The Aquinas Center for Theological Renewal seeks to foster the renewal of speculative theology in the Church. The purpose of speculative work—e.g., St. Augustine’s De Trinitate, St. John Damascene’s On the Orthodox Faith—is to instruct the believer in the contemplation of the profound congruity of the various truths of the Catholic faith. True intellectual contemplation of the beauty of Christ (that is to say, true wisdom) flows from the desire to live out fully the mysteries revealed in Christ.

In pursuit of such cruciform wisdom, the Aquinas Center for Theological Renewal undertakes projects that accord with the Catholic Church’s understanding of theology as fides quaerens intellectum (faith seeking understanding) and that explore historically and systematically the harmony, beauty, and intelligibility of the reality revealed in faith, as set forth in the foundational texts of the Catholic Tradition. Pope John Paul II has written in Fides et Ratio, “The chief purpose of theology is to provide an understanding of revelation and the content of faith. The very heart of theological enquiry will thus be the contemplation of the mystery of the Triune God” (#93).

The scholarly work of the Aquinas Center for Theological Renewal aims at a return to this understanding of theology’s purpose and heart, by means of a “ressourcement” or reclaiming of the resources of the Catholic tradition for the purpose of contemplating God’s revelation and thereby assisting in the contemporary proclamation of the truth of the Gospel.