Thomas Aquinas

In our eighth and final lecture, we reflect on Thomas Aquinas’s ethics as the means by which human beings, created in God’s image, return to God through a teleological framework centered on beatitudo (happiness) as humanity’s ultimate goal. We examine Aquinas’s analysis of wealth, honor, power, and bodily pleasure, showing how each fails to satisfy our deepest longing for God, the true source of beatitudo. The lecture concludes by outlining how the virtues of justice, temperance, courage, and prudence, together with natural and eternal law, order human life toward God and lasting fulfillment. Bishop Barron emphasizes the importance for us to live at the unchanging center of life's "wheel of fortune" rather than on its constantly turning rim.

In lecture seven, we consider Thomas Aquinas's philosophical and theological anthropology—understanding humanity in light of God—particularly focusing on the complex relationship between body and soul. We trace the historical debate from Plato's dualistic view of the soul imprisoned in the body through Aristotle's more unified approach, showing how Aquinas synthesizes both traditions while remaining grounded in biblical teaching that affirms the goodness of both body and soul. The lecture concludes by discussing the imago Dei—the image of God within us—creating an unlimited yearning for truth and being itself. Bishop Barron shows how this divine image drives our restless quest for God, explaining why humans are fundamentally ordered toward the divine.

In lecture six, Bishop Barron examines God’s providence and how God directs the world He created, using the metaphor of an author and a novel to illustrate God’s absolute yet non-competitive relationship with creation. We explore the universality of divine providence, the nature of human freedom as the ordering of desire toward the good, and the problem of evil through Thomas Aquinas’s view that God permits evil only to bring about greater goods that would not otherwise exist. The lecture concludes by examining the Book of Job as a biblical response to suffering, emphasizing that while we cannot fully grasp God's providential design, we are called to surrender in faith to God's ultimate purpose for creation.

In lecture five, we explore the doctrine of creation through Thomas Aquinas’s teaching on why God creates despite His perfection and self-sufficiency. Aquinas argues that God creates not from need but from the Platonic principle of “bonum diffusivum sui” — the good is diffusive of itself. We then examine creation ex nihilo (creation from nothing), which reveals creation as a continual relationship with God rather than simply a past event. Bishop Barron concludes by discussing how God as artist creates a beautifully diverse world to display His glory, setting up the next topic of divine providence and the problem of evil.