Two forms of existential proposition are identified, one favoured by analytical philosophers, one by Thomists. It is argued, against objections, that both forms were recognized and used by Thomas. A useful way of labelling this point is to speak of the distinction between esse ut verum and esse reale: being in the sense of the true, the analytical notion, on the one hand, and the Thomist notion of actual or real existence on the other. The former is best expressed by a second-level predicable, the latter by a first-level predicable. Both express a valid notion which is fittingly called ‘existential’, and both are, indeed, analogically connected in meaning.

In the second volume of his Systematic Theology, William Lane Craig raises a number of issues against the traditional doctrine of divine simplicity, along with several criticisms of Aquinas’s notion of existence. We can’t respond to all of his complaints here – but we can respond to what are, in our estimation, the most fundamental to his case.

Our focus will be on two of the main problems he presses against Aquinas’s view of existence: first, whether it makes sense to talk about existence itself as existing; and second, whether existence comes in degrees. These challenges are closely related – both, ultimately, concern the classical theist claim that God is identical to His own existence – and so our answers will be related as well.

We’ll conclude by raising a challenge for Craig.

This article argues for a possible route by which Thomism might affirm the goodness of physical deformity as an aid to abstraction. Recent scholarship has shown how Aquinas can speak positively of bodily diversity as part of God’s providential order, without treating physical defect as a loss of dignity. I extend this line by asking whether Aquinas can also give physical deformity an intrinsic epistemic role. For Augustine, the cosmos is an intelligible whole ordered by eternal Forms in the Word, mediated by rationes seminales, so that even physical defects remain diminished likenesses of their exemplars and can serve the good of the whole. Aquinas rejects this strong Platonic imaging: he retains divine ideas as extrinsic measures determined by God’s will, treats cosmic unity as an ordo communis under providence, and identifies goodness with the actualisation of natural potency. I therefore locate physical deformity as a mixed case of David Oderberg’s notion of ‘goodness by approximation’. The paper states conditions under which a mixed case can clarify a ratio and sharpen the universal: intelligible species are entia rationis grounded in substantial similarity, and atypical cases can remove misleading accompaniments so that what belongs per se becomes more evident.

In this paper, I argue that shame (verecundia) functions as a key passion, revealing the complex structure of human affectivity and shedding new light on the understanding of Aquinas’s theory of the passions. In numerous passions, such as sadness, fear, or pleasure, the appetitive motion and the accompanying bodily changes follow the same direction – expansion or contraction – according to a common sensory basis. In contrast, shame presents a clear exception: while the appetite contracts inward, vital spirit and heat expand outward, producing blushing. According to Aquinas, passions are motions of the sensitive appetite accompanied by bodily change. Although shame retains this structure, its change is nevertheless formed through the redundantia of the higher faculties, which leads me to argue that it occupies an intermediate position between ‘passions properly speaking’ and ‘purely intellectual pseudo-passions’. By analyzing shame in this light, I demonstrate that human passions should be understood not as purely natural or rational, but as complex intersections of both.

Augustine and Aquinas assume that Moses’s law figures Christ. In this piece, I show how their complementary accounts of the old law rest upon other doctrinal emphases, namely providence, God the Father, and created things as participations in divine goodness. By drawing out these themes, I advance reflection on the worth of Moses’s law, unfolding how other doctrines structure loving attention to the law as indicative of Christ.

Aristotle’s views about the female body are commonly held to be an insurmountable obstacle to aligning his philosophy with feminism. Sarah Borden Sharkey, however, has attempted a robust Aristotelian feminism that alters only the minimum. She argues that to succeed it must give positive and detailed reasons for sexual equality, a task that she leaves open. Building on Sharkey’s work, this essay argues that Thomas Aquinas’ view of the will allows such a position, by combining it with Aristotle’s notion of thumos as the main dividing factor between the sexes. The result is an Aristotelian–Thomistic view that keeps female biological difference, while allowing equality in attaining virtue and prudence.