Extract

This volume of essays continues the trend of reclaiming the Angelic Doctor for theology. The preface claims that in the past ‘Thomas the theologian has sometimes suffered from a caricature of his work that paints him as primarily a (usually Aristotelian) philosopher’ (p. xiii). A ‘more accurate picture’ having become necessary, the editors have gathered twelve essays by some of today's best-known Thomist scholars to ‘offer something not currently available in English: a companion to Thomas as a teacher of Christian doctrine’. While it may be something of an exaggeration to maintain that until recently Thomas's contribution to the life of the Church and the thought of Western Europe was judged to be primarily in philosophical rather than theological terms (a view also expressed by Fergus Kerr in his foreword), there is enough truth in the assertion to give some justification for the preface's forcefully expressed contentions and to make a volume like this a welcome addition to the growing number of studies that are mining the theological depths of Thomas's writings.

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