40. Harm Goris, “Thomism in Fifteenth-Century Germany,” in Aquinas as Authority, 1–24; as well as Erich Höhn, “Köln als der Ort der ersten Kommentare zur ‘Summa theologiae’ des Thomas von Aquin,” in Thomas von Aquino. Interpretation und Rezeption, 641–55.
41. The best account is Paul Oskar Kristeller, Le Thomisme et la pensée Italienne de la Renaissance (Montreal: Institut d’Études Médiévales-Vrin, 1967).
42. John O’Malley, “Some Renaissance Panegyrics of Aquinas,” Renaissance Quarterly 27 (1974): 174–92.
43. Edward P. Mahoney, “St. Thomas and the School of Padua at the End of the Fifteenth Century,” Thomas and Bonaventure. Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Society 48 (1974): 277–85.
44. On Ficino and Thomas, Kristeller, Thomisme et la pensée Italienne, 93–101. For more detail, Ardis B. Collins, The Sacred Is Secular: Platonism and Thomism in Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1974).
45. On the famous nondisputation, S. A. Farmer, Syncretism in the West: Pico’s 900 Theses (1486). The Evolution of Traditional Religious and Philosophical Systems (Tempe, AZ: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1998), where the Thomist theses can be found on 218–31 (see also 47–49, 422, on Pico’s anti-Thomism).
46. The commentaries of this period are briefly discussed in the histories of Thomism by Cessario, Torrell, et al.; see also Philippe Lécrivain, “La Somme théologique de Thomas d’Aquin aux XVIe–XVIIIe siècles,” Recherches de science religieuse 91 (2003): 397–427.
47. On Cajetan, Jared Wicks, “Thomism between Renaissance and Reformation: The Case of Cajetan,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 68 (1977): 9–32; and Martin Grabmann, “Die Stellung des Kardinal Cajetan in der Geschichte des Thomismus und der Thomistenschule,” in Mittelalterliches Geistesleben, Martin Grabmann, ed., 3 vols. (repr., Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1984), 2:602–13.
48. Henri De Lubac, Augustinianism and Modern Theology (New York: Crossroad, 2000), chap. 5.
49. Leonard Kennedy, “Thomism at the University of Salamanca in the Sixteenth Century: The Doctrine of Existence,” in Tommaso d’Aquino nella storia del pensiero, 2:254–58.
50. D. Martin Luthers Werke (Weimar: Böhlaus, 1899), 15:184 (32–33).
51. Denis R. Janz, “Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, and the Origins of the Protestant Reformation,” in Philosophy and the God of Abraham, 71–83; and David C. Steinmetz, “Luther among the Anti-Thomists,” in Luther in Context (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), chap. 5.
52. D. Martin Luthers Werke (Weimar: Böhlaus, 1888), 6:508 (11–12).
53. Karl-Heinz zur Mühlen, “On the Critical Reception of the Thought of Thomas Aquinas in the Theology of Martin Luther,” in Aquinas as Authority, 65–86.
54. Pesch has written extensively on Thomas and Luther in German. In English, see Otto H. Pesch, “Existential and Sapiential Theology—The Theological Confrontation between Luther and Thomas Aquinas,” in Catholic Scholars Dialogue with Luther, Jared Wicks, ed. (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1970), 59–81; and The God Question in Thomas Aquinas and Martin Luther (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1972).
55. Pesch, “Existential and Sapiential Theology,” 76.
56. For knowledge of Thomas and the Summa in Protestant England, John K. Ryan, The Reputation of St. Thomas Aquinas among English Protestant Thinkers of the Seventeenth Century (Washington, DC: Catholic University Press, 1948).
57. On Trent and its significance, John O’Malley, Trent. What Happened at the Council (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2013).
58. On these discussions, Hubert Jedin, A History of the Council of Trent (St. Louis: B. Herder, 1961), 2:286–96, and 387–88.
59. A single example must suffice. In the early debates over original sin directed against Luther, the Thomist party introduced Thomas’s distinction (IaIIae, q. 82.3) that baptism forgives the formal element of the sin, but that the material element called “concupiscence” remains. This language was approved in the draft, but not included in the final decree.
60. Bañez’s Scholastica commentaria in primam partem Angelici Doctoris was first published in Salamanca in 1584.
61. Matthias Lu, “La diffusione delle Opere di Tommaso d’Aquino in Cina,” in Tommaso d’Aquino nella storia del pensiero, 2:367–74.
