Other Work | Kwasniewski

In addition to my work in the areas of sacred liturgy, sacred music, and Catholic social teaching, I maintain a lively interest in the life, writings, and perennial wisdom of St. Thomas Aquinas, and contribute to the contemporary Thomistic revival through scholarly publications, editing and annotating original texts, and reprinting classics. (For reprints, see the OS JUSTI PRESS page.) Beyond this academic sphere, I also frequently write on topics of current controversy.

Books

BOOKS

The Ecstasy of Love in the Thought of Thomas Aquinas

My thesis in this book is that Aquinas's rich, unique, and multifaceted teaching on the ecstasy of love ("extasis amoris") is a crucial element in his philosophical account of friendship, his theological presentation of charity, his solution to the so-called "problem of love" (the compatibility of the seemingly self-centered desire for one's own happiness with the requirement to love God for His own sake and to love other created persons as ends, not as means), and his ascetical-mystical doctrine of progress in the spiritual life. The Ecstasy of Love in the Thought of Thomas Aquinas closely examines passages in the Sentences commentary, the Divine Names commentary, the Summa theologiae, and a number of opuscula, with a generous use of the Scripture commentaries. Aquinas is brought into dialogue with ancient, medieval, and modern authors, among them Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Augustine, Bernard, Albert, Bonaventure, Bergson, Heidegger, and Marcel. Quotations are given in Latin with fresh English translations. Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Academic Press, 2021.

Commentary on Book IV of the Sentences of Peter Lombard

Distinctions 1–13; Distinctions 14–25; Distinctions 26–42. [An annotated translation St. Thomas Aquinas' early work, Scriptum Super IV Sententiarum, done by a team of scholars of The Aquinas Institute.] Lander, WY: The Aquinas Institute, 2017.

On Love and Charity: Readings from the Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard

[A translation of texts from St. Thomas Aquinas’s Commentary on the Sentences, containing Book I, Distinction 17, in both the Parisian and the Roman versions; Book III, Distinctions 27 to 32; and selected articles from all four Books.] Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2008.

Wisdom’s Apprentice: Thomistic Essays in Honor of Lawrence Dewan , O.P.

Edited and introduced by Peter A. Kwasniewski. [A Festschrift of twelve essays with biography and bibliography of the honoree.] Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2007.

Academic Articles

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SELECTED ACADEMIC ARTICLES

“Divine Wisdom, Natural Order, and Human Intervention: Leibniz on the Intersection of Theology, Teleology, and Technology.” Studia Neoaristotelica 14/2 (2017): 115–38. [PDF]

“St. Thomas on the Grandeur and Limitations of Marriage.” Nova et Vetera 10 (2012): 415–36. [PDF]

“On the Ideal Basis and Fruition of Marriage.” Second Spring 12 (2010): 43–53. [PDF]
“Aquinas on Eucharistic Ecstasy: From Self-Alienation to Gift of Self.” Nova et Vetera 6 (2008): 157–204. [PDF]
“A Thomistic Preface to Theology, ‘The Science of God and of the Blessed.’” Doctor Angelicus [Cologne] 7 (2007): 89–108. [PDF]
“The Ecstasy of Love in Aquinas’s Commentary on the Sentences.” Angelicum 83 (2006): 51–93. [PDF]
“Doing and Speaking in the Person of Christ: Eucharistic Form in the Anaphora of Addai and Mari.” Nova et Vetera 4 (2006): 313–79. [PDF]
“Aquinas’s Sermon for the Feast of Pentecost: A Rare Glimpse of Thomas the Preaching Friar.” Introduced by P. A. Kwasniewski, translated from the Latin with Jeremy Holmes. Faith & Reason 30:1–2 (2005): 99–139. [PDF]

“A Tale of Two Wonderworkers: St. Nicholas of Myra in the Writings and Life of St. Thomas Aquinas.” A study accompanied by St. Thomas’s sermon for the feast of St. Nicholas. Angelicum 82 (2005): 19–53. [PDF]
“Anton Bruckner, Sacred Tonality, and Parsifal’s Redemption: Spiritual Enfleshment and the Musical Via Positiva.” Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture 8.2 (Spring 2005): 17–55. [PDF]

“Golden Straw: St. Thomas and the Ecstatic Practice of Theology.” Nova et Vetera 2 (2004): 61–89. [PDF]

“William of Ockham and the Metaphysical Roots of Natural Law.” The Aquinas Review 11 (2004): 1–84. [PDF]

“‘Divine Drunkenness’: The Secret Life of Thomistic Reason.” The Modern Schoolman 82 (2004): 1–31. [PDF]

“Transcendence, Power, Virtue, Madness, Ecstasy—Modalities of Excess in Aquinas.” Mediaeval Studies 66 (2004): 129–81. [PDF]

“The World as Symbol of Divine Beauty in the Thought of St. Bonaventure.” Faith & Reason 24/25 (1999–2000): 31–54. [PDF]

“Solitude, Communion, and Ecstasy.” Communio 26 (Summer 1999): 371–92. [PDF]
“The Inseparability of Freedom, Goodness, and Final End in St. Thomas.” The Aquinas Review 5.1 (1998): 50–69. [PDF]

“Thales and the Origins of Rational Theology.” The Journal of Neoplatonic Studies 6.1 (Fall 1997): 75–104. [PDF]

“St. Thomas, Extasis, and Union with the Beloved.” The Thomist 61.4 (1997): 587–603. [PDF]
“The Metaphysics of Providential Causality in the Στοιξειωσισ Θεολογικη of Proclus.” The Journal of Neoplatonic Studies 5.2 (Spring 1997): 3–28. [PDF]

Dr. Peter Kwasniewski

BOOKS

SELECTED ACADEMIC ARTICLES

POPULAR ARTICLES