David Francis Sherwood

I am a PhD candidate in theology at Ave Maria University (AMU) in Florida, where I have studied systematic and biblical theology. Since January 2025, I have also been an adjunct instructor of theology at AMU, teaching in the core curriculum.

Originally from the Columbia Basin of Washington State, I returned to the USA in the summer of 2022, after having studied in Trumau, Austria, at the (Pontifical) ITI Catholic University for four years. While in Austria, I received a licentiate degree (STL) and a master’s degree (STM / Mag. theol.) in theology from the ITI. I began my academic journey at Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula, California, studying theology and philosophy alongside the humanities and liberal arts.

My academic writing has appeared in The Aquinas Review, The Downside Review, The Heythrop Journal, European Journal for the Study of Thomas Aquinas, and Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses, while my academic translations are published or forthcoming in The Aquinas Review and Lux Veritatis. My popular work may be found in the Homiletic and Pastoral Review and VoegelinView. My work centers on Saint Thomas Aquinas’s theology and philosophy, especially in the tradition of Laval Thomism. Specifically, my work focuses on mariology and sacramental theology. However, I also have interests in late patristics (particularly Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and Saint Augustine of Hippo), biblical theology, liturgical studies, theology of the magisterium, and Pseudo-Albert the Great's mariology.

My dissertation project is titled “The Cosmological Mariology of Charles De Koninck: Marian Causality and Principles.” It will both help to recover the full scope of De Koninck’s published Mariology and explain his key contribution to the field, namely that Mary is an agent, final, and formal cause within the cosmology of the order of re-creation, insofar as she is united and subordinate to her Son.