Jeffrey S. Lehman is co-founder and Dean of Fellows at the Boethius Institute and Professor of Philosophy and Theology and Director of the M.A. in Catholic Education program at the Augustine Institute’s Graduate School of Theology. He earned a B.A. in Biblical Literature and Philosophy from Taylor University, an M.A. in Philosophy of Religion and Ethics from Biola University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Dallas. He is the founder and President of the Arts of Liberty Project, a Founding Fellow of the Center for Thomas More Studies, and he has served on the teaching faculty at Biola University, Thomas Aquinas College, Hillsdale College, and the University of Dallas, where he received the Haggerty Award for Excellence in Teaching. While at the University of Dallas, he also served as director of the Classical Education Graduate Program and executive director of the St. Ambrose Center for Catholic Liberal Education. He has several publications on a wide array of authors, including Augustine: Rejoicing in the Truth and Socratic Conversation: Bringing the Dialogues of Plato and the Socratic Tradition into Today’s Classroom.

Monographs & Edited Volumes

Author: Socratic Conversation: Bringing the Dialogues of Plato and the Socratic Tradition into Today’s Classroom, Classical Academic Press, 2021 (front matter and first chapter)

Author: Augustine: Rejoicing in the Truth, Classical Academic Press, 2018 (front matter and first chapter)

Editor: Life of John Picus Earl of Mirandola: 500th Anniversary Edition, Center for Thomas More Studies, 2010 (entire work published online)

Articles in Academic Journals & Essays in Collections

Article: “The Cave and the Quadrivium: Mathematics in Classical Education,” Principia: A Journal of Classical Education, Vol. 1. Iss. 1, 2022 (article)

Essay in Collection: “Book 3: Augustine’s Pedagogy of Presence, Truth, and Love,” in Augustine’s Confessions and Contemporary Concerns, edited by Fr. David Vincent Meconi, SJ, Catholic University of America Press [Imprint: St. Paul Seminary Press], 2022 (table of contents and introduction to collection of essays)

Essay in Collection: “Passing Strange, Yet Wholly True: On the Political Tales of Plato’s Critias and More’s Hythlodaeus,” in Thomas More: Why Patron of Statesmen?, edited by Travis Curtright, Rowman & Littlefield, 2015 (table of contents)

Article: “Seeing Tyranny in More’s History of King Richard III,” Moreana, June 2013, Vol. 50, No. 191-192 (abstract)

Article: “’As I read, I was set on fire'”: On the Psalms in Augustine’s Confessions,” Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture, Vol. 16, No. 2., Spring 2013 (entire article)

Essays & Excerpts: “Chapter 3: Aristotle” and “Chapter 4: Virgil”, in The Great Books Reader, Excerpts and Essays on the Most Influential Books in Western Civilization, edited by John Mark Reynolds, Baker Publishing, 2011 (table of contents)

Public Lectures & Podcasts

Podcast: “Episode 1: Plato’s Apology,” The Examining Life: A Podcast of the Arts of Liberty Project (recording)

Podcast: “Episode 3: Raphael’s School of Athens,” The Examining Life: A Podcast of the Arts of Liberty Project (recording)

Podcast: “Episode 8: Anselm’s Proslogion,” The Examining Life: A Podcast of the Arts of Liberty Project (recording)

Public Lecture: “On the Psalms in St. Augustine’s Confessions,” St. Vincent de Paul Lecture & Concert Series, Thomas Aquinas College, Santa Paula, CA,  2015 (recording)

Teaching Awards and Commendations

“Educating by Example: A Tribute to Dr. Lehman,” by Avery Lacey, Hillsdale College, 2019 (article)

Haggerty Award for Excellence in Teaching, University of Dallas, 2022 (press release)

Andrew Seeley is co-founder and President of the Boethius Institute for the Advancement of Liberal Education. He also serves as the Director of Advanced Formation for Educators at the Augustine Institute. He received a Licentiate from the Pontifical Institute in Medieval Studies in Toronto and a Ph.D. in Medieval Studies from the University of Toronto. Over his three decades as a Tutor at Thomas Aquinas College in California, Dr. Seeley completed teaching every subject in its demanding, integrated Great Books curriculum. He is co-author of Declaration Statesmanship: A Course in American Government. Desiring to share his love of learning and teaching, Dr. Seeley co-founded the Institute for Catholic Liberal Education in 2005, where he served as Executive Director for 12 years, and continues to contribute as a board member and a Faculty Consultant. He became Executive Director of the Arts of Liberty Project in 2021. In recognition of his work in the renewal of liberal education, he has been named as the 2023 recipient of the Circe Institute’s Paideia Prize.

Publications

Classic Hymns for Catholic Schools (editor), Institute for Catholic Liberal Education, April, 2021.

Golden Treasures: Notes and Commentary on Classic English Hymns, Institute for Catholic Liberal Education, 2021.

Renewing Catholic Schools: How to Regain a Catholic Vision in a Secular Age (contributor). Catholic University of America Press, 2020. 

Declaration Statesmanship: A Course in American Government (with Dr. Richard Ferrier), 2002; republished by TAN Books, 2021.

Papers and Essays

“Numbers Make Me Sad: A Mathematical Account of Music’s Emotional Power”, The National Conference of the Institute for Catholic Liberal Education, July 2021.

 “The Declaration of Independence: Shadow or Image?” Thomas Aquinas College, February 2021.

