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Thesis advisor: Eileen C. Sweeney / This work aims to initiate a comprehensive and definitive account of St. Thomas Aquinas' doctrine of the principle of the individuation of substances of a common species, which adds some sort of "quantity" or "dimensions" to the Aristotelian account of matter as the principle of individuation. After laying out the interpretative problem in its entirety through a review of the Scholastic and modern traditions of commentary, I determine the first step on the path to its solution, and take that first step by offering a properly limited interpretation of the account set forth in Question 4, article 2 of the Expositio super librum Boethii De trinitate. I argue that this text presents a sapiential metaphysical account of the principle of individuation informed by a properly metaphysical understanding which it leaves implicit. St. Thomas resolves the ratio of the numerically individual composite substance of a species as apprehended by the logician to its first per se principle, defined as "matter under dimensiones interminatae." As individuating, the dimensiones interminatae do not belong to the accidental category of quantity, but are merely a dimensional continuum, a certain composite of a potency--the parts of dimensions, which can be united or divided--and the unifying act of situs, the "order of the parts in the whole," or beginning-middle-end structure, by virtue of which the dimensions possess in themselves the ratio of the numerical individual. In each of these respects, the dimensions qualify the potency of the matter subject to them. Qua potency, the dimensiones interminatae qualify matter's intrinsic potency for unity with form in the substance as a whole by restricting its scope in the real order. Qua act, they qualify this complex restricted potency in a merely rational manner, rendering its restricting potency (i.e., that of the dimensional parts for situs) actual, and thus they make the complex restricted potency of matter intelligible, possessed of the ratio of the numerical individual. Accordingly, matter under dimensiones interminatae is this (and not that) matter, one unified principle belonging to the category of substance. In the properly metaphysical understanding of individuation which underlies the explicit account given in Question 4, article 2 of the Expositio, matter is understood as the potency for the corruptibly contingent mode of the act of substantial existence. Being subjected to the restricting potency of the dimensiones interminatae renders matter thus considered a principle of contingency, in the real order, in respect of divisibility. As before, this complex restricted potency is rendered partially actual in the rational order, and thus the ground of the ratio of the numerically individual substance qua being, by the dimensiones interminatae according to the act of situs. In this way, matter is constituted as this matter, this potency for the corruptibly contingent mode of existence, and not that matter--or in other words, it is constituted as numerically individual matter, the first per se principle of individuation. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.

Thesis advisor: Ronald Tacelli / Thomas Aquinas and Thomas Reid are philosophers who, while writing from very different historical and intellectual contexts, both share a common conviction as epistemological realists. This paper will argue that, despite any initial appearances of conflict, their arguments and conclusions are both compatible and complementary, and that through such an agreement we can come to a richer understanding of the realist tradition. At the heart of this unity lie the shared principles that: * Knowledge involves a direct apprehension of things themselves. * Ideas are not themselves objects or intermediaries, but the active means by which the intellect understands. * The relationship between the mind and its object is not one of a material likeness, but of a formal likeness. * The existence of external objects of knowledge is not demonstrable, but is a self-evident first principle. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.

Thesis advisor: Frederick G. Lawrence / This study investigates Aquinas' understanding of Christ's role in sanctification. In discussing the soteriological effect of Christ's passion, Aquinas makes a distinction between the manner in which the soteriological effect is brought about (modo efficiendi), the effect in itself, and the way the effect is obtained. The dissertation explores Aquinas' understanding of the third element - the securing of the effect of Christ's passion - and the relation of this third element to the first two. Sanctifying grace is given as a result of Christ's saving acts, is infused by an act of the Holy Spirit, and conforms its recipients to the Holy Spirit. But Christ's role in sanctification does not cease once the Holy Spirit is given. In Aquinas' judgment, Christ continues to be present in the giving of the gift, a giving that is also consequent upon a being conformed to Christ. The dissertation builds toward an examination of how Aquinas understands this being conformed to Christ, especially in light of Aquinas' conception of faith as a knowledge of God, of Christ as the source and object of faith's knowledge, and of charity's relation to this knowledge, all of which are analyzed against Aquinas' strict adherence to the principle that humans cannot know God in his essence so long as they remain in time / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology.

