Thomas Williams is the Isabelle A. and Henry D. Martin Professor of Medieval Philosophy at Georgetown University. He has published widely on medieval philosophy and theology, with a particular focus on Augustine, Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, and John Duns Scotus.
His work includes Anselm: A Very Short Introduction, Anselm: The Complete Treatises with Selected Letters and Prayers and the Meditation on Human Redemption, and a translation of Augustine's Confessions.
· “How great a debtor: grace and providence in Augustine’s Confessions” (2024)
· Confessions (2019)
· Hermeneutics and Reading Scripture (2014)
· Review of Brian Dobell, Augustine’s Intellectual Conversion (2011)
· Review of James J. O’Donnell, Augustine: A New Biography (2007)
· Augustine vs Plotinus: The Uniqueness of the Vision at Ostia (2002)
· On Free Choice of the Will (1993)
· “‘Be anxious for nothing’: Anselm on Fearing Evil” (2024)
· Anselm: A Very Short Introduction (2022)
· Anselm: The Complete Treatises (2022)
· Can Anselm Have Everything He Wants? (2021)
· Anselm on Evil (2018)
· Anselm on Free Choice and Character Formation (2017)
· Anselm’s Quiet Radicalism (2016)
· Anselm: Free Will and Moral Responsibility (2014)
· Review of Katherin Rogers, Anselm on Freedom (2009)
· Anselm (Great Medieval Thinkers) (2008)
· God Who Sows the Seed and Gives the Growth: Anselm’s Theology of Holy Spirit (2007)
· Anselm on Truth (2005)
· Anselm’s Account of Freedom (2005)
· The curious case of the marginalized mystics (2023)
· Atonement (2021)
· The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Ethics (2019)
· Will and Intellect (2019)
· Philosophy in the Middle Ages, 3rd ed. (2010)
· Describing God (2009)
· Sin, Grace, and Redemption in Abelard (2004)
· Transmission and Translation (2003)
Translations
Errata
100.8. restrained willing / restrained willing-against
211 7th line from bottom. not straightaway / straightaway
219.5. [missing period]
219 last sentence before section 3. Faith / Hope
328 n. 55 line 4. unhappiness / happiness
333 line 2 of main text. interior / exterior
I am grateful to Robert Pasnau for drawing some of these corrections to my attention, and I invite other readers to notify me of any other mistakes.
Articles
“Duns Scotus, intuitionism, and the third sense of 'natural law'“ (2022)
“Complexity without Composition--Duns Scotus on Divine Simplicity” (2019)
“John Duns Scotus on Free Will” (2016)
“The problem with the Vatican edition of Ordinatio III.26-40” (2014)
“The divine nature and Scotus’s Libertarianism: A reply to Mary Beth Ingham” (2009)
“From metaethics to action theory” (2003)
“The Unimitigated Scotus” (1998)
“The Libertarian Foundations of Scotus’s Moral Philosophy” (1998)
Lesser Feasts
A blog about the Church, travel, staying put, a bit of philosophy, small celebrations (lesser feasts), such meals as I can manage to eat (lesser feasts, again), and whatever else occurs to me