“The Gravity of Gravity: Astronomy and its Relevance”, Imaginative Conservative, January 2021.

“Hamlet and the Problem of Conscience”, St. Austin Review, March/April 2016.

“A Wise and Understanding People”, presented to Authenticum, Grand Rapids, Michigan, April 

2015.

“The Education of the Hobbits in the Lord of the Rings”, The Imaginative Conservative, August 

2014.

“The Blessings of Liberty:  Reminders from Aristotle and Livy For Our Troubled Times”:  Arts 

of Liberty: A Journal on Liberal Arts and Liberal Education, Summer 2014. 

“Cassius and the Tragedy of Rome”, in Julius Caesar, Ignatius Critical Editions:  San Francisco, 

CA, 2012.

“Aristotelian Matter in an Evolutionary Cosmos”. Presented at the Society for Aristotelian Studies conference, June 2011.

Blog

When I Discovered Your Words

Matthew Walz was born in New York, but grew up mostly in Ohio. He completed undergraduate studies at Christendom College, double-majoring in philosophy and theology and graduating as the valedictorian of the class of 1995. He did graduate studies in the School of Philosophy at The Catholic University of America (CUA). There he earned a doctorate in philosophy by completing a dissertation on Thomas Aquinas’s understanding of free will.

Matthew has been teaching at the college level since 1998. As a graduate student, he taught for two years at CUA. Then he began teaching at Thomas Aquinas College, where he remained for eight years. Since 2008 he has been a professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Dallas (UD). He served as Chair of the Philosophy Department for four years. In the summer of 2012, he began serving as the Director of the Philosophy & Letters and Pre-Theology Programs at UD and became the Director of Intellectual Formation at Holy Trinity Seminary. Since the summer of 2022, moreover, he has been serving as Associate Dean of the Constantin College of Liberal Arts at UD.

Matthew’s research and writing focus primarily on medieval philosophy, ancient philosophy, and philosophical anthropology. As his publications indicate, in addition to Aquinas, his favorite philosophical authors include Aristotle, Augustine, Boethius, Anselm, Bonaventure, and Wojtyla/John Paul II.

Matthew has been married to his lovely wife Teresa since 1999. They have been blessed with eight children (two boys and six girls) who keep them busy, of course, but also joyful and grateful to God for His multitudinous gifts.

Book Translation

Anselm of Canterbury, Proslogion (including Gaunilo’s objections and Anselm’s reply), translated and introduced by Matthew D. Walz (South Bend: St. Augustine’s Press, 2013).

Articles

“A ‘Kingdom of Friends’: Personal Dimensions of Aquinas’s Moral World,” The Aquinas Review 25 (2022): 59-76.

“Study, Truth, and Personal Formation: Reflections on John Paul II’s Pastores dabo vobis,” International Journal of Christianity and Education 25 (2021): 277-89.

“Toward a Causal Account of Priestly Formation: A Reading of Pastores dabo vobis,” Homiletic and Pastoral Review (January 28, 2021, https://www.hprweb.com/2021/01/toward-a-causal-account-of-priestly-formation/).

“Education as Intellectual Healing: Pedagogical Dimension of Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy,” in: Liberal Arts and Core Texts in the World of Our Students, ed. G. Camp (The ACTC Liberal Arts Institute, 2021), 33-37.

“From Monasticism to Scholasticism: Reflections on Anselm and Aquinas,” in: The Arts and Sciences of a Core Text Education: What Are They? Why Do We Need Them?, ed. S. Ashmot and K. Tom (The ACTC Liberal Arts Institute, 2021), 45–49.

“At the Heart of Atheism: Aquinas on the Two Basic Objections to a God’s Existence,” in: Bridging Divides, Crossing Borders, Community Building: The Human Voice in Core Texts and the Liberal Arts, eds. T. Hoang and D. Nuckols (The ACTC Liberal Arts Institute, 2021), 139-44.

“Death by Incarnation,” Logos 23 (2020): 19–35.

“Synthesizing Aquinas and Newman on Religion,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 86 (2019): 173–98.

“Augustine’s Modification of Liberal Education: Reflections on De doctrina Christiana,” Arts of Liberty 1 (2013): 51–97.

“Stoicism as Anesthesia: Philosophy’s ‘Gentler Remedies’ in Boethius’s Consolation,” International Philosophical Quarterly 51 (2011): 501–19.

“An Erotic Pattern of Thinking in Anselm’s Proslogion,” Quaestiones Disputatae 2 (2011): 126–45.

“The ‘Logic’ of Faith Seeking Understanding: A Propaedeutic for Anselm’s Proslogion,” Dionysius 28 (2010): 131–66.

“The Opening of On Interpretation: Toward a More Literal Reading,” Phronesis 51 (2006): 230–51.

“What is a Power of the Soul? Aquinas’s Answer,” Sapientia 60 (2006): 319–48.

“Theological and Philosophical Dependencies in Bonaventure’s Argument Against an Eternal World,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 97 (1998): 75–98.

Invited Publications

Foreword to Wayne Hankey, Aquinas’s Neoplatonism in the Summa theologiae on God: A Short Introduction (South Bend: St. Augustine’s Press, 2019).

“Boethius, Christianity, and the Limits of Stoicism,” Perspectives in Religious Studies 45 (2018), 407–25.

“Boethius and Stoicism,” in: The Routledge Handbook of the Stoic Tradition, ed. J. Sellars (London: Routledge, 2016): 70–84.