance of Aquinas lies not only in the historical authority of his thought, but in the way his work continues to illuminate the fundamental questions of theology and philosophy. For Thomas, the intelligibility of the world reflects its origin in divine wisdom, and the human mind is ordered by nature toward the knowledge of truth and ultimately toward the vision of God. Together, the essays of this issue of Communio explore themes central to the Thomistic vision: the relation between contemplation and action, the intelligibility and giftedness of being, the meaning of analogy in theological speech, and the human desire to know God.
Can Aquinas and Balthasar Be Reconciled? On a Disputed Question in Trinitarian Theology
“In God strength and weakness, majesty and humility, glory and kenosis, paradoxically go together, not just in the economy of salvation, but even in God secundum quod Deus.”
On the Thomistic Problem of the Beatific Vision
“The beatific vision crowns the natural desire to see God as the most noble of our natural desires. By supernaturalizing it, it does not change its nature.”