Jean Rioux has written an admirable synthesis of the main debates in the philosophy of mathematics between those of a largely classical perspective, particularly as in Plato, Aristotle, and Thomas Aquinas, and the whole modern mathematical project begun especially by Cantor.
Read MoreKevin Vallier, in his book All the Kingdoms of the World: On Radical Religious Alternatives to Liberalism, presents the first book-length critique of the contemporary revival of Catholic integralism. Vallier’s work seeks to show the insufficiency of Catholic integralism as well as other religiously motivated anti-liberal theories. Vallier ultimately rejects Catholic integralism because, as he argues, it cannot transition from a liberal order to an integralist one, it is intrinsically unstable, and integralism is fundamentally unjust. Liberals, post-liberals, and integralists will find much to take from this book. Vallier’s arguments set an agenda for integralists to expand and deepen their own philosophical and theological politics.
Read MoreAmong the many contributors to the revival of the Aristotelian philosophy of nature in recent decades one must include the work of William Wallace, O.P., Benedict Ashley, O.P., Nancy Cartwright, Robert Koons, William Simpson, Edward Feser, and many others. We can now include Fr. Andrew Younan’s title, Matter and Mathematics. Younan’s work is a refreshing, briskly argued addition to recent debates about the nature of the laws of nature that avoids pointless detours into their details without eschewing their necessary substance.
Read MoreIt was many years ago when I first learned about the android of St. Albert the Great. It is recorded, among other loca, in the oh-so-reliable Supplement to Mr. Chambers's Cyclopædia: or, Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, published in 1753 …
Read MoreSullivan’s book is one with which further scholarly and even pastoral engagement is needed. Such were the contexts in which I studied the book, while leading a monthly seminar on Habits and Holiness during the 2021–22 academic year. The participants were diocesan priests in Wichita, and, apart from the fraternity of the group itself, the further purpose of the discussion was to become better ministers of the sacrament of confession towards the end of bearing greater spiritual fruit in the lives of penitents. After reviewing the scope and contents of the work, along with a closer look at some points of detail, I close with some feedback from the monthly seminar.
Read MoreFor the first time, St. Thomas’s exposition of The Divine Names is available commercially in English. This exquisite 549 page volume includes an introduction, endnotes, a table of citations of The Divine Names in other works of Aquinas, and indexes pertaining to Scripture, Persons, and Terms used. …
Read MoreFew topics inspire more controversy today than human sexuality and gender identity. There is no shortage of Thomistic reflections on the nature of sexual difference in human persons. Typically, Thomists must navigate between the manifest image of human sexual difference and Aquinas’s assumption of medieval Aristotelian biology (e.g., Nolan or Johnston), on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the post-scientific image of gender adopted in indefinitely diverse ways by our contemporaries. An array of ethical and moral theological literature on marriage, the conjugal act, and the family is ready to hand. …
Read MoreHan-Luen Kantzer Komline loves the Doctor of Grace not only as her theological guide but also as her personal companion, and that makes Augustine on the Will: A Theological Account a joy to read. Indeed, Kantzer Komline writes as though she traveled alongside St. Augustine from his conversion in Milan to his death in Hippo. Her prose is sophisticated with a familial lilt, a soulfulness that is rare in academic writing. Better still, she allows Augustine to speak for himself before she paraphrases or synthesizes; he was schooled as a rhetorician, after all. Rather than feigning originality, she allows Augustine to be Augustine without projecting any twenty-first century vogue onto him. Thus, Kantzer Komline presents a true theology, reaching the heart of what affiliates of the Sacra Doctrina Project cherish as “both scientia and sapientia.”
Read MoreTeaching the subjects of logic and natural theology well is no easy task, and aids are greatly to be desired, particularly by beginning teachers. Prof. Houser and Fr. Dodds have recently and respectively published excellent means to each end. My reason for discussing these two books together is to venture, at the end of this review essay, a few ideas concerning philosophical pedagogy in today’s classroom. This review of both books is based upon my own classroom use.
