The Thomistic Institute

Join Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P. of Aquinas 101, Godsplaining, and Pints with Aquinas for an off-campus conversation with Prof. Ross McCullough. How Does Christ Save Us? w/ Prof. Ross McCullough and Fr. Gregory Pine (Off-Campus Conversations) You can listen to the original lecture here: https://soundcloud.com/thomisticinstitute/making-sense-of-the-atonement-prof-ross-mccullough For more information please visit thomisticinstitute.org. About the speaker: Ross McCullough joined George Fox University as an assistant professor of theology and faculty fellow in the George Fox University Honors Program in 2018. He studied patristic theology at the University of Notre Dame before doing a doctorate at Yale University at the intersection of systematic theology and analytic philosophy of religion. Dr. McCullough's first book, Freedom and Sin: Evil in a World Created by God (Eerdmans, 2022) reconciles traditional Christian commitments to, on the one hand, God causing all that is and, on the other, God in no way being responsible for sin. He also has academic publications on the doctrine of hell, the Eucharist, the hermeneutics of Scripture, and liberation theology. His popular articles have appeared in First Things, Commonweal, and America Magazine, among other venues. Dr. McCullough lives with his wife and four children across the street from St. Peter parish in Newberg, where he is on the pastoral council and leads RCIA.

This talk was given on April 10th, 2023 at Ohio State University. For more information please visit thomisticinstitute.org. About the speaker: Gina Maria Noia is an Assistant Professor of Theology and Resident Bioethicist at Belmont Abbey College. She received her Ph.D. in Theology and Health Care Ethics from Saint Louis University. She has served as a clinical ethicist for OSF Saint Francis Medical Center in Peoria, IL and St. Alexius Hospital in St. Louis, MO, and she is published in Christian Bioethics and the Journal of Moral Theology. She and her husband, Justin, love spending time with their vivacious one-year-old boy.

This talk was given at the University of Oregon on March 15, 2023. For more information please visit thomisticinstitute.org. About the speaker: Ross McCullough joined George Fox University as an assistant professor of theology and faculty fellow in the George Fox University Honors Program in 2018. He studied patristic theology at the University of Notre Dame before doing a doctorate at Yale University at the intersection of systematic theology and analytic philosophy of religion. Dr. McCullough's first book, Freedom and Sin: Evil in a World Created by God (Eerdmans, 2022) reconciles traditional Christian commitments to, on the one hand, God causing all that is and, on the other, God in no way being responsible for sin. He also has academic publications on the doctrine of hell, the Eucharist, the hermeneutics of Scripture, and liberation theology. His popular articles have appeared in First Things, Commonweal, and America Magazine, among other venues. Dr. McCullough lives with his wife and four children across the street from St. Peter parish in Newberg, where he is on the pastoral council and leads RCIA.

This talk was given on March 28th, 2023 at Regent University. For more information please visit thomisticinstitute.org. About the speaker: Francis J. Beckwith is Professor of Philosophy & Church-State Studies and Affiliate Professor of Political Science at Baylor University, where he also serves as Associate Director of the Graduate Program in Philosophy. Among his over one dozen books are Never Doubt Thomas: The Catholic Aquinas as Evangelical and Protestant (Baylor University Press, 2019), Defending Life: A Moral and Legal Case Against Abortion Choice (Cambridge University Press, 2007), and Taking Rites Seriously: Law, Politics, and the Reasonableness of Faith (Cambridge University Press, 2015), winner of the American Academy of Religion's prestigious 2016 Book Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion in Constructive-Reflective Studies. He is a graduate of the Washington University School of Law, St. Louis (MJS) as well as Fordham University (PhD, MA, philosophy).

This talk was given on March 23, 2023 at the University of Dallas. For more information please visit thomisticinstitute.org. About the speaker: Dr. William E. Carroll is Distinguished Visiting Professor in the School of Philosophy at Zhongnan University of Economics and Law (Wuhan, China) and Senior Research Fellow at the Collegium of Anton Neuwirth (Bratislava, Slovakia). His specialty is the relationship among the natural sciences, philosophy, and theology, with an emphasis on Thomas Aquinas’s understanding of the doctrine of creation. He is the author of works and articles including Creation and Science: Has Science Eliminated God?; Galileo: Science and Faith; and (with Steven Baldner) Aquinas on Creation. Beginning in 2013, he has spent several weeks each year giving lectures and seminars at various Chinese universities in Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Wuhan.

