Justin M. Anderson, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Moral Theology
School of Theology

Justin M. Anderson is Associate Professor of Moral Theology at Immaculate Conception Seminary School of Theology at Seton Hall University. He is author of the book Virtue and Grace in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming) and co-author of Pursuing the Honorable: Honor and Today’s Military (Lexington Books, 2019). His articles have been published in peer-reviewed journals such as Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie and International Philosophical Quarterly.

Dr. Anderson is co-founder of the international research group “Thomas Aquinas and Canon Law” and a consultant at “Aquinas and ‘the Arabs'”. He is a member of the Academy of Catholic Theology and the American Catholic Philosophical Association.

Dr. Anderson’s overarching interest focuses on the historical sources and conditions under which various ethical positions become possible, especially in the medieval ages and today. This has led him to study understandings of virtue and grace in the 12th and 13th centuries, especially that of Thomas Aquinas; an ethics and politics of participation; and the historical influence medieval ecclesial law and arabic philosophy exercised on Aquinas’s works. Given his interest is largely in the realm of ethics, Dr. Anderson’s scholarly interests also extend to contemporary, analytic virtue ethics and its potential for dialogue with a contemporary Thomism; the rational grounding for the existence of intrinsically evil actions; moral object and intentionality; and the philosophical basis for the social principles of Catholic social teaching.

He earned his Ph.D. (2011) from the Institute of Philosophy at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Louvain).

Courses he frequently teaches include: Fundamental Moral Theology I and II, Catholic Social Teaching, The Ethics of Virtue, Moral Evil and Moral Absolutes, Christian Decision Making, and Secularism and Catholicism.

Education

• Ph.D., Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
• M.Phil., Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
• Ph.L., Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas
• M.A., Gonzaga University
• S.T.B., Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas

Scholarship

Peer-Reviewed Books

Virtue and Grace in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). Pursuing the Honorable: Honor and Today’s Military, co-authored with Prof. Kenneth W. McDonald (Lexington Book, 2019)

Peer-Reviewed Articles

“Is it Better to Die Excommunicated than Act Against One’s Conscience? What Aquinas Famously (Never) Said on Conscience and Church Authority.” Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 95, issue 4 (2019): 567-93.

“The Hermeneutical Function of the Family in Right Understanding of Catholic Social Teaching and Its Use for Catholic University Education,” Journal of Catholic Higher Education 35, no. 2 (Summer 2016): 119-32.

“Clarifying Anscombe’s Ethical Absolutism”, Ch. 4 in G.E.M. Anscombe and the Catholic Intellectual Tradition (Neumann University Press, May 2016): 49-80.

“Aristotelian Groundings of the Social Principle of Subsidiary,” International Philosophical Quarterly, 55, no. 1 (August 2014): 101-19.

“An Unmanageable Rationale: How Business Ethic Textbooks Unwittingly Recommend a Virtue Ethic Account of Moral Reasoning,” Journal of Markets and Morality, 17, no. 1 (June 2014): 85-103.

“Aquinas on the Graceless Unbeliever,” Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie, 59, no. 1 (September 2012): 5-25.