A graduate colloquium on Contemporary Thomistic Christology with Fr. Thomas Joseph White, O.P., and
Fr. Dominic Legge, O.P.
July 29 - August 3, 2024 | Dominican House of Studies, Washington, DC
The Thomistic Institute’s graduate colloquia give emerging scholars from different Ph.D. programs an opportunity to meet and work with other young scholars. Participants also have the chance to benefit from the wisdom and formation of senior scholars.
This colloquium is open to current Ph.D. students in philosophy, theology, and related fields. Attached to your application, please include a 500-word personal statement describing your current research and your reasons for applying to this colloquium.
Successful applicants will receive a full tuition scholarship and room and board for the duration of the conference. A limited number of travel scholarships are also available for select students who do not have access to institutional funding for travel.
Applications have closed.
The Scholars:
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Fr. Thomas Joseph was born in Atlanta, Georgia (USA). He graduated from Brown University with a B.A. in religious studies (1993) and completed his M.Phil, and D.Phil. at the University of Oxford in theology (2003). In 2003 he entered the Dominican Order’s Province of St. Joseph, where he was ordained to the priesthood in 2008 in Washington, D.C. He completed an S.T.L. at the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception at the Dominican House of Studies, where he also served as a professor of theology for 10 years. He was the founding director of the Thomistic Institute in Washington D.C, an institute for intellectual evangelization on secular university campuses that is now present on over 90 campuses across the US and Europe.
Since 2018, Fr. Thomas Joseph was charged by the Master of the Dominican Order to teach theology at the Angelicum and to reorganize the Angelicum’s Thomistic Institute in order to help promote the study of the Thomistic tradition in the heart of the Church. This institute fosters theological research and engagement with other philosophical and theological traditions, as well as contemporary sciences.
In 2021, Fr. Thomas Joseph was appointed the Rector Magnificus of the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Rome and Director of the Thomistic Institute at the Angelicum. He has been a member of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas since 2011. He is the co-editor of the theology journal Nova et Vetera (English edition), and a Distinguished Scholar of the McDonald Agape Foundation. He has authored several books, including Wisdom in the Face of Modernity: A Study in Thomistic Natural Theology (Sapientia Press, 2009); The Incarnate Lord: A Thomistic Study in Christology (The Catholic University of America Press, 2015); The Light of Christ: An Introduction to Catholicism (The Catholic University of America Press, 2017), and The Trinity: On the Nature and Mystery of the One God (The Catholic University of America Press, 2022). In December 2023, Fr. White was installed as a Master of Sacred Theology, the highest scholarly honor in the Dominican Order.
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Fr. Dominic Legge, O.P. hails from the greater Seattle area. He received his BA in Political Philosophy and Economics from Claremont McKenna College (1993). Fr. Legge subsequently obtained a J.D. from Yale Law School and practiced law as a trial attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice for several years.
After entering the Order of Preachers, Fr. Legge obtained a Ph.L. from the Catholic University of America and an S.T.L. from the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception. He completed his doctorate in Sacred Theology from the University of Fribourg, working under Gilles Emery and defending a dissertation on the Trinitarian dimensions of the Incarnation according to St. Thomas Aquinas.
In 2014, Fr. Legge was appointed to the faculty of the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception as a Professor of Systematic Theology and, since 2018, has served as the Director of the Thomistic Institute in Washington, D.C. He has also taught at The Catholic University of America Law School in Washington, DC and at Providence College in Providence, RI.
While Fr. Legge publishes widely on topics such as faith and reason, natural rights and natural law, and grace, he specializes in Thomistic Christology and is the author of The Trinitarian Christology of St. Thomas Aquinas (Oxford University Press, 2018). In addition, he has contributed chapters to Thomas Aquinas and the Greek Fathers (Ave Maria University Press, 2018), Thomas Aquinas and the Crisis of Christology (Ave Maria University Press, 2021), The Cambridge Companion to Aquinas (Cambridge University Press, 2022), and A Theology after the School of Saint Thomas Aquinas: In honor of Prof. Gilles Emery, OP on the Occasion of his 60th Birthday (Éditions du Cerf, 2022). In February 2022, he was invited to speak at the Vatican for the Symposium on the Priesthood, sponsored by the Research Center of Anthropology for Vocations.
Fr. Legge is an ordinary member of the Academy of Catholic Theology and an Ordinary Member of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas.