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Thomas Aquinas's Summa theologiae: A Biography
The life and times of the most important theological work of medieval Christendom
This concise book tells the story of the most important theological work of the Middle Ages, the vast Summa theologiae of Thomas Aquinas, which holds a unique place in Western religion and philosophy. Written between 1266 and 1273, the Summa was conceived by Aquinas as an instructional guide for teachers and novices and a compendium of all the approved teachings of the Catholic Church. It synthesizes an astonishing range of scholarship, covering hundreds of topics and containing more than a million and a half words--and was still unfinished at the time of Aquinas's death.
Here, Bernard McGinn, one of today's most acclaimed scholars of medieval Christianity, vividly describes the world that shaped Aquinas, then turns to the Dominican friar's life and career, examining Aquinas's reasons for writing his masterpiece, its subject matter, and the novel way he organized it. McGinn gives readers a brief tour of the Summa itself, and then discusses its reception over the past seven hundred years. He looks at the influence of the Summa on such giants of medieval Christendom as Meister Eckhart, its ridicule during the Enlightenment, the rise and fall of Neothomism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the role of the Summa in the post-Vatican II church, and the book's enduring relevance today.
Tracing the remarkable life of this iconic work, McGinn's wide-ranging account provides insight into Aquinas's own understanding of the Summa as a communication of the theological wisdom that has been given to humanity in revelation.
This concise book tells the story of the most important theological work of the Middle Ages, the vast Summa theologiae of Thomas Aquinas, which holds a unique place in Western religion and philosophy. Written between 1266 and 1273, the Summa was conceived by Aquinas as an instructional guide for teachers and novices and a compendium of all the approved teachings of the Catholic Church. It synthesizes an astonishing range of scholarship, covering hundreds of topics and containing more than a million and a half words--and was still unfinished at the time of Aquinas's death.
Here, Bernard McGinn, one of today's most acclaimed scholars of medieval Christianity, vividly describes the world that shaped Aquinas, then turns to the Dominican friar's life and career, examining Aquinas's reasons for writing his masterpiece, its subject matter, and the novel way he organized it. McGinn gives readers a brief tour of the Summa itself, and then discusses its reception over the past seven hundred years. He looks at the influence of the Summa on such giants of medieval Christendom as Meister Eckhart, its ridicule during the Enlightenment, the rise and fall of Neothomism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the role of the Summa in the post-Vatican II church, and the book's enduring relevance today.
Tracing the remarkable life of this iconic work, McGinn's wide-ranging account provides insight into Aquinas's own understanding of the Summa as a communication of the theological wisdom that has been given to humanity in revelation.
272 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2014
10 people are currently reading
137 people want to read
About the author
Bernard McGinn
101 books57 followersBernard McGinn, the Naomi Shenstone Donnelley Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago Divinity School, is widely regarded as the preeminent scholar of mysticism in the Western Christian tradition. He has also written extensively on Jewish mysticism, the history of apocalyptic thought, and medieval Christianity.
A cum laude graduate of St. Joseph's Seminary and College in Yonkers, NY, he earned a doctorate in theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome in 1963 and a PhD in history from Brandeis University in 1970. After teaching theology for a year at The Catholic University of America, he joined the Chicago faculty in 1969 as an instructor in theology and the history of Christianity and was appointed a full professor nine years later. Dr. McGinn was named to the Donnelley chair in 1992. He retired in 2003.
The recent recipient of a Mellon Foundation Emeritus Grant, he also has held a Fulbright-Hays Research Fellowship, an American Association of Theological Schools research award, two research fellowships for work at the Institute for Advanced Study at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, a research fellowship at the Institute for Ecumenical and Culture Research at St. John's University, and a Lily Foundation Senior Research Fellowship.
Dr. McGinn has delivered invited lectures at some one hundred colleges and universities in North America, Europe, and Israel. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the Medieval Academy of America. Past-president of the International Society for the Promotion of Eriugenean Studies, the American Society of Church History, and the American Catholic Historical Association, he is member of the board of The Eckhart Society. He served as editor-in-chief of the Paulist Press series Classics of Western Spirituality and currently serves as a member of the editorial boards of Cistercian Publications, The Encyclopedia of World Spirituality, The Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, and Spiritus.
