Thomistic Summer Conference 2023: “A Glimpse of the Heavenly Banquet”

Building on the success of last year’s inaugural Thomistic Summer Conference, Thomas Aquinas College hosted scholars from across the U.S. once more this summer. Old friends and new came to the California campus from June 15-17 to contemplate the nature of the soul, under the guidance of St. Thomas Aquinas.

Organizing the event was Dr. John Goyette (’90), a tutor and the outgoing dean of Thomas Aquinas College, California, who traced the inspiration for the gathering to the late Dr. Ralph McInerny’s summer conferences at the University of Notre Dame. “Ralph aimed to bring together a mix of scholars, both young and old, to help revive the study of St. Thomas by encouraging Thomists to share their ideas, to encourage one another in their academic work, and to develop friendships with fellow Thomists,” says Dr. Goyette.

The ideas shared this year centered around St. Thomas’s teaching on the soul, about which the Angelic Doctor wrote extensively, both integrating the thought of his predecessors and opening whole new vistas of inquiry. For Thomists, then, this particular subject yields rich theological, philosophical, and even scientific fruit, which the 26 presenters — and especially the featured speakers — harvested in abundance.

Representing such institutions as Ave Maria University, Hillsdale College, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Ralston College, The Catholic University of America, Thomas More College, the United States Air Force Academy, and the University of Notre Dame, the visiting scholars spent the mornings and afternoons listening to and discussing each other’s papers. Titles included “St. Thomas on the Intentionality of Thought,” “Science From The Vantage Point of the Human Soul,” and “Arrow and Archer: St. Thomas Aquinas’s Teleological Soul in Dante’s Commedia and Melville’s Moby-Dick.”

This year’s featured speakers included three TAC alumni, two of them tutors. On Thursday, Dr. Marie George (’79) of St. John’s University delivered an address, The Soul and the Natural Division of Living Things at the Most Universal Level. Friday featured lectures by Dr. Goyette, who spoke on The Soul as Imago Dei: The Image of the Trinity according to Nature and Grace” and Dr. Steven Jensen of the University of St. Thomas in Houston, who delivered a paper entitled, Why G.E. Moore Could Have Used A Few Lessons in Thomistic Psychology. Then on Saturday, Dr. Michael Augros (’92) of Thomas Aquinas College, New England, concluded the gathering with Aquinas’s Proof for the Human Soul’s Subsistence.

But as Dr. Goyette envisioned, the conference was more than an academic exercise. Between sessions and at shared meals, the visitors nurtured friendships over conversation and, at least on Friday night, cocktails beneath the summer stars. This friendly atmosphere, together with the beauty of the campus and surrounding hills, made the conference an unforgettable experience for all in attendance. Said Dr. Christopher Blum of the Augustine Institute, “As a reunion of Thomists, it was a glimpse of the heavenly banquet.”