Read MoreReinhard Hütter has written perhaps the most significant theological work of 2020. John Henry Newman On Truth and Its Counterfeits: A Guide for Our Times is a trenchant critique of contemporary culture providing insights gained by Hütter’s ease in making Sts. Thomas Aquinas and Newman conversation partners. Hütter astounds the reader not only has with his command of Newman’s writings but also by showing how each of Newman’s works fit into his life. For my part, I have found the book to be an important course-preparation resource for establishing a development of doctrine framework in the Church history classes I have taught in seminary over the past academic year. I am re-reading and discussing the text with one of our seminarians.
Read MoreStephen L. Brock’s The Light That Binds is an excellent treatment of St. Thomas Aquinas’s natural law teaching in the Summa theologiae. The exposition and argument present a cogent and insightful tour of the theological and metaphysical architecture of the legal transept, as it were, of the cathedral that is Aquinas’s Summa, all while engaging the views of a variety of contemporary scholars. In what follows, I consider the book overall, note some high points of its chapters, and offer some thoughts for future readers of the book.
Read MoreIn his monograph, Cosmology Without God? The Problematic Theology Inherent in Modern Cosmology—a revised version of his doctoral dissertation written under Michael Hanby at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family at the Catholic University of America—Fr. David Alcalde pronounces a harsh sentence on the cogency of much contemporary science-religion dialogue, in particular in the domain of theological claims made in virtue of the hypotheses, theories, or conclusions of modern cosmology
Read MoreEdward Feser’s Aristotle’s Revenge (Editiones Scholasticae, 2019) is consequently a welcome addition to the late 20th- and early 21st-century resurgence of broadly Aristotelian and Thomistic approaches to the philosophy of nature, and the volume spells out in detail and begins to develop the metaphysical grounds to which Simon refers. It is essential reading for those interested in the topic of the perennial Aristotelian philosophy of nature and its relationship to the particular natural sciences.
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Thomas Aquinas and the Greek Fathers, edited by Michael Dauphinais, Andrew Hofer, O.P., and Roger Nutt, Sapientia Press: Ave Maria University, Ave Maria, Florida, 2019.
In this latest of volumes that are the product of joint conferences between the Thomistic Institute of the Dominican House of Studies (Washington, DC) and the Aquinas Center for Theological Renewal of Ave Maria University (Ave Maria, FL), the editors and authors address what is variously identified as a “tragic dialectic,” a “false dichotomy,” and a “hermeneutical binary” that has arisen between the theology of Thomas Aquinas and that of the Greek Fathers. As this volume makes clear, whatever one might call this outdated approach, it fails to appreciate the mass of textual evidence supporting the considerable influence which the Greek Fathers exercised upon St. Thomas’ mature works, especially the Tertia Pars and the biblical commentaries. This volume also demonstrates that the dichotomous view profoundly incapacitates the contemporary theologian from attending with any sensitivity to the profound modes of complementarity that exist between the joint “cruciform proclamations of the truth of the Gospel” in Aquinas and the Greek Fathers.
For students of St. Thomas this volume will be a welcome addition to their library and is likely to assist in future studies of patristic themes in Aquinas. In particular, citing only a few of the many excellent essays contained herein, students ought to attend closely to the works of Fr. Khaled Anatolios (University of Notre Dame), “The Ontological Grammar of Salvation and the Salvific Work of Christ in Athanasius and Thomas Aquinas,” and Joseph Wawrykow, “The Greek Fathers in the Eucharistic Theology of Thomas Aquinas.” Both of these essays, which can be profitably read together, are masterful presentations of the complementarity that becomes possible when one abandons the false binary between Aquinas and the Greek Fathers. Likewise, the contribution of Jorgen Vijgen (Nicolaus Copernicus University, Poland), “Aquinas’s Reception of Origen: A Preliminary Study,” the longest in the volume, is noteworthy for its extensive treatment of explicit references to Origen in Aquinas’ works and certainly invites further research. All of the essays, and the volume as a whole, reinforce for students and scholars the generous spirit, a spirit requisite for the renewal of theology today (see Fr. Andrew Hofer’s conclusion), with which St. Thomas went about his study and teaching of theology.