62. Suarez’s metaphysics is set forth in his Disputationes Metaphysicae of 1597, which were widely read and constituted the major link between medieval philosophy and the new philosophy of the seventeenth century. On Suarez’s metaphysics and its difference from Thomas, Gilson, Being and Some Philosophers, 96–107; and John P. Doyle, Collected Studies on Francisco Suarez, S. J. (1548–1617) (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2010).
63. Molina’s teaching on “middle knowledge” is available in English, Luis de Molina. On Divine Foreknowledge. Part IV of the “Concordia,” trans. Alfred J. Freddoso (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988).
64. For an English translation, The Gifts of the Holy Spirit by John of St. Thomas (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1951).
65. The original edition of the Collegii Salmanticensis … Cursus Theologicus Summam theologicam Angelici Doctoris D. Thomae complectens was published in ten volumes. The most accessible edition is the twenty-volume Paris edition of 1870–83.
66. Among the foremost of these commentators are John Gonet (d. 1681), who issued a number of commentaries and defenses of Thomas late in the seventeenth century, and the Dominican Charles René Billuart (d. 1757), who published an eighteen-volume commentary on the Summa between 1746 and 1751.
67. The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, Charles Stephen Dessain, ed. (London: Nelson, 1961), 11:279. See also the comments on “the prevalent depreciation of St. Thomas” found in another letter in the same volume (pp. 303–5).
CHAPTER 5 The Rise and Fall of Neothomism
1. James Hennesey, “Leo XIII’s Thomistic Revival: A Political and Philosophical Event,” in Celebrating the Medieval Heritage. A Colloquy on the Thought of Aquinas and Bonaventure, David Tracy, ed., Journal of Religion suppl. 58 [1978]: S185–97.
2. On nineteenth-century Catholic theology, Mark Schoof, A Survey of Catholic Theology 1800–1970 (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2008); and especially Gerald A. McCool, Nineteenth-Century Scholasticism. The Search for a Unitary Method (New York: Fordham University Press, 1989).
3. Many of the documents, such as the papal encyclical Aeterni Patris of 1879, speak of the renewal of “scholastic philosophy” (philosophia scholastica); hence the term “Neoscholasticism” is often used to describe this movement in modern Catholic thought. In practice, however, Thomas Aquinas was seen as the Neoscholastic author. All other scholastics, including such distinctive thinkers as Bonaventure, were reduced to agreeing with Thomas. Hence, the terms “Neoscholasticism” and “Neothomism” can be used interchangeably.
4. Along with McCool’s book, see James A. Weisheipl, “The Revival of Thomism as a Christian Philosophy,” in New Themes in Christian Philosophy, Ralph McInerny, ed. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968), 164–85; and Leonard E. Boyle, “A Remembrance of Pope Leo XIII: The Encyclical Aeterni Patris,” in One Hundred Years of Thomism. Aeterni Patris and Afterwards, Victor B. Brezik, ed. (Houston: Center for Thomistic Studies, 1981), 7–22.
5. On the relation of Dei Filius to Neoscholasticism, McCool, Nineteenth-Century Scholasticism, 216–26.
6. Hennesy, “Leo XIII’s Thomistic Revival,” S190.
7. Ibid., S192, quoting the historian of nineteenth-century theology Edgar Hocedez.
8. On Liberatore and Kleutgen, McCool, Nineteenth-Century Scholasticism, chaps. 7–9.
9. Mark Jordan, Rewritten Theology. Aquinas after His Readers (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), chap. 1, especially 5–12.
10. For reflections on the reasons for the academic success (and limitations) of Neothomism, Marcia L. Colish, “St. Thomas Aquinas in Historical Perspective: The Modern Period,” Church History 44 (1975): 13–16.
11. Robert F. McNamara, The Amer
ican College in Rome, 1855–1955 (Rochester, NY: Christopher Press, 1956), 243.
12. Josiah Royce, “Pope Leo’s Philosophical Movement: Its Relation to Modern Thought,” Tablet 102 (August 15, 1903), 260–62.
13. An account of the editions of Thomas’s Opera omnia, including the beginnings of the Leonine edition, can be found in Louis-Jacques Bataillon, “Le Edizioni di Opera Omnia degli Scolastici e l’Edizione Leonina,” in Gli studi di Filosofia medievale fra Ottocento e Novecento, Ruedi Imbach and Alfonso Maierù, eds. (Rome: Edizioni di Storia et Letteratura, 1991), 141–54.
14. On the Leonine Commission, see also James P. Reilly, Jr., “The Leonine Commission and the Seventh Centenary of St. Thomas Aquinas,” in Thomas and Bonaventure. Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 48 (1974): 286–94.
