Season 1 • Episode 8
LatestIn our eighth and final lecture, we reflect on Thomas Aquinas’s ethics as the means by which human beings, created in God’s image, return to God through a teleological framework centered on beatitudo (happiness) as humanity’s ultimate goal. We examine Aquinas’s analysis of wealth, honor, power, and bodily pleasure, showing how each fails to satisfy our deepest longing for God, the true source of beatitudo. The lecture concludes by outlining how the virtues of justice, temperance, courage, and prudence, together with natural and eternal law, order human life toward God and lasting fulfillment. Bishop Barron emphasizes the importance for us to live at the unchanging center of life's "wheel of fortune" rather than on its constantly turning rim.
In Thomas Aquinas, a seven-hour course, Bishop Robert Barron guides us through a study of the theological and philosophical system of Thomas Aquinas, the 13th-century Dominican friar who masterfully synthesized Ancient Greek philosophy with Christian doctrine. We examine his Five Ways for demonstrating God's existence, his understanding of divine attributes and the Trinity, and his teachings on creation, providence, and the problem of evil. The course delves into Aquinas's philosophical anthropology, particularly the relationship between body and soul and humanity's creation in God's image. We conclude by studying his ethical framework centered on finding happiness in God as humanity's ultimate goal, and the role of virtues in ordering human life toward God.
Creator
Bishop Robert E. Barron
US
