The Thomistic Institute

Prof. Michael Root argues that, in Catholic theology, we are saved wholly by the unmerited grace of Christ, and that this grace brings us into a Spirit‑given life of faith, hope, love, and morally significant works, so that eternal life is at once pure gift and, in a secondary sense, a “merited destiny.”

This lecture was given on September 9th, 2025, at North Carolina State University.

For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.

About the Speakers:

Michael Root is Professor Emeritus of Systematic Theology at the Catholic University of America, Washington, DC. Earlier in life, he was a Lutheran, teaching at various Lutheran seminaries and serving ten years as a Research Professor at the Institute for Ecumenical Research in Strasbourg, France. He was received into the Catholic Church in 2010. His particular theological interests lie in grace and justification, eschatology (death, heaven, hell, etc.), and Protestant-Catholic relations.

Keywords: Augustine and Pelagius, Council of Trent, Grace and Merit, Justification, Luther’s Sola Fide, St. Thomas Aquinas, Teleological Salvation, Faith Hope and Love, Works and Final Judgment

Fr. Dominic Langevin defends the Catholic priesthood as a divinely willed, sacramental system of mediation in which ordained men, configured to Christ the High Priest, bestow God’s gifts on the faithful and offer their prayers and sins to God, thereby promoting both God’s glory and the sanctification and dignity of the Church.

This lecture was given on November 10th, 2025, at West Virginia University.

For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.

About the Speakers:

Fr. Dominic Langevin, O.P., is the dean and an assistant professor of dogmatic theology at the Dominican House of Studies, where he teaches courses principally about the sacraments and the liturgy. He did his undergraduate degree at Yale University. He entered the Dominican Order in 1998 and was ordained a priest in 2005. He earned his doctorate from the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. He is the author of the book From Passion to Paschal Mystery, has been editor of the journal The Thomist, and has been the secretary/treasurer of the Academy of Catholic Theology.

Keywords: Christ the High Priest, Hierarchy, Holy Orders, Mediation and Sacraments, Ministerial Priesthood, In Persona Christi, Sacramental System, Why the Church Has Priests

Fr. John Baptist Ku unpacks St. Thomas Aquinas’s doctrine of predestination, showing how God’s universal salvific will, efficacious grace, and real human freedom coexist without collapsing into Calvinist double predestination or Pelagian self-salvation.

This lecture was given on November 22nd, 2025, at Dominican House of Studies.

For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.

About the Speakers:

Fr. John Baptist Ku was born in Manhattan (1965) and grew up in Fairfax, Virginia. After graduating from School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Virginia, he worked in software design at AT&T for five years before entering the Dominican Order in 1992. After obtaining his S.T.B./M.Div. (1998) and S.T.L. (2000) at the Dominican House of Studies, he served for three years in St. Pius Parish in Providence, R.I., before going on to complete his studies doctoral studies at the University of Fribourg in 2009. He was awarded the Thomas Aquinas Dissertation Prize by the Aquinas Center for Theological Renewal at Ave Maria University (2010) for his dissertation on God the Father in the Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas. He now teaches at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C., where he has also served as book review editor of The Thomist, chaplain to commuter students, and chaplain to the Immaculate Conception Chapter of Third Order Dominicans.

Keywords: Aquinas on Predestination, Divine Providence, Efficacious and Sufficient Grace, Free Will and Foreknowledge, Molinism and Middle Knowledge, Reprobation, Single Predestination, Universal Salvific Will

Prof. Thomas Osborne clarifies how, for Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas, the distinctive immateriality of human intellectual knowledge grounds a philosophical case for the soul’s immortality, going beyond today’s narrower “problem of consciousness.”

This lecture was given on October 16th, 2025, at University of Connecticut.

For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.

About the Speakers:

Thomas M. Osborne, Jr. (Ph.D, Duke University, 2001) is the Frank A. Rudman Endowed Chair in Philosophy and the Chair of the Department of Philosophy at the University of St. Thomas. He has published widely on Thomas Aquinas, Thomism, and medieval and late scholastic philosophy. His interests cover moral psychology, ethics, political philosophy, and metaphysics. His latest book is Thomas Aquinas on Virtue (Cambridge University Press, 2024).

Keywords: Aristotle's De Anima, Immaterial Intellect, Immortality of the Soul, Intentional Presence, Philosophy of Mind, Soul, Subsistent Form, Universals and Knowledge

Prof. Marshall Bierson uses Aristotle’s distinction between work, play, and deeper “energetic” activities to argue that friendship and contemplation uniquely allow us to “rest” in what is truly good and meaningful, and then shows how Aquinas radicalizes this by making both contemplation and friendship with God the heart of human fulfillment.

This lecture was given on November 20th, 2025, at Cornell University.

For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.

About the Speakers:

Marshall Bierson is an assistant professor of philosophy at the Catholic University of America. His research centers on the intersection of ethics and philosophical anthropology. He is particularly focused on the work of Elizabeth Anscombe and in exploring how her Thomisticly inflected philosophical psychology clarifies moral absolutes.

Keywords: Aristotle, Energeia and Kinesis, Friendship and Contemplation, Meaning of Human Activity, Nihilism and Work–Play, Practical and Theoretical Reason, Thomistic Friendship with God