Reviewed by Gideon Barr
John M. Meinert offers a signal contribution to contemporary scholarship on the gifts of the Holy Spirit in The Love of God Poured Out: Grace and the Gifts of the Holy Spirit in St. Thomas Aquinas. St. Thomas composed his Summa theologiae as a unified presentation of sacra doctrina, and Meinert uncovers the riches of reading the treatise on grace in the Summa alongside the treatise on the gifts.
Servais Pinckaers argued that that the gifts of the Holy Spirit exert a perpetual and pervasive influence on the Christian moral life, contrary to the more traditional reading of Aquinas that the gifts are only intermittently activated by a distinct grade of supernatural inspirations. Meinert gives greater traction to Pinckaers’s interpretation by arguing in various ways that the instinctus of the Holy Spirit is in fact identical with the common auxilium that God gives to believers, i.e. actual grace. From this central thesis, Meinert offers an impressive number of implications for Thomistic thought on the modes of human action, sacramental grace, merit, perseverance, the divisions of grace, the relations between grace, gifts, and virtues, etc. The book also contains some handy expositions of St. Thomas’s analogous uses of the terms instinctus, auxilium, necessity, and motion. Meinert offers a highly credible alternative to the traditional reading of St. Thomas on the gifts. His project, however, would be helpfully supplemented with a more thorough account of the context in which St. Thomas developed his theology of the gifts as well as the formation of the traditional consensus about their unique mode of operation. I suspect that investigating these contexts will give conclusive evidence that Meinert has in fact struck key insights in St. Thomas’s thought.
The Love of God Poured Out is highly technical and would not be suitable for anyone who is not already familiar with St. Thomas’s treatments of both grace and the gifts. That said, for anyone with a serious scholarly interest in the gifts of the Holy Spirit, this book is simply indispensable.
- Reviewed by Joshua Revelle, The Catholic University of America
Christopher J. Thompson’s first publication formally introducing his “Green Thomism” is a work of art. For years, Thompson has been quietly coordinating this Thomistic vision for ecology through his Chapelstone Foundation and with a number of articles calling for theologians and other thinkers to give serious moral consideration to the intersection of the Catholic worldview and the growing need for ecological stewardship. Now, he weaves together an integral account that convincingly presents our contemporary deficit with regard to the natural order of lower creation and also argues for a proper vision rooted in the Thomistic philosophical and theological tradition. Throughout, Thompson relies upon the doctrine of Pope Francis’s Laudato Si’, beautifully demonstrating the Thomistic precedent in the holy father’s encyclical.
The Joyful Mystery: Field Notes toward a Green Thomism is available from Emmaus Road Publishing in their Living Faith Series as a small, easy-to-read and easy-to-enjoy hardback. It is accessible at a popular level to readers who have some familiarity with the Catholic Thomistic tradition. Just because it is accessible, however, does not mean that it is not intellectually worthwhile. Its import primarily lies, however, in its ability to personally challenge the reader to convert their minds and hearts and habits to Jesus Christ, the Logos Incarnate, the same sapiential Logos who both creates and redeems in a joyful mystery, summoning a proper response of awe and adoration from us rational animals.
- Reviewed by Brandon L. Wanless
Almost exactly one year ago, the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology and Emmaus Academic (under the direction of Dr. Scott Hahn) teamed up with the Aquinas Institute, the organization behind the famous opera omnia project led by Dr. John Mortensen. The Thomistic Institute has for several years been working diligently at producing a single complete set of the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas, with Leonine Latin and English translation side-by-side throughout. This particular author recently received a free sample copy of volume number 55—”Opusculum I”—as a gift from the St. Paul Center for review. Of the same series, I already have Aquinas’s biblical commentaries on St. Paul’s letter to the Romans and the gospels of Matthew and John, plus the entire fourth book of his commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard.
