Using carefully selected resources, Romanus Cessario has composed a short account of the history of the Thomist tradition as it manifests itself through the more than seven hundred years that have elapsed since the death of Saint Thomas

In this book, renowned philosopher Ralph McInerny sets out to review what Thomas meant by the phrase and to defend a robust understanding of Thomas's teaching on the subject.

This guide to the most interesting work that has recently appeared on Aquinas reflects the revival of interest in his work. Written by one of the foremost Roman Catholic theologians currently writing in English. Offers a guide to the most interesting work that has recently appeared on Aquinas, reflecting the revival of interest in his work. Brings together in one volume, a range of views that have previously only been accessible through different books, articles, and periodicals. Represents a major revisionist treatment of Thomism and its significance, combining useful exposition with original, creative thinking. Offers students, in one volume, all the material necessary for a rounded understanding of Aquinas.

Examining the influence of Thomas Aquinas and his followers upon the seventeenth century Puritan theologian John Owen, this book breaks new ground in exploring the impact of medieval thought upon Reformed scholasticism. Cleveland argues that Owen uses Thomistic ideas in two ways: first in an Augustinian fashion arguing against Pelagian and semi-Pelagian ideas of human independency; second in a Trinitarian fashion, with Thomistic ideas affecting the understanding of each person of the Trinity. The resulting theological formulation is strongly Western and Orthodox and provides a helpful model for theological formulation seeking to build upon a Western Christian foundation. The works of the Reformed theologian John Owen have long been admired for their depth and theological sophistication. In this book Cleveland fills a significant gap in Owen studies by pursuing a deeper understanding of the role that Thomas Aquinas and the school of thought known as Thomism played in Owen's theology, from his works on providence and salvation by the Holy Spirit to his Christological work.

Through an in-depth study of four key figures - Pierre Rousselot, Joseph Marechal, Jacques Maritain, and Etienne Gilson - From Unity to Pluralism traces the evolution of Thomism in the first half of the twentieth century. Through their work, Thomisism encountered contemporary thought and rediscovered its authentic roots, and the ideal of a univocal, unitary doctrine of Scholastic truth embodied in the unambiguous teachings of Thomas Aquinas, which had inspired the Thomist revival at the end of the nineteenth century, gradually gave way. The result is the emergence of pluralism within the system itself and the independent development of the theologies of Karl Rahner and Bernard Lonergan.

Cosmological reasoning is an important facet of classical arguments for the existence of God, but these arguments have been subject to many criticisms. The thesis of this book is that Thomas Aquinas can dodge many of the classic objections brought against cosmological reasoning. These objections criticize cosmological reasoning for its use of the Principle of Sufficient Reason; its notion of existence as a predicate; its use of ontological reasoning; its reliance on sense realism; its ignoring of the problem of evil; and its susceptibility to the critique of "ontotheology" as famously put forward by Heidegger. Secondly, the book proposes that the kind of reasoning found in Aquinas's De Ente can be formulated in a more robust version. Prompted by Aquinas’s admissions that philosophical knowledge of God is the prerogative of metaphysics, the second main portion of the book extensively illustrates how the more robust version of the De Ente is the interpretive key for Aquinas’s many arguments for God. Hence, the book should be of interest both to philosophers engaged in cosmological reasoning discussion and to Thomists interested in understanding Aquinas’s viae to God. Finally, the deep purpose of the book is to reawaken interest in Thomistic Existentialism, an interpretation of Aquinas that flourished in the 1950's in the works of Etienne Gilson, Jacques Maritain, and Joseph Owens. In this interpretation, a particular thing’s existence is the actuality of the thing in the sense of a distinctive actus not translatable into something else, for example, the fact of the thing or the thing having form. This book clearly explains how this interpretation looks at Thomas's metaphysics, and why it helps illuminate metaphysical realities.

Thomism's influence upon the development of Catholicism is difficult to overestimate - but how secure is its grip on the challenges that face contemporary society? Culture and the Thomist Tradition examines the crisis of Thomism today as thrown into relief by Vatican II, the twenty-first ecumenical council of the Roman Catholic Church. Following the Church's declarations on culture in the document Gaudium et spes - the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World - it was widely presumed that a mandate had been given for transposing ecclesiastical culture into the idioms of modernity. But, says Tracey Rowland, such an understanding is not only based on a facile reading of the Conciliar documents, but was made possible by Thomism's own failure to demonstrate a workable theology of culture that might guide the Church through such transpositions. A Thomism that fails to specify the precise rôle of culture in moral fomration is problematice in a multicultural age, where Christians are exposed to a complex matrix of institutions and traditions both theistic and secular. The ambivalence of the Thomist tradition to modernity, and modern conceptions of rationality, also impedes its ability to successfully engage with the arguments of rivial traditions. Must a genuinely progressive Thomism learn to accomodate modernity? In opposition to such a stance, and in support of those who have resisted the trend in post-Conciliarliturgy to mimic the modernistic forms of mass culture, Culture and the Thomist Tradition musters a synthesis of the theological critiques of modernity to be found in the works of Alasdair MacIntyre, scholars of the international 'Communio' project and the Radical Orthodoxy circle. This synthesis, intended as a post-modern Augustinian Thomism, provides an account of the rôle of culture, memory and narrative tradition in the formation of intellectual and moral character. Re-evaluating the outcome of Vatican II, and forming the basis of a much-needed Thomist theology of culture, the book argues that the anti-beauty orientation of mass culture acts as a barrier to the theological virtue of hope, and ultimately fosters despair and atheism.