Thesis advisor: Stephen J. Pope / This dissertation provides a multidisciplinary analysis of acedia, a vice that misdirects the natural human love for God and disorders the mind and social structures. Acedia—from the Greek a- + kedos, “lack of care”—is a vice that rejects moral agency, disorders love, and distorts thinking, resulting in a range of psychological effects (such as despair, anxiety, hyper productivity, etc.) and the creation of social structures that hinder human flourishing. This vice was widely discussed as a moral and spiritual problem until the modern period, when three factors led to its neglect: (1) the equation of acedia with laziness in post-Reformation theological literature, (2) the medicalization of acedia as depression in the emerging psychological literature, and (3) the contention that moral and spiritual concepts were out of place in psychological reflection. And as morality, spirituality, and mental health became bifurcated, psychologists began to claim that the Christian tradition discovered depression, but spiritualized it as the vice of acedia. An integrative approach that connects moral theology with the biopsychosocial sciences clarifies the nature of acedia and provides practices to reorder individuals languishing or struggling with its effects. This approach resists the bifurcation of morality and spirituality from mental health; rejects reductive accounts of acedia as slothful laziness, anomie, boredom, melancholy, or depression; and demonstrates the areas of overlap between vices and mental disorders. Beginning with a statement of the problem of acedia, this dissertation indicates how the moral, spiritual, and mental health elements of acedia became separated. Then the strengths and weaknesses in the biopsychosocial literature on mental health and vice is discussed, and it is argued that the sciences can be supplemented with a theological account of vices as habits that result from choices to act, love, and reason which disorder the mind and social structures. This integrative account reveals how vices like acedia can be factors in mental health since they disorder crucial capacities of the mind like agency, love, and reasoning. Nevertheless, vices like acedia are distinct from sloth, anomie, boredom, melancholy, and depression. While vices and disorders involve intentions, choices, habits, and actions, vices may or may not impact neural functioning or cause neural malfunction as mental disorders do. Acedia and these various disorders are distinct even though they may overlap in certain cases. Consequently, vices like acedia can be one of several factors—including biological, psychological, and social ones—involved in the development course of mental disorders, but need not, and will not always be so involved. Recognizing this avoids moralizing mental disorders (by making mental disorder into a purely moral problem with a moral remedy), and medicalizing vices (by affirming that moral problems are at root medical ones requiring a medical remedy). Removing acedia, therefore, requires the adoption of practices that can be tailored to foster the virtue of gratitude, which remove acedia, redirect its disordered inclination to love God, and reorder individuals struggling with its effects. Thus, to discuss acedia adequately, one needs to integrate insights from morality, spirituality, and mental health. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology.

Thesis advisor: Stephen F. Brown / The study of Thomas Aquinas generally focuses on theological questions in his work, and ignores certain aspects of what might be called his "spiritual life." Though there are exceptions to this rule, there are numerous themes in the writings of Thomas Aquinas which have not been given their due. In light of this fact, this dissertation seeks to provide an extended treatment of two components of the work of Thomas Aquinas which receive little attention: the role of spiritual exercises in his writing, and the form of reflexivity--one's understanding of and relation to one's self--he recommends. As a way of approaching these issues, I draw from the work of two historical philosophers, Pierre Hadot and Michel Foucault, using the methodological questions they employ in their writings on the classical world. Both Hadot and Foucault argued that there was something different about the way philosophy was accomplished in the antique world, something which was lost as philosophy shifted in the modern period. Hadot's work focuses, in particular, on the use of spiritual exercises in the formation of the person--that is, how a person becomes the ideal form they ought to be. Foucault, on the other hand, focused on the alternative form of reflexivity as found in the work of classical philosophers, and used it for fruitful comparison and critique of the contemporary forms of reflexivity found in the modern world. Both of these thinkers, however, never included in their study the medieval period, or at least not in an extended and meaningful way. Their questions, however, are particularly relevant to the work of Thomas Aquinas, as he offers both an extended treatment of spiritual exercises, as well as a form of reflexivity similar in many ways to classical forms. As a way of highlighting these two topics in Thomas Aquinas, I first provide an overview of the work of Pierre Hadot and Michel Foucault as it relates to these topics. I then move onto a discussion of the current state of scholarship on "spirituality" in Thomas Aquinas, and suggest the ways in which this dissertation can improve on this current state. In the subsequent chapters, I begin a discussion of the concept of virtue as found in Thomas Aquinas, and its relation to both spiritual exercises and reflexivity, the description of which in Thomas forms the basis for the next two chapters. Finally, I turn to an in depth application of these methodological questions by turning to two different works of Thomas; first, I turn to his De perfectione spiritualis vitae, a short and rarely read work in which Thomas explains the practices which accompany the formation of a person in charity. Second, I turn to the Summa Theologiae and the cardinal virtues, drawing attention to the presence of spiritual exercises in a work typically treated as merely expositional. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2014. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology.