A cum laude graduate of St. Joseph's Seminary and College in Yonkers, NY, he earned a doctorate in theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome in 1963 and a PhD in history from Brandeis University in 1970. After teaching theology for a year at The Catholic University of America, he joined the Chicago faculty in 1969 as an instructor in theology and the history of Christianity and was appointed a full professor nine years later. Dr. McGinn was named to the Donnelley chair in 1992. He retired in 2003.
The recent recipient of a Mellon Foundation Emeritus Grant, he also has held a Fulbright-Hays Research Fellowship, an American Association of Theological Schools research award, two research fellowships for work at the Institute for Advanced Study at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, a research fellowship at the Institute for Ecumenical and Culture Research at St. John's University, and a Lily Foundation Senior Research Fellowship.
Dr. McGinn has delivered invited lectures at some one hundred colleges and universities in North America, Europe, and Israel. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the Medieval Academy of America. Past-president of the International Society for the Promotion of Eriugenean Studies, the American Society of Church History, and the American Catholic Historical Association, he is member of the board of The Eckhart Society. He served as editor-in-chief of the Paulist Press series Classics of Western Spirituality and currently serves as a member of the editorial boards of Cistercian Publications, The Encyclopedia of World Spirituality, The Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, and Spiritus.
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October 24, 2015
Reading this book is like standing on a plain and having features of a mountain range pointed out by an expert guide. In the distance to the left rises an aged peak, craggy and formidable; a line of lesser prominences runs from there, passing before us and seeming to extend beyond, to the right and into the mist-shrouded future. The massive peak is the Summa theologiae, written by Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century, which totals more than a million and a half words; the rest is commentary, influence, reaction. Bernard McGinn, a scholar of medieval Christianity at the University of Chicago’s Divinity School, is our expert guide in this book. His approach is chronological: he sketches the world in which the Summa was created, narrates Thomas’s life and his work on the book (which was incomplete at his death), plunges in for a tour that discusses a few notable portions, surveys its reception for the next six hundred years, and reports on the rise and fall of the Neothomism movement.
The last is in a way the most intriguing. It shows the Catholic Church in the latter half of the 19th century, faced with varieties of new thought—among them historicism and the critical philosophy established by Immanuel Kant—responding with an attempt to turn back the clock and insist on the absolute primacy of Thomas’s approach to theology and philosophy. A 1914 decree by Pope Pius X, for example, declared, “All teachers of philosophy and sacred theology should be warned that if they deviated so much as one iota from Aquinas, especially in metaphysics, they exposed themselves to grave risk.” This effort wasn’t abandoned until the early 1960s, when the Second Vatican Council threw open a few windows and tossed out some exceedingly old practices.
But McGinn’s tour of Summa theologiae is also appealing, for bringing before us the particular kind of rigor with which Thomas, like other scholastics, approached his task. Though McGinn doesn’t say so, it appears from the multipage outline he provides that the entire work is structured like what he says of its first part: “Like a series of Chinese boxes, each of these sections opens up to reveal other boxes and yet smaller boxes within.” It’s the method of reduction or decomposition, breaking down a large subject into smaller components. Thus, in considering human action, Thomas addresses “Acts peculiar to humans” along with “Acts common to humans and other animals.” Thomas’s treatment of the components is likewise highly methodical. McGinn explains that the three parts of the Summa “consist of no fewer than 2668 articles, or mini-disputations. Each of these mini-disputations follows a standard form: (1) posing the question to be examined (e.g., ‘Was it fitting for the Word to be incarnated?’), (2) giving a series of arguments against the answer that Thomas intends to support (usually three or four, sometimes more), (3) citing an authoritative text (most often from the Bible) as the proof or principle of the position to be taken (called the sed contra), (4) arguing for his own position in what is called the body of the article (corpus), and finally (5) answering the objections one by one.” The approach sounds sensible in a way, but also exhausting and even strange considering the vast scale of the work. Yet Wittgenstein, unquestionably a modern thinker, employed a similar overall structure, hierarchical and logically analytic (though without the argumentation and at nowhere near the length) in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, as you can see by playing around with the version here.
