Thomas' Commentary on Boethius' 'De Trinitate' - an afternoon of studies at the Thomas Instituut

Matthew Kostelecky is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia, Canada. He worked on a doctoral project at Leuven - to be defended on March 21 - titled The Summa contra gentiles as a Mirror of Human Nature and published on the theological method of the SCG and the relationship between Verbum and negative theology in Aquinas.

On the occasion of his visit the Thomas Instituut te Utrecht organised a paper presentation and discussion on 19 March 2008.



Matthew Kostelecky's paper was entitled:

Whither Metaphysics and Revealed Theology?
Some Clues from St. Thomas' Commentary on Boethius' De Trinitate

"In this presentation I will discuss the continuity of plan, purpose, and method between St. Thomas' commentary on Boethius' De trinitate (In De trin.) and his Summa contra gentiles (SCG). In so doing I hope to accomplish at least two things: 1) shed light onto the perplexing structure of the SCG, an issue which has caused no small amount of disagreement among commentators, and 2) give us a point of access for understanding Thomas' general approach to the knowledge of divine things. More specifically, I will try to show that Thomas' investigation of the methods of coming to know divine things in the In De trin. determines the order of procedure in the SCG (i.e., that the SCG takes the lessons learned from his methodological investigations in the In De trin and puts them into practice and that this is seen both in terms of the content and the structure of the SCG) and, moreover, that by comparing these two works one can see better the conditions that require metaphysics and revealed theology as modes of discourse if we are to speak about God. The presentation will offer some tentative answers, by a study of the relationship between these two texts, to the questions 'Whither metaphysics?' and 'Why revealed theology?'"
(Matthew Kostelecky)