Thomas Aquinas and His Predecessors takes us on a voyage through the history of philosophical thought as present in the works of Thomas Aquinas. It is a synthetic presentation of the works and thought of the great predecessors of Aquinas, as he kne

Offering a fresh approach to one significant aspect of the soteriology of Thomas Aquinas, God's Grace and Human Action brings new scholarship and insights to the issue of merit in Aquinas's theology. Through a careful historical analysis, Joseph P. Wawrykow delineates the precise function of merit in Aquinas's account of salvation. Wawrykow accounts for the changes in Thomas's teaching on merit from the early Scriptum on the Sentences of Peter Lombard to the later Summa theologiae in two ways. First, he demonstrates how the teaching of the Summa theologiae discloses the impact of Thomas's profound encounter with the later writings of Augustine on predestination and grace. Second, Wawrykow notes the implications of Thomas's mature theological judgment that merit is best understood in the context of the plan of divine wisdom. The portrayal of merit in sapiential terms in the Summa permits Thomas to insist that the attainment of salvation through merit testifies not only to the dignity of the human person but even more to the goodness of God.

A study of Aquinas's theory of self-knowledge, situated within the mid-thirteenth-century debate and his own maturing thought on human nature.

Cardinal Tommaso de Vio (1469-1534), commonly known as Cajetan, remains a misunderstood figure. Cajetan on Sacred Doctrine is the first ever monograph on Cajetan as a theologian in his own right, and it fills an immense lacuna in the debate on the nature of sacred doctrine from the Thomism of the Renaissance. Confirming Cajetan as a key protagonist within the emergent Reformation, this work delivers an indispensable immersion into his theological method in relation to his closest predecessors and contemporaries: Hervaeus Natalis, Blessed Duns Scotus, Gregory of Rimini, Johannes Capreolus, Silvestro Mazzolini da Prierio, Martin Luther, and others. The first ever commentary on St. Thomas Aquinas’s entire Summa Theologiae was published by Cajetan. This monograph focuses primarily on the Summa Theologiae Ia pars, question 1, concerning sacred doctrine, and how Cajetan unpacks the potency of Aquinas’s opening syllogism, setting forth a coherent division of the question, and ultimately touching the mind of Aquinas when revealing the articles of the Apostles’ Creed as the Summa Theologiae’s macrostructure. Finally, we are shown how Cajetan emphasizes the essential link between ecclesiology and the communication of sacred doctrine, especially the papacy’s role in guaranteeing the proposal and explication of the faith. Cajetan’s accomplishments as a biblical exegete established him as a renowned Renaissance scholar and a forerunner of future ecumenical dialogue. Furthermore, his grasp of theology’s perennial properties continue to make him an important interlocutor in the renewed quest for a unity in theology in an ever more fragmented aggregation of theologies. Cajetan’s theological labor is a perpetuation of the via antiqua, a biblical-theological worldview handed down through Tradition. St. Gregory the Theologian (329-390), the via antiqua’s preeminent Eastern representative and chief theological constructor of Christendom, offers the monograph’s author--himself a Byzantine Hieromonk--a prime opportunity for a few closing insights on the innate symphony between two very distant periods and distinct theological traditions within the one ecumenical Church.