15. Bataillon, “Le Edizioni di Opera Omnia,” 154.
16. For historical surveys, Alec Vidler, A Variety of Catholic Modernists (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970); and Marvin R. O’Connell, Critics on Trial. An Introduction to the Catholic Modernist Crisis (Washington, DC: Catholic University Press, 1994). On the relation of Modernism to Neothomism, Thomas J. A. Hartley, Thomistic Revival and the Modernist Era (Toronto: St. Michael’s College, 1971).
17. Late in the encyclical Pius summarizes his view: “[T]here is no surer sign that a man is tending to Modernism than when he begins to show his dislike for the scholastic method.” See Pascendi Dominici Gregis, as translated in The Program of Modernism. A Reply to the Encyclical of Pius X (New York: G.P. Putnam, 1908), 222.
18. The Italian original, Il Programma dei Modernisti, was published in 1907; the English version, translated by Tyrrell, appeared in 1908. The quotation is from Program of Modernism, 6.
19. The decree can be found in Heinrich Denzinger. Compendium of Creeds, Definitions, and Declarations on Matters of Faith and Morals, Peter Hünermann, ed., bilingual 43rd ed. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012), nos. 3601–24. The major author of the twenty-four theses was the Jesuit Guido Mattuissi (1852–1925), a student of Cardinal Billot and an opponent of the Suarezians.
20. These quotations from Humani Generis are taken from the English translation, False Trends in Modern Teaching (London: Catholic Truth Society, 1957), secs. 18 and 31.
21. Torrell, Aquinas’s Summa, 110–11.
22. Among the surveys of modern Thomism I have found helpful are O’Meara, Thomas Aquinas, 167–200; Helen James John, The Thomist Spectrum (New York: Fordham University Press, 1966); Gerald McCool, From Unity to Pluralism. The Internal Evolution of Thomism (New York: Fordham University Press, 1989); and Fergus Kerr, After Aquinas. Versions of Thomism (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002). More briefly, Gerald A. McCool, “Twentieth-Century Scholasticism,” in Celebrating the Medieval Heritage, S198–221; Brian J. Shanley, “Twentieth-Century Thomisms,” in The Thomist Tradition (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2002), 1–20; and J.-P. Torrell, “Situation actuelle des études thomistes,” in Nouvelles recherches thomasiennes (Paris: Vrin, 2008), 177–202.
23. Richard Peddicord, The Sacred Monster of Thomism. An Introduction to the Life and Legacy of Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P. (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2005) is a helpful, but perhaps too favorable, presentation.
24. Garrigou-Lagrange at times carried his Thomism to ridiculous lengths, as when he argued on Thomist grounds during World War II that it was a mortal sin for French Catholics to support the Free French Movement of Charles de Gaulle against the Fascist Vichy government! On his political views, Peddicord, Sacred Monster of Thomism, 96–100.
25. Chenu, Toward Understanding St. Thomas, 68–69.
26. There is an account of the conflict between Garrigou-Lagrange and Chenu in Peddicord, Sacred Monster of Thomism, 100–113.
27. There is an English translation of the second edition, The Mystery of the Supernatural (New York: Herder and Herder, 1967).
28. John F. Wippel, Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas (Washington, DC: Catholic University Press, 1984); and The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas. From Finite Being to Uncreated Being (Washington, DC: Catholic University Press, 2000).
29. A short work originally given as a series of lectures at the Angelicum in Rome in 1931 and later appearing in English in 1940 as Science and Wisdom provides a sense of Maritain’s view of the integrative role of Thomas’s wisdom.
30. Gilson wrote an illuminating intellectual autobiography late in life, Philosopher and Theology.
31. Ibid., 91.
32. Gilson’s view of Christian philosophy and the difficulties involved in extracting a philosophy from Thomas’s mostly theological writings are surveyed by John F. Wippel, “Thomas Aquinas and the Problem of Christian Philosophy,” in Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas, 1–33.
33. Gilson, Philosopher and Theology, 211.
34. Finance, Être et Agir dans la Philosophie de Saint Thomas, x. The work has not been translated into English.
35. These contributions to Thomist metaphysics are surveyed in John, Thomist Spectrum, chaps. 6–7.
36. Gilson’s rejection of what became Transcendental Thomism is evident in his critical remarks about Joseph Maréchal in Thomist Realism and the Critique of Knowledge (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986; French original 1939), chaps. 5–6.
