Prof. Jacob Wood contrasts Aquinas’s account of nature, cause, and purpose with modern identity theory, showing that human nature—created and ordered by God—grounds authentic freedom and common purpose in contrast to the fragmentation of expressive individualism. This lecture was given on September 10th, 2025, at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events . About the speaker: Jacob W. Wood was born and raised in the New York City area, where he grew up in the Episcopal Church, learning to contemplate the love of the Lord in the beauty of the liturgy. After an initial period of theological study at the University of Saint Andrews, he followed the path of St. John Henry Newman into full communion with the Catholic Church in 2008. Since earning a doctorate in Systematic Theology from the Catholic University of America in 2014, he has served as a theologian at Franciscan University of Steubenville, focusing his teaching and research on the theology of creation, sin, and grace. He lives with his family in the Ohio countryside, where he continues to cultivate the love of the Lord through liturgical beauty, and has followed the call that many a young Catholic family has answered to sanctify Creation through the work of homesteading. Visit his website at www.wisdomoftradition.com. Keywords: Aristotelian Causes, Divine Creation, Expressive Individualism, Freedom For Excellence, Gender Theory, Heidegger, Judith Butler, Nature And Identity, Order Of Creation, Shared Human Nature
