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Dr. Drew Rosato

 

Shortly after helping to arrange a conference in Oxford last fall, Thomas Aquinas College tutor Dr. Drew Rosato found himself in South Bend, Indiana, where he presented a paper on St. Thomas’s understanding of prophecy. Dr. Rosato’s paper, one of over 150 presented at the University of Notre Dame’s “Aquinas at 800” conference, was an excerpt from a book to which he is contributing, along with fellow Notre Dame alumni.

“The book is a festschrift for Dr. Joseph Wawrykow, a Thomist who recently retired from Notre Dame,” says Dr. Rosato. “He directed my dissertation and those of many others, so his former students are offering him this book as a way of honoring all that he has done for us.”

The paper, he adds, is an attempt to respond to various objections leveled against St. Thomas. “Some critics of Aquinas’s account of prophetic cognition, for instance, think that he multiplies miracles beyond necessity when he posits that the prophetic light is given and taken away periodically over the course of the life of the prophet,” says Dr. Rosato. “In my paper, I tried to develop some arguments compatible with Aquinas’s account, as well as show some reasons why his account of prophetic cognition is still reasonable to uphold.”

While attending the conference, Dr. Rosato was able to visit with colleagues and former students, including Claire Murphy (CA’20) and Andreas Waldstein (CA’19). “We had many pleasant discussions about different aspects of St. Thomas’s theology,” he says. “Overall, I think the conference was a great success.”