These volumes are a handful, sizing at about 11.5 inches tall by 8.5 inches wide. They are bound very well and encased within a beautiful blue imitation-leather hardback. The pages feel appropriately thick and almost elegant, with eye-friendly font and dimensions. Finally, there is sufficient marginal space for annotation, especially at the top and bottom of the pages. All in all, this series is splendidly beautiful and easily becomes the envy of any bookshelf, especially after one has compiled a number of volumes.
The most significant aspect of this series, however, is what is found printed on the paper. Not only does this Opera Omnia series provide stunning side-by-side Latin and English of Aquinas’s texts, although that alone would be worthy of attention. No, instead, the real contribution of this series is twofold. First, and most importantly, the Leonine critical Latin edition is made easily accessible to Thomistic scholars in a printed format that will (most likely) fit on office and home bookshelves practically anywhere. This is a major improvement from the opera omnia series that are generally only found as oversized volumes in the reference sections of theological libraries, if they even have them. Second, and quite interestingly, the entirety of Aquinas’s works will be made available in English for the first time ever. It is true that the Aquinas Institute has been relying on several previous English translations to populate their series; however, there are still many works that previously have never been translated beyond a few snippets here and there. Most especially, I am thinking of Aquinas’s massive Commentary on Lombard’s Sentences, but even several of his biblical commentaries, his correspondences, and his lesser known treatises. Because of the availability of the Leonine texts and because of the wave of new English translations, this series marks a major milestone in Thomistic scholarship.
As one can see from the St. Paul Center website, there are only select series available for purchase. A fuller picture of the publication process for individual volumes still in the works can be found on the Aquinas Institute website. Additionally, they have made available many of the texts online at Aquinas.cc. Even though there are still several volumes yet to be published, once the entire series is complete, it will be well worth the wait. In the meantime, there is plenty to enjoy and to use until then!
- Reviewed by Brandon L. Wanless
Roger W. Nutt’s new work, General Principles of Sacramental Theology, is a significant and timely contribution to the field of sacramental theology, one which will fill a long-standing void in the Thomistic theological landscape.
Perhaps the most important aspect of the work is its salient analysis of modern thought and its relation to the pursuit of wisdom. In general, the field of sacramental studies in recent years has largely stood as a sort of microcosm for the wide-ranging contemporary predilection to de-spiritualize everything which it touches. However, what Nutt has done is to properly situate the sacraments within a worldview which strives toward wisdom and real spiritual progress. This ultimately lays the ground work for an understanding of the sacraments which transcends modernity’s proclivity to see even religious practice as entirely experiential, technocratic, and ultimately anthropocentric. The fundamental claim that the sacraments are "visible tokens of God's action"(21) in the world animates the particular theological analyses which comprise the book, allowing them to speak once again to the human desire for wisdom and virtue (rather than remaining dusty, old Thomistic principles of interest only to the curator of ideas). Proper sacramental theology is indeed wedded to Christianity’s claim that mankind is drawn in a supernatural way toward union with God.
Nutt roots sacramental efficacy in the power of Jesus Christ and the Paschal Mystery which is the center point of salvation history. The problem of sin is met with the salve of the sacraments, which not only heal but also elevate man to communion and participation with the divine life itself.
As such, Nutt provides an overview of the sacraments which includes careful considerations of each essential element of Thomistic sacramental theology. For the sake of brevity, I will simply list the most important of those principles: an historical and speculative treatment of the sacraments as signs, sacramental form and matter, ministerial intention, the necessity of the sacraments, sacramental causality and grace (ex opera operato), sacramental character, the institution and authority of the sacraments, and the tripartite sacramental formula of the sacramentum tantum, rest et sacramentum, and res tantum.
While Nutt gives a detailed primer on each principle, he also explores the thought of contrasting theologians and theories. For example, after considering St. Thomas’ theory of instrumental efficient causality, Nutt examines the occasional causality of Duns Scotus, the moral causality of Melchior Cano, as well as some of the views of the Reformers. This analysis not only aids the reader in providing a broader context within which to situate St. Thomas’ views but also helps to clarify those views by way of contrast.
