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This lecture was given on January 27, 2023, at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C., for the annual Aquinas Lecture in honor of St. Thomas Aquinas.
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“In Summa Theologiae I, question 97, article 1, Aquinas argues that the indissolubility of the body of original humanity was not due to some intrinsic vigor of immortality that the body had, unlike the resurrection body, but ‘by reason of a supernatural force given by God to the soul…whereby it was enabled to preserve the body from all corruption so long as it remained itself subject to God.’ This is a very important point….The root cause of earthly paradise is, I would claim, the quasi-supernatural strength given by God to the soul as such. That is, to the nature of original humanity in the state of original justice, in virtue of the perfect submission of mind and will to God. A quasi-supernatural strength that would radiate through the whole human body-soul composite, and in this way, so to speak, constitute earthly paradise. To put it differently, the homo supernaturalis cannot walk out of paradise like out of a garden, rather wherever the homo supernaturalis is, there is paradise. The root, radix, of the state of paradise is the gift of iustitia originalis, and the loss of the latter, original justice, is identical with the loss of the former, the state of paradise, with all of its preternatural entailments.” —Prof. Reinhard Hütter
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About the speaker:
Dr. Reinhard Huetter is Ordinary Professor of Fundamental Theology at the School of Theology and Religious Studies of The Catholic University.
Professor Huetter is a native of Lichtenfels, Germany. He received his Dr. theol. (summa cum laude) in 1990, and his Habilitation in 1995, both from the University of Erlangen. He taught for nine years theological ethics and systematic theology at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago and for seventeen years systematic theology at Duke University Divinity School. In 2004, he and his wife entered into the full communion of the Catholic Church.
His teaching and research focuses on fundamental theological questions of the relationship between faith and reason, nature and grace, revelation and faith, theology and philosophy, dogma and history, on questions of theological anthropology (grace and freedom), and the theology and epistemology of faith. He has an abiding interest in the thought of Thomas Aquinas and has, in more recent years, developed also an intense interest in the thought of John Henry Newman.
Huetter is the author of numerous books, most recently Dust Bound for Heaven: Explorations in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas (2012) and Divine Happiness: Aquinas on the Journey to Beatitude, the Ultimate Human End (forthcoming 2018) and has contributed numerous chapters to handbooks and edited collections. He is presently working on a theological commentary on Psalm 119, a small book on John Henry Newman, and a theological treatise on Doctrine: Its Nature and Development.
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