Put Away Falsehood | Prof. Adam Eitel

Professor Adam Eitel explores Thomas Aquinas's treatment of truthfulness and falsehood, discussing different types of lies, their motivations, and how they relate to charity and friendship with God, as well as forms of deception beyond speech, like hypocrisy and irony.

This lecture was given on June 22nd, 2023, at Stonyhurst College.

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About the Speaker:

Prof. Adam Eitel (Yale Divinity School) holds appointments in the Divinity School, the Program in Medieval Studies, and the Humanities Program. His research and teaching bring topics in the history of Christian theology to bear on questions of fundamental moral concern. A specialist in medieval scholasticism, his particular research interests span doctrinal and moral theology, especially in the works of Thomas Aquinas and his contemporaries. His first book, Thomas Aquinas and the Invention of the Preacher, examines the need for gifts of the Holy Spirit in light of the eliminable conditions of human folly; as this volume approaches the final stages of revision, he is also preparing a translation and critical introduction to Aquinas’s Contra impugnantes. His contributions to various journals include published and forthcoming essays in the Journal of Religious Ethics, Nova et Vetera, Studies in Christian Ethics, and The Thomist. Longer term aspirations include projects on the virtue of charity, the nature of sin, grace, eschatology, grief, and infant mortality.

Keywords: Charity, Deception, Holiness, Hypocrisy, Irony, Lies, Mortal Sin, St. Thomas More, Summa Theologica, Truthfulness