Throughout the work, Nutt cites major figures of the Catholic intellectual tradition but remains in fruitful dialogue and contact with a varied group of modern theologians such as Bernhard Blankenhorn, John Gallagher, Reginald Lynch, Thomas Weinandy, and Sr. Judith Kubicki.
It seems that Nutt’s work has been highly successful in what it sought to achieve, that is to “to address a current lacuna in English-language theological literature” which has been present largely since the publication of Bernard Leeming’s Principles of Sacramental Theology some six decades ago. I believe that it may even be said that Nutt's work transcends Leeming’s work in multiple ways, not least of which with its clarity, coherence, and purposeful consideration of the very foundational principles of solidly Catholic, Thomistic sacramental theology.
The book works at once both to reinvigorate the mind of the sacramental scholar and to introduce the novice to the basic precepts which are fundamental for sacramental study. This book is a must-have for anyone interested in sacramental theology, and ought to immediately become the go-to authority and text for introducing students to the sacramental theology of St. Thomas and its relation to competing sacramental theologies. As such, it appears to me that this work will become an absolutely essential and formative piece of the discussion of sacramental theology for years to come.
It must, of course, be noted that the work is not simply a manual of important sacramental principles. General Principles is itself a speculative contribution to the field insofar as it re-engages fundamental questions in light of what Nutt characterizes as the via moderna of seeing all sacramental practice through the lense of experience, mere history, or anthropology.
Instead, Nutt has re-established the sacraments as the font from which the Church draws her hope and through which she is drawn back to God. Nutt states at the outset that “vital sacramental spirituality constitutes the very heartbeat of the Church,” (6). Rather than relegating sacramental theology to an examination of human ritual or seeing the sacraments as merely an extension of liturgical studies, General Principles restores sacramental study to its legitimate, theo-centric character. With controversies continuing to upset the Church regarding the theological understanding of the operation and reception of the sacraments, Nutt’s work is a true service and offering to the Church, guiding it back toward the Thomistic principles which demonstrate the sacraments and their life-giving pulse.
- Reviewed by Taylor Patrick O’Neill
As the various debates and crises of the 20th century illustrate, the specific focus of fundamental theology addresses some of the most contentious and pertinent aspects of theological and ecclesial reflection within the (post-)modern milieu. Dr. Lawrence Feingold’s recent volume, Faith Comes from What Is Heard: An Introduction to Fundamental Theology, published by Emmaus Academic, provides the reader with a much-needed “textbook” (xix) that faithfully and perspicaciously navigates the decisive waters of fundamental theology.
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With the arrival of The Catholic University of America Press' Thomism and Predestination: Principles and Disputations, the questions pertaining to the Angelic Doctor's understanding of predestination and election have once again been brought to the fore of the Thomistic landscape. In looking through the many fine essays that make up this volume, it becomes clear how intimately linked are the questions of physical premotion and predestination.
Certainly, some may take objection to their relation, especially those who deny that St. Thomas ever held to a doctrine of physical premotion at all. Still, while all Thomists will certainly agree that the grace whereby the elect are chosen (and thus whereby they merit their salvation) is gratuitous, the mechanism of how exactly that grace works to produce the salutary act with the human patient is still hotly disputed.
Many remind us that St. Thomas himself never used the term praemotio physica. While this is certainly true, it is argued by several within this volume that St. Thomas did indeed hold to the doctrine even if he did not explicitly use the term. Steven Long says, "...St. Thomas does affirm that there is a real motion bestowed by God to every creature, a motion that is ontologically prior to any action whatsoever on the part of any creature, including volitional action: and this is what “physical premotion” means. Those who reject the doctrine because Thomas does not use this precise formulation are exhibiting what one might call a semantic ipsissima verba-ism that obstructs their acknowledgment of Thomas’s manifest and express teaching," (pg. 54).
It is indeed true that St. Thomas states unequivocally that, "God moves man to act, not only by proposing the appetible to the senses, or by effecting a change in his body, but also by moving the will itself; because every movement either of the will or of nature, proceeds from God as the First Mover," (ST I-II, q. 6, a. 1, ad 3). Moreover, St. Thomas states, "When anything moves itself, this does not exclude its being moved by another, from which it has even this that it moves itself," (De malo, q. 3, a. 2, ad 4).