A few other notes from McGinn’s thoughtful survey: As a modern commentator put it, Thomas’s work was “resisted at its birth, and even condemned.” But once the resistance was overcome, Summa theologiae achieved a position of high and lasting eminence. McGinn writes, “A sign of the importance of the Summa is that it was printed early and often. If the Gutenberg Bible can be dated to circa 1455, it is noteworthy that by circa 1463 the earliest printing of the most popular part of the Summa…appeared in Strassburg.” Finally, Thomas, like thinkers before him, and unlike modern-day literalists, recognized that, though the Bible was the word of God, it had to be taken as a sort of intermediary. “The Bible is filled with stories and metaphors.… But, Thomas responds, it is quite fitting for God to use metaphors and corporeal language in conveying his message, both out of necessity, because the Bible is directed to all people (not just philosophers), and because it is useful for drawing people to the knowledge of higher intelligible realities through lower sense images.… Metaphorical language…was important for indicating God’s transcendence.” This reminds me of a Buddhist lesson. If we see before us a finger pointing at the moon, our attention is supposed to be directed toward the moon. Literalists are looking only at the finger.
The last is in a way the most intriguing. It shows the Catholic Church in the latter half of the 19th century, faced with varieties of new thought—among them historicism and the critical philosophy established by Immanuel Kant—responding with an attempt to turn back the clock and insist on the absolute primacy of Thomas’s approach to theology and philosophy. A 1914 decree by Pope Pius X, for example, declared, “All teachers of philosophy and sacred theology should be warned that if they deviated so much as one iota from Aquinas, especially in metaphysics, they exposed themselves to grave risk.” This effort wasn’t abandoned until the early 1960s, when the Second Vatican Council threw open a few windows and tossed out some exceedingly old practices.
But McGinn’s tour of Summa theologiae is also appealing, for bringing before us the particular kind of rigor with which Thomas, like other scholastics, approached his task. Though McGinn doesn’t say so, it appears from the multipage outline he provides that the entire work is structured like what he says of its first part: “Like a series of Chinese boxes, each of these sections opens up to reveal other boxes and yet smaller boxes within.” It’s the method of reduction or decomposition, breaking down a large subject into smaller components. Thus, in considering human action, Thomas addresses “Acts peculiar to humans” along with “Acts common to humans and other animals.” Thomas’s treatment of the components is likewise highly methodical. McGinn explains that the three parts of the Summa “consist of no fewer than 2668 articles, or mini-disputations. Each of these mini-disputations follows a standard form: (1) posing the question to be examined (e.g., ‘Was it fitting for the Word to be incarnated?’), (2) giving a series of arguments against the answer that Thomas intends to support (usually three or four, sometimes more), (3) citing an authoritative text (most often from the Bible) as the proof or principle of the position to be taken (called the sed contra), (4) arguing for his own position in what is called the body of the article (corpus), and finally (5) answering the objections one by one.” The approach sounds sensible in a way, but also exhausting and even strange considering the vast scale of the work. Yet Wittgenstein, unquestionably a modern thinker, employed a similar overall structure, hierarchical and logically analytic (though without the argumentation and at nowhere near the length) in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, as you can see by playing around with the version here.
A few other notes from McGinn’s thoughtful survey: As a modern commentator put it, Thomas’s work was “resisted at its birth, and even condemned.” But once the resistance was overcome, Summa theologiae achieved a position of high and lasting eminence. McGinn writes, “A sign of the importance of the Summa is that it was printed early and often. If the Gutenberg Bible can be dated to circa 1455, it is noteworthy that by circa 1463 the earliest printing of the most popular part of the Summa…appeared in Strassburg.” Finally, Thomas, like thinkers before him, and unlike modern-day literalists, recognized that, though the Bible was the word of God, it had to be taken as a sort of intermediary. “The Bible is filled with stories and metaphors.… But, Thomas responds, it is quite fitting for God to use metaphors and corporeal language in conveying his message, both out of necessity, because the Bible is directed to all people (not just philosophers), and because it is useful for drawing people to the knowledge of higher intelligible realities through lower sense images.… Metaphorical language…was important for indicating God’s transcendence.” This reminds me of a Buddhist lesson. If we see before us a finger pointing at the moon, our attention is supposed to be directed toward the moon. Literalists are looking only at the finger.
December 27, 2020
It is a little technical at points as he delineates Thomism through a broad swath of history, some of which appears obscure to the unacquainted. Overall, it was an excellent introduction, particularly for a Protestant dilettante like myself.
May 21, 2014
Princeton's "Lives of Great Religious Books" series continues to knock them out of the park. McGinn manages to give a reasonable overview of one of the most important and perhaps largest works in Christian history in under 300 small pages.