37. A brief survey can be found in W. J. Hill, “Thomism, Transcendental,” New Catholic Encyclopedia, 14: 52–57. More detailed treatments are in John, Thomist Spectrum, pt. 3; and McCool, From Unity to Pluralism, chaps. 2–4.
38. For an English translation, The Intellectualism of Saint Thomas (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1935).
39. Ibid., 2.
40. Joseph Maréchal, “A propos du sentiment de presence chez les profanes et chez les mystiques,” Revue des questions scientifiques 64–65 (1908–9), later included in vol. 1 of his Études sur la Psychologie des Mystiques (Bruges: Beyaert-Alcan, 1924), 69–179. This was translated as Studies in the Psychology of the Mystics (London: Burns & Oates, 1927), 55–145.
41. These quotations are from Maréchal, Studies in the Psychology of the Mystics, 61 and 101.
42. Ibid., 135.
43. McCool, From Unity to Pluralism, 110.
44. Lonergan, Grace and Freedom.
45. The “Verbum” articles appeared in Theological Studies between 1946 and 1949 and were published in book form as Verbum. Word and Idea in Aquinas (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1967).
46. Ibid., 85.
47. Karl Rahner, “The Importance of Thomas Aquinas,” in Faith in a Wintry Season. Conversations and Interviews with Karl Rahner in the Last Years of His Life (New York: Crossroad, 1990), 47.
48. Ibid., 43.
49. Hans Urs von Balthasar, Thomas und die Charismatik. Kommentar zu Thomas von Aquin, Summa theologica Quaestiones II II 171–182 (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1954).
50. Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Drama. Theological Dramatic Theory. V: The Last Act (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1998), 14.
51. Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord. A Theological Aesthetics. IV: The Realm of Metaphysics in Antiquity (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1989), 405.
52. On Vatican II, John O’Malley, What Happened at Vatican II (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008).
53. The largest of the collections published for Thomas’s centenary was the nine volumes of the Atti del Congresso Internazionale Tommaso d’Aquino produced by the Dominicans of Naples and containing 459 articles.
EPILOGUE
1. Fergus Kerr, After Aquinas, 207. Along with this survey of recent trends in Thomist studies, Kerr also edited the collection, Contemplating Aquinas.
2. Encyclical Letter “Fides et Ratio” of the Supreme Pontiff John Paul II (Washington, DC: U.S. Catholic Conference, 1998), sec. 76 (p. 110).
3. Ibid., especially secs. 43–44 (pp. 65–68) titled “The Enduring Originality of the Thought of Thomas Aquinas,” and secs. 57–63 (pp. 87–94) on “The Church’s Interest in Philosophy.”
4. Jean-Pierre Torrell ti
tled the second volume of his summary work on Aquinas Saint Thomas Aquinas. Spiritual Master (1996; English version 2003).
5. “Analytical Thomism” was pioneered by Peter Geach and John Haldane, and has been carried forward by scholars like Anthony Kenny, the late Norman Kretzmann, and Eleonore Stump.
6. Among the projections about the future direction of Thomism that merit pondering: W. Norris Clarke, “The Future of Thomism,” in New Themes in Christian Philosophy, 187–207; Lonergan, “Future of Thomism,” 43–53; and Benedict M. Ashley, “Thomism and the Transition from the Classical World-View to Historical-Mindedness,” in The Future of Thomism (Notre Dame: American Maritain Society, 1992), 109–21.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
I. Translations of the Summa theologiae
A. Complete Versions
St. Thomas Aquinas. Summa theologiae. Latin text and English translation, Introduction, Notes, Appendices and Glossaries. Published in 61 vols. (1964–81) and available online.
St. Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologica. First published in 22 vols. in New York (1911–25), reprinted in 3 vols. (1947–48), and in 5 vols. by Christian Classics of Westminster, MD (1981).
B. Selections from the Summa
Bauerschmidt, Frederick Christian. Holy Teaching. Introducing the “Summa Theologiae” of St. Thomas Aquinas. Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2005.
Fairweather, A. M., ed. Nature and Grace. Selections from the “Summa Theologica” of Thomas Aquinas. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1954.
McInerny, Ralph. Thomas Aquinas. Selected Writings. New York: Penguin, 1998.
Pegis, Anton C. Introduction to St. Thomas Aquinas. New York: Random House, 1948.
II. General Books on Thomas and His Thought
A. Individual Studies
Chenu, M.-D. Toward Understanding St. Thomas. Chicago: Regnery, 1964.
Chesterton, G. K. St. Thomas Aquinas. London: Sheed and Ward, 1933.
Davies, Brian. The Thought of Thomas Aquinas. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
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