Disputed Questions & Whitaker's Words

The Aquinas Institute wishes you a most blessed feast of Our Lady of the Rosary! According to our custom of releasing new volumes on Marian feasts, we are also pleased to announce the release of the next volume in the Opera Omnia: Volume 26: Disputed Questions: On the Soul; On Spiritual Creatures; On the Virtues; On the Union of the Incarnate Word. 

These disputed questions were composed in the last decade of St. Thomas’s life and were preparatory to his composition of the Summa Theologiae. Though these are heavily edited reports of actual disputations, we can still see in them the fruits of the lively debates that were typical of the medieval university, and furthermore, we can see in them how a mature St. Thomas carefully listens to both sides of a question in his own discernment of the truth. In the disputed questions we see the truth of what St. Thomas says elsewhere in his Sermon on the Our Father, “Among all those things that bring about knowledge and wisdom in man, the most powerful wisdom is that a man does not lean on his own opinion: lean not upon your own prudence (Prov 3:5). For those who presume on their own opinion, such that they do not trust others but only themselves, are thought to be, and found to be, stupid. But the man who does not trust his own judgment acts out of humility, and where humility is, there also is wisdom (Prov 11:2).”

In reading the disputed questions, we find not only an example of this wisdom, but we can even participate in the exercise of it, as we ourselves carefully weigh the different sides of each question along with St. Thomas. To take just one example, in his Disputed Questions on the Unity of the Incarnate Word, St. Thomas tries to resolve the difficult question of whether there are two activities or one activity in Christ. The answer to this question is not so obvious, and strong arguments could be found for either position. Following the guidance of the Church, St. Thomas concludes that there are indeed two activities in Christ, but not without also learning from the truth found in the other side, for he notes that Christ’s human actions do indeed have something God-like about them: “Christ’s activity according to humanity is called ‘theandric,’ that is, ‘God-manly,’ insofar as Christ’s humanity was working in the divine power. Through this, humanity’s action was salvific, like an instrument which works in the agent’s power. To this extent is it called ‘a new-made action,’ because Christ’s humanity is made anew to be the instrument of divinity conjoined in unity of person—but it is not said in such a way that there be one composite from two actions” (a. 5, ad 1).

Volume 26: Disputed Questions is now available for purchase from the St. Paul Center here.

One further announcement: The Aquinas Institute has rewritten and now re-released the online program William Whitaker’s Words. William Whitaker (1936–2010), was a US Air Force colonel who, as part of the High Order Language Working Group, helped develop the Ada computer language. This language was later put to use in Whitaker’s invaluable online Latin dictionary, which parses and analyzes Latin words and provides Latin-English and English-Latin translations in multiple forms. After re-writing the entire program in C#, we are now making the code itself available on GitHub here, while the working revised version of Whitaker’s Words can be found at the new website: https://words.ac. On this new website, one can easily look up both Latin and English words, keep track of an entire history of searches, and further, follow the readily available links to the more detailed Lewis and Short dictionary. We hope this new tool will prove to be a valuable resource.  As always, your feedback is welcome.