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"Courageous Surviving: How St. Thomas Aquinas' Accounts of Fear and Courage Matter for Life after Trauma"
Warren Kinghorn, MD, ThD
Wednesday, March 18, 2026
4:00 p.m.
Stapleton Lounge - LeMans Hall
Livestream option available: https://www.youtube.com/live/WAlUWrQbO-Q
Meet our 2025 Joyce McMahon Hank Aquinas Scholar in Residence
Dr. Warren Kinghorn is Professor of Psychiatry, Duke University School of Medicine; Esther Colliflower Professor of the Practice of Pastoral and Moral Theology, Duke Divinity School; co-director of the Theology, Medicine, and Culture Initiative at Duke Divinity School; and a staff psychiatrist at the Durham VA Medical Center. His work centers on the way that Christians understand mental health and mental illness and accompany those with mental health problems. He is co-author with Abraham Nussbaum of Prescribing Together; A Relational Guide to Psychopharmacology (American Psychiatric Association Publishing, 2021) and the author of Wayfaring: A Christian Approach to Mental Health Care (Eerdmans, 2024).
About His Lecture
When traumatic events have shattered the safety and predictability of life in the world, what does it mean to go on? In this lecture we will examine how St. Thomas Aquinas offers powerful and helpful resources for living in the aftermath of trauma. When trauma makes emotions hard to control and understand, Aquinas reminds us that the emotions (or passions) are embodied signs of love. When trauma encourages us to hide and retreat, Aquinas offers an account of courage and the disposition to stand squarely in the face of life-threatening danger, to feel appropriate fear, and nonetheless to stand firm and to move forward in the pursuit of justice. Aquinas' accounts of the passion of fear and the virtue of courage offer surprising resources for trauma survivors, naming trauma's existential dimensions and suggesting practices helpful for recovery.
The Aquinas Scholar in Residence is sponsored by the Joyce McMahon Hank Aquinas Chair in Catholic Theology, held by Professor Anita Houck.
For further information, please contact Department of Religious Studies and Theology, (574) 284-4534 or email ahouck@saintmarys.edu.