Without the doctrine of physical premotion, questions are immediately raised as to the efficacy of the divine decrees and providential governance over creation. Certainly man participates as a secondary or instrumental cause in his own good action, culminating in the beatific vision for the elect. However, if God is not the primary cause of each and every good act, we may begin to ask whether the elect are distinguished by the grace of God or, conversely, by their own good cooperation with grace, rendering God somehow passive in regard to their distinction and election.
In so many ways, this new volume on predestination highlights the intimacy between this doctrine of physical premotion and many other facets of the Thomistic theological tradition. In his own essay in the volume, Fr. Serge-Thomas Bonino, O.P. considers how physical premotion necessitates that evil be first permitted by the divine will, otherwise it could not be a part of the divine plan. That God's permission remains non-causal is argued in an essay by Fr. Thomas Joseph White, O.P. It is man who causes his own defect and sin, not God. Thomas Osborne considers how the Thomist ought to understand St. Thomas when he speaks of God causing the being of the sinful act but not that it be sinful.
Joseph Trabbic explores the doctrine of praemotio physica as it relates to recent objections from Fr. Brian Shanley, O.P. Fr. Christopher Cullen, S.J. elucidates the ways in which premotion aids in a proper reading of St. Ignatius' Spiritual Exercises.
Of course, not all of the essays in the volume deal explicitly with premotion. Roger Nutt contemplates beautifully an often over-looked aspect of this discussion, namely the central role of the Incarnation of Christ for the mystery of predestination. Also exploring the centrality of the Incarnation, Michael Dauphinais surveys St. Paul's spirit of joy in Ephesians, reminding the reader that God's loving election is a source of Christian hope. Fr. Romanus Cessario, O.P. considers the relation between devotion to Mary and election, especially as contemplated by Louis de Montfort.
One of the aspects of this volume which will make it most attractive to Thomists of all stripes is the fact that it is a unified conversation with differing voices. The authors found within often disagree as to the fundamental meaning of the doctrines of physical premotion and predestination themselves. Lawrence Feingold presents an essay which tackles the question of the resistance of grace, arguing along similar lines to Jacques Maritain and Francisco Marín-Sola, two figures who certainly disagreed with, for example, Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, referenced favorably within the volume by Bonino, Trabbic, and others.
Fr. Matthew Lamb unfolds the thought of Bernard Lonergan, whose own view in regard to premotion is far from the classical definition of physical premotion (a direct working on the will as an exterior principle which moves the will to will.) For Lonergan it is instead something closer to the bringing about of a contactus or proximity between two created beings which are already created and preserved in act, allowing one to act upon the other as cause of some effect.
Barry David considers the quantitative scope of salvation, arguing against St. Thomas that the assertion of a minority salvation mitigates the divine goodness. Michael Waldstein spars charitably with the thought of his friend and colleague Steven Long over Hans Urs von Balthasar, pure nature, and its relation to man's ordering to his supernatural end of beatitude.
While each essay is worthy of speculation and contemplation, the most valuable character of the work is its discussion as a whole. At the center of any of the fruitful tensions, disagreements, and even concurrences between the individual essays is a sign of the Thomistic project once again collectively picking up these difficult but central questions.
Much of that discussion deals, at its core, with the way in which God causes the beatitude of His chosen, a fundamental theological principle for all Thomists. The differing understandings of physical premotion and its relation to human freedom and evil are certainly at the center of this fecund project. Each essay, whether it explicitly deals with premotion or not, is an important comment and addition to the Thomistic tradition on the nature of that doctrine. As such, while the volume addresses a myriad of issues and their relation to the mystery of predestination, it is an important contemporary consideration of praemotio physica. It is a must-read for anyone who is at all interested in predestination or the human dependence upon God for the good acts which are predestination's effect.
- Reviewed by Taylor Patrick O’Neill
Under the direction of the Sacra Doctrina Project
