Thomas Aquinas

by Davies, Brian, Op

• ISBN13: 9780826450852
• ISBN10: 0826450857
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-08-01
• Publisher: Continuum Intl Pub Group

Summary

This series offers a range of authoritative studies on people who have made an outstanding contribution to Christian thought and understanding. The series will range across the full spectrum of Christian thought to include Catholic and Protestant thinkers and to cover East and West, historical and contemporary figures. By and large, each volume will focus on a single "thinker", but occasionally the subject may be a movement or a school of thought.

Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) is widely recognized as one of the greatest of all Christian thinkers, referred to by Pope Pius V as "the most brilliant light of the Church". This book is a clear and engaging introduction to Aquinas.

Series editor Brian Davies reviews Aquinas's life from the point at which he joined the Dominicans through his tutelage under Albert the Great in Cologne to his death in the Cistercian Abbey of Fossanova. Through exploration of the key questions posed by Aquinas in his voluminous writings, such as "What is God like?" and "What should people do?", Davies surveys this thinker's major themes.

Author Biography

Brian Davies is Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University, New York, and the editor of the Outstanding Christian Thinkers Series for Continuum.

Table of Contents

Editorial Foreword	vii
Preface	ix
Bibliography	xi
Abbreviations	xxiii
Introducing Aquinas	1	(8)
The Cast of a Mind	9	(6)
Building-Blocks	15	(8)
Being and Existence	23	(8)
Approaches to God	31	(7)
Ways to God	38	(16)
The Being of God	54	(8)
God-Talk	62	(10)
Creature and Creator	72	(8)
The Doing of God	80	(8)
Lower than the Angels	88	(8)
The Acting Person	96	(9)
The Free Human Creature	105	(8)
God and Goodness	113	(9)
The Problem of Evil	122	(10)
Father, Son, and Spirit	132	(8)
God Incarnate	140	(10)
Nature Enabled	150	(8)
Faith, Hope, and Charity	158	(12)
Prayer and Sacraments	170	(11)
Aquinas's Achievement	181	(12)
Chronological List of Aquinas's Writings	193	(3)
Index	196