December 31, 2014
An excellent introduction to the thought of Thomas Aquinas and how it has been understood (and misunderstood) throughout the centuries. McGinn is a first-rate scholar. His insights into key themes in the Summa alone make this book worth reading.
June 27, 2017
The concept of a biography of a book is very attractive to me (as a bibliophile), so I was very excited to see that a new brief overview of Thomas's reception history had come out. I am sad to say that I was disappointed.
The book is so brief and is written at such a high altitude that very little of real use or importance is actually said. He offers tantalizingly short comments on the ways that a thinker such as Cajetan deviated from Thomas, but then states bluntly that he does not have the space to actually address what those differences were. I wished the book was long enough to fit synopses of how each thinker wrestled with Thomas.
Even though it is also frustratingly short, one of the best passages of the book was the section on Meister Eckhart's idiosyncratic reading of Thomas.
The final chapter, entitled "The Rise and Fall of Neothomism," is by far the most interesting and useful chapter of the book. It clearly sounded like McGinn was more energized about this period of Thomas's reception, and the chapter was much more engaging than the rest of the book. Though McGinn does still get bogged down with distracting details, this chapter is an extremely helpful summary of the different streams of Thomism in the late 19th and 20th century. I often have a very difficult time keeping different Thomisms apart in my mind, and I think I will return to this chapter in the future when I need a refresher. Perhaps most helpful for me was his unpacking of the difference between the Thomisms of Maritain, Gilson, and the nouvelle theologians.
This is admittedly nitpicky and not fair to his project, but I was also disappointed that McGinn did not comment on how many key protestant theologians interacted with Thomas. Owen, Edwards, Kuyper, Bavinck and Barth are all ignored in McGinn's summary of the reception of the ST in history. I understand that these theologians are well outside of McGinn's research interests, and that some of them were antagonistic to Thomas. But still, especially in the case of Owen and Barth, key figures in the history of Protestantism have engaged in prolonged and important readings of Thomas, and I was hoping McGinn would mention even tiny examples of the ways they read Thomas. (Also, as a humorous sidenote, Calvin only gets a passing mention, with the epithet 'predestinarian' attached to his name, like an insult.) I suppose that the Protestant reception of Thomas is the subject of another book.
The book on the whole gets three stars from me (it was both too light in its engagement of the real issues in Thomism, and too heavy in useless bibliographic side trails.) But, the final chapter is excellent and is very worth reading.
The book is so brief and is written at such a high altitude that very little of real use or importance is actually said. He offers tantalizingly short comments on the ways that a thinker such as Cajetan deviated from Thomas, but then states bluntly that he does not have the space to actually address what those differences were. I wished the book was long enough to fit synopses of how each thinker wrestled with Thomas.
Even though it is also frustratingly short, one of the best passages of the book was the section on Meister Eckhart's idiosyncratic reading of Thomas.
The final chapter, entitled "The Rise and Fall of Neothomism," is by far the most interesting and useful chapter of the book. It clearly sounded like McGinn was more energized about this period of Thomas's reception, and the chapter was much more engaging than the rest of the book. Though McGinn does still get bogged down with distracting details, this chapter is an extremely helpful summary of the different streams of Thomism in the late 19th and 20th century. I often have a very difficult time keeping different Thomisms apart in my mind, and I think I will return to this chapter in the future when I need a refresher. Perhaps most helpful for me was his unpacking of the difference between the Thomisms of Maritain, Gilson, and the nouvelle theologians.
This is admittedly nitpicky and not fair to his project, but I was also disappointed that McGinn did not comment on how many key protestant theologians interacted with Thomas. Owen, Edwards, Kuyper, Bavinck and Barth are all ignored in McGinn's summary of the reception of the ST in history. I understand that these theologians are well outside of McGinn's research interests, and that some of them were antagonistic to Thomas. But still, especially in the case of Owen and Barth, key figures in the history of Protestantism have engaged in prolonged and important readings of Thomas, and I was hoping McGinn would mention even tiny examples of the ways they read Thomas. (Also, as a humorous sidenote, Calvin only gets a passing mention, with the epithet 'predestinarian' attached to his name, like an insult.) I suppose that the Protestant reception of Thomas is the subject of another book.
The book on the whole gets three stars from me (it was both too light in its engagement of the real issues in Thomism, and too heavy in useless bibliographic side trails.) But, the final chapter is excellent and is very worth reading.
