Thomas Aquinas's Summa theologiae: A Biography (Lives of Great Religious Books, 20) Hardcover – May 25, 2014

OK fine book

Thorough

Bernard McGinn is in my view at least, the best scholar on Christian spirituality around at the moment. His studies and translations of the works of Meister Eckhart, and his magisterial series 'History of Western Mysticism' remains unsurpassed in depth and scope, and probably will remain so for at least another generation or so. In this shorter work, McGinn aims to give an overview of the 'Summa Theologica,' the masterpiece of Thomas Aquinas that became the outstanding achievement of the intellect in medieval Christendom, and remains extremely influential even today (Aquinas is cited along with Augustine the most times of any non-Papal writer in the recent Catechism and the most recent CDF document makes abundant reference to Aquinas, as have all the Popes in the last century). An illuminating anecdote around Aquinas's canonisation is useful here - when asked what miracles Aquinas had performed through his intercession, the Pope apparently replied that everything Thomas wrote was a miracle. While perhaps hagiographical in origin, there is a solid element of truth to this story.Aquinas is a difficult thinker, though his expression in the ST and other works is clear and dry enough. I have read the entire ST and still often refer to it, and have also read some of Thomas's other works. Overall, as Richard McBrien rightly remarked in one article, Thomas is a genuinely 'Catholic' thinker. His theology has a strong balance between faith and reason, nature and grace, prayer and the sacraments, liturgy and theology, devotion and thought, as well as an intellectual rigor attained by very few in the whole history of the church. Quite rightly the Catholic church at least still requires seminarians to carefully study the angelic doctor and become familiar in his thought.McGinn does a good job of mapping out the ST, which despite its complexity, is also a spiritual journey as well as a didactic work. Thomas follows the Neo-Platonic structure of procession of all things from God as their source in creation and nature, (exitus) and their final return to their final goal through nature and grace. Thomas follows the four-fold structure of Peter Lombard's 'Sentences' with the Triune God coming first, followed by a consideration of the world as God's creation (Part 2), the Incarnation of the Word and the grace of the redeemer (Part 3) and the return of the redeemed creature to God via the church and sacraments (Part 4). Unfortunately, St Thomas died before he was able to complete the fourth part of the Summa and hence compilers attempted to 'complete' his work with extracts from his other works, such as the Commentary on Sentences. In this, Aquinas along with Bonaventure, Eriugena, Augustine, Origen, Pseudo-Dionysius, Meister Eckhart and the Cappadocian Fathers conceived of the world as a great 'river' of sorts emanating from the free will of a loving God, and returns to him in an overarching symphony of movement that reflects (but does not exhaust) the dynamic and fecund nature of God himself. Part of the challenge of the ST is not to just take a snippet here and there to settle some controversial issue, or use it to compile a 'manual' of some kind to purport to give answers to every question (the problem Rahner noted with Neo-Scholastic uses of St Thomas). Fortunately, the more modern readings more accurately place Aquinas and the ST in better context and also with better coherence with Christian fundamental theology about God, the Trinity, the Incarnation, Christ, Salvation, the Sacraments, the Liturgy, prayer, and so on. To try and not understand Thomas as a whole is to not understand him at all, a point I wish more contemporary apologists would take into account. The lack of intellectual rigor I see in many pointless and trivial debates in so-called 'discussion forums' often involves people misquoting or misusing Thomas's ideas to develop a one-dimensional fundamentalist travesty of his thought.This work by McGinn adds to the library of useful Thomistic studies and will hopefully help make the Angelic Doctor better known to the wider public.

Princeton's "Lives of Great Religious Books" series continues to knock them out of the park. In this volume McGinn manages to give a reasonably comprehensive overview of one of the most important and largest works in Christian history in under 300 small pages and frankly I don't know how that was possible.I wasn't previously familiar with the Summa itself and I'm not personally from the Catholic tradition. But I didn't struggle with this book because McGinn writes coherently to insiders and outsiders of the Catholic tradition. I haven't read any other introductions to the Summa, but if there is a better one out there than this I'd like to see it, because I'm not sure how you could improve on what McGinn's done here.

Thomas Aquinas's "Summa Theologiae" is regarded as a classic in the history of philosophy and Bernard McGinn's biography of this influential work now has a reputation of its own to contend with.The "Summa Theologiae" was written by Thomas Aquinas with the intention of providing an instructional guide for moderate theologians as well as a compendium of the theological teachings of the Catholic Church. McGinn tells the story of how this massive piece of history came to be in what he calls "a short book about a long book".The book begins with an exploration of the world in which Thomas Aquinas lived. The 13th century was a time of great change, from the papal reordering of western medieval Christianity to the rise of the university and scholastic theology. This world shaped Aquinas and McGinn examines his reasons for writing the "Summa". He also takes readers on a tour of the original works and discusses its influence over the last seven centuries. To this day there is extensive religious study of "Summa", and one book for several related essays is Eleonore Stump's  Reasoned Faith: Essays in Philosophical Theology .McGinn makes efforts to present this biography in a way that is accessible to all readers and assumes those who have picked it up will share his curiosity in the subject. He is right to assume this, because it is an immensely interesting subject. It is also unlikely that many people will tackle the original work (it's 3,000 pages long!), so this is a great book for both research and reference that is easy to follow and one that clearly demonstrates the author's passion for this topic.

Orderred for a friend. No feedback

Well researched and different insight from the usual. No mention of what Aquinas was actually saying.

interesting book but poor quality paper