Thesis advisor: Frederick G. Lawrence / This dissertation, an exercise in interpretation, is on Bernard Lonergan’s notion of faith as expressed in his early Latin theological writings—especially his scholastic supplement Analysis Fidei (1952). This interpretation consists largely of an analysis of the intellectual horizon in which Lonergan did his earliest thinking on faith; without a grasp of this horizon Lonergan’s early, especially scholastic notion of faith is almost overwhelmingly difficult to understand. The horizon analysis is completed in the first four chapters of the dissertation. Chapter One aims to show that Lonergan’s analysis of faith is rooted in the theological context informed by the decrees of Vatican I (especially Dei Filius) and its focus on the question about the relation of faith to reason, and by the effort especially in Catholic theological circles of the time to mine the works of Thomas Aquinas, the Doctor of the Church, for a deeper understanding of the revealed mysteries. Chapter Two situates Lonergan’s notion of faith in his understanding of a developing world-order; coming to faith is understood as a part of a larger process that, on the one hand, begins with a natural desire to see God (a natural desire to understand everything about everything) and, on the other, terminates in the absolutely supernatural goal of beatific knowledge: knowing God as God. Chapter Three narrows the scope and situates the act and virtue of faith in Lonergan’s rigorously systematic theology of grace that distinguishes clearly between grace as operative and cooperative on the one hand, and actual and habitual on the other. Chapter Four offers a very brief sketch of Thomas Aquinas’s understanding of the notion of faith, from which Lonergan’s own work takes its bearings. After this horizon analysis, Chapter Five offers an exposition of Lonergan’s own treatment of the notion of faith as found in his early Latin theology. The chapter investigates three principal sources, giving most attention to the third: first, the Gratia Operans dissertation (1940) together with the Grace and Freedom articles (1941–42); second, De Ente Supernatural (1946); and third, Analysis Fidei (1952). The chapter claims that Lonergan’s early presentation of faith breaks new ground by bringing into view, alongside a logical analysis of the act of faith, the psychological dimension of the conscious process of coming to believe revealed mysteries. Finally, a brief concluding chapter looks ahead to Lonergan’s later understanding of faith in Method in Theology (1972) in order to indicate some of the challenges that would need to be met in a full-scale treatment of the development of Lonergan’s notion of faith throughout his entire intellectual career—a project for which this dissertation can serve as a perhaps helpful prolegomena. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2016. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology.

Thesis advisor: John F. Baldovin / This dissertation argues that the eucharistic theology found in Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologiae is not a Christocentric, static, hierarchical economy of grace production. Rather, it is a deeply Trinitarian, dynamic, communal drama of graced participation. Based on Aquinas's insistence that grace is a participation in the Divine Nature that is signified by the sacraments, I turn to the Secunda Pars in order to explicate the relationship between grace and human action that is presupposed in the sacramentology of the Tertia Pars. Insofar as the res tantum of the Eucharist is the unity of the mystical body of Christ, special attention is given to the relationship between grace, theological virtue, and moral virtue. Through close examination of the process through which charity is said to increase in the subject, the unity of the mystical body is seen, not as a mystical state, but as a graced action that is simultaneously God's action (insofar as grace formally moves us through charity) and the Church's action (insofar as the moral virtues dispose us to receive the presence of God as the extrinsic principle of our actions). The unity of the mystical body of Christ is, then, rightly called the grace of the Eucharist because the spiritual life affected by the Eucharist is the active presence of charity in the Church. The result of the Eucharist is the Church's participation in the Divine Nature. This project aims at providing a grammar that allows for fruitful dialogue in modern sacramental theology. Within Catholic Eucharistic theology, the scholastic language of metaphysics is regularly given place of privilege to such an extent as to view other grammars of the Eucharist with suspicion. This dissertation provides a Thomistic grammar of the Eucharist that largely avoids the traditional scholastic grammars. It is the hope that such retrieval is a catalyst for constructive dialogue between modern grammars (of all denominations) and traditional scholastic grammars. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology.