2016 Aquinas Lecture

This lecture will explore the analogies between our “life in Christ” and our life “with language”. The inescapability of language is usually either over-deplored or over-celebrated by thinkers and poets of our times. Aquinas deals with this linguistic conditioning of creaturely knowledge for several reasons. Olivier-Thomas' thesis is that he experiences a deep analogy, even a participation, between Christ and language, already at work in the New Testament. Aquinas thematises that analogy only partly, but it is our task as theologians to deploy it if we are to maintain the ideal of realism.

Olivier-Thomas Venard, OP, Vice Director of École Biblique et Archéologique Française de Jérusalem, Professor of New Testament.