This talk was given on March 6th, 2023 at Oxford University. For more information please visit thomisticinstitute.org. About the speaker: Lewis Ayres is Professor of Catholic and Historical Theology at Durham University in the United Kingdom. He specializes in the study of early Christian theology, especially the history of Trinitarian theology and early Christian exegesis. He is also deeply interested in the relationship between the shape of early Christian modes of discourse and reflection and the manner in which renewals of Catholic theology during the last hundred years have attempted to engage forms of modern historical consciousness and sought to negotiate the shape of appropriate scriptural interpretation in modernity, even as they remain faithful to the practices of classical Catholic discourse and contemplation. His publications include Augustine and the Trinity (2010) and Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Trinitarian Theology (2004). He is co-editor of the Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature (2004) and of the Oxford Handbook of Catholic Theology (forthcoming). Professor Ayres has co-edited the Blackwell Challenges in Contemporary Theology series (since 1997), the Ashgate Studies in Philosophy and Theology in Late Antiquity series (since 2007), and has just co-founded with Fortress Press the Renewal: Conversations in Catholic Theology series. He serves on the editorial boards of Modern Theology, the Journal of Early Christian Studies, and Augustinian Studies. He has also served on the board of the North American Patristics Society.

This talk was given on April 27th, 2023 at Georgetown University. The slides for the lecture can be found here: https://tinyurl.com/yus8cvkx For more information please visit thomisticinstitute.org. About the speaker: Patrick Callahan is director of the Newman Institute for Catholic Thought & Culture at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln as well as Assistant Professor of English & Humanities at St. Gregory the Great Seminary. He did his undergraduate work at the University of Dallas and his graduate work at Fordham University in Classical Philology. While his doctoral work focused on ancient Greek commentaries to the lyric poet Pindar, his recent work focuses on early Jesuit Latin texts.

This talk was given on March 3rd, 2023 at New York University. For more information please visit thomisticinstitute.org. About the speaker: Karin Öberg is Professor of Astronomy at Harvard University. Her specialty is astrochemistry and her research aims to uncover how chemical processes affect the outcome of planet formation, especially the chemical habitability of nascent planets. Dr. Öberg obtained her B.Sc. in chemistry at Caltech in 2005, and her Ph.D. in astronomy, with a thesis focused on laboratory astrochemistry, from Leiden University in 2009. She did postdoctoral work at Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics as a NASA Hubble fellow, focusing on millimeter observations of planet-forming disks around young stars. In 2013 she joined the Harvard astronomy faculty as an assistant professor. She was promoted and named the Thomas D. Cabot Associate Professor in Astronomy in 2016, and promoted to full professor with tenure in 2017. Dr. Öberg’s research in astrochemistry has been recognized with a Sloan fellowship, a Packard fellowship, the Newton Lacy Pierce Award from the American Astronomical Society, and a Simons fellowship. Here recent TED talk explaining some of her research can be found here.

This lecture was given on February 8, 2023 at Trinity University, San Antonio. The handout for this lecture can be found here: https://tinyurl.com/yczkuphu. For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org. About the speaker: Sister Elinor Gardner is a member of the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia. Before arriving at University of Dallas, she taught at Aquinas College in Nashville, TN and at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. Her doctoral work (Boston College) was on the ethics of Thomas Aquinas ("St Thomas Aquinas on the Death Penalty").

This talk was given on February 7th, 2023 at Texas A and M University. For more information please visit thomisticinstitue.org. About the speaker: Michael Gorman is professor of philosophy at The Catholic University of America. He has doctorates in philosophy and theology. He has authored over thirty-five academic papers and a book entitled Aquinas on the Metaphysics of the Hypostatic Union (Cambridge University Press, 2017). His main interests are metaphysics, human nature, and ethics. He is working on a textbook in metaphysics and on a short book on human nature and human dignity.