January 28, 2015
I've been fascinated with Aquinas' book ever since I read brief extracts of it when I was in confirmation class, and then longer stretches in grad school covering some of the ethical sections (I've never read the whole thing, but considering it's 3,500 pages I bet few have either). Religion has never had much of a hold on me, so it was more of an intellectual fascination, but I'm still fairly impressed that someone could generate such a rigorously systematic framework for proving what I consider to be definitively unproven and unprovable. The quinque viae, where Aquinas tries to prove not only that God exists but must exist based on logic alone, are the equivalent of debating with both hands tied behind your back, and while I'm not convinced by them, I think Aquinas gave an impossible task as good a shot as you could ask for.
Still, whatever your personal stance towards faith and its relationship to reason, an account of who Aquinas actually was and how he came to write this massively influential tome should be of at least mild interest. The book is divided into 5 chapters:
- The World That Made Thomas Aquinas
- Creating the Summa Theologiae
- A Tour of the Summa Theologiae
- The Tides of Thomism, 1275-1850
- The Rise and Fall of Neo-Thomism
The first chapter talks about the religious environment Aquinas grew up in, and what his intellectual influences were, as a Benedictine specifically and as a Catholic more generally. The second discusses his decision to embark on the project of writing the Summa, his working style, and how he was able to write the treatise while carrying on incredible amounts of correspondence with other important figures of the day. The third is a high-level overview of the Summa, his almost lawyerly approach to argumentation, and how he organized such a gigantic work. The fourth traces the impact of the Summa on theological debates, and how it fared over such a long time period as a work that had to be either affirmed or argued against, but never ignored. The fifth introduces the 19th century Neo-Thomist/Neo-Scholasticist movement that attempted to resuscitate Aquinas' general approach to theology in a post-enlightenment world, to varying degrees of success.
At first it might seem necessary to be religious, and more specifically Catholic, to fully enjoy the book, but McGinn approaches his subject with the air of a historian and not a religious partisan, so it remains accessible to people of any persuasion. The source material retains its place as one of the most thought-provoking works of theology ever written, and this is a welcome overview for those who, like me, aren't up to summiting the whole thing.
Still, whatever your personal stance towards faith and its relationship to reason, an account of who Aquinas actually was and how he came to write this massively influential tome should be of at least mild interest. The book is divided into 5 chapters:
- The World That Made Thomas Aquinas
- Creating the Summa Theologiae
- A Tour of the Summa Theologiae
- The Tides of Thomism, 1275-1850
- The Rise and Fall of Neo-Thomism
The first chapter talks about the religious environment Aquinas grew up in, and what his intellectual influences were, as a Benedictine specifically and as a Catholic more generally. The second discusses his decision to embark on the project of writing the Summa, his working style, and how he was able to write the treatise while carrying on incredible amounts of correspondence with other important figures of the day. The third is a high-level overview of the Summa, his almost lawyerly approach to argumentation, and how he organized such a gigantic work. The fourth traces the impact of the Summa on theological debates, and how it fared over such a long time period as a work that had to be either affirmed or argued against, but never ignored. The fifth introduces the 19th century Neo-Thomist/Neo-Scholasticist movement that attempted to resuscitate Aquinas' general approach to theology in a post-enlightenment world, to varying degrees of success.
At first it might seem necessary to be religious, and more specifically Catholic, to fully enjoy the book, but McGinn approaches his subject with the air of a historian and not a religious partisan, so it remains accessible to people of any persuasion. The source material retains its place as one of the most thought-provoking works of theology ever written, and this is a welcome overview for those who, like me, aren't up to summiting the whole thing.
April 25, 2018
I appreciated the read, even if I found it less than I had hoped. McGinn is just doing something here that wasn't as much an interest to me--tracing the history not only of the production and contents of the Summa, but also its reception. Nearly half the book concerns the Summa's reception over the past 700+ years. And while this is an interesting historical subject, I had hoped for a greater and more detailed focus on the Summa itself. The first three chapters are quite good in this regard, offering a brief treatment of Aquinas' biography, and then a discussion of the creation of the work. Chapter 3, on the contents themselves, is the book's strongest contribution--but I would have appreciated even further detail there rather than such a large focus on how the book was received in subsequent centuries.
March 16, 2021
Are you going to read Thomas's Summa Theologiae? No. You're not even going to read the Summa Contra Gentiles! But you can read this book, and you can probably read it on a train trip, because it's short and easy to get through. McