Volume 38 (2020): Issue 1 (June 2020)

Contemporary discussions of Aquinas’ understanding of the passions often mention the passio corporalis and the passio animalis, but no recent scholarship has paid close attention to what these terms mean, largely because many scholars wrongly assume that ‘passio animalis’ simply means the same thing as ‘passio animae’. However, this paper argues that ‘passio corporalis’ and ‘passio animalis’ are specialized terms that Aquinas uses in order to explain the ways in which Christ experienced suffering on earth. Furthermore, understanding these terms properly bears important implications for understanding the development of Aquinas’ thought on the passion of pain.

Fundamental to theology is the ordering of all things to God, yet this ordering is directly tied to the topic of relation. Thus, while the category of relation is inherited by Aquinas from ancient philosophy, it mostly shows up in Aquinas’ theological treatments. This paper will look specifically at the distinction between God and creatures as understood through Aquinas’ use of mixed relations. It will provide an expository treatment of Aquinas’ use of mixed relation in attempt to bridge his philosophy and theology while seeking to encourage and aide others to more actively incorporate the category of relation in theological work, as Aquinas himself did.

Employing a work of modern conceptual art, a manipulated photograph entitled ‘The Missing Person’, the author studies Thomas Aquinas on the concept of human beings as image of (the Triune) God. Typical for Aquinas’ approach is the theocentric focus of his Christian anthropology. The threefold (nature, grace, glory) ‘image of God’, a central and dynamic concept in Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae, is both descriptive and prescriptive in nature, corresponding to an account of both analogical naming of the divine ánd living according to the vocation to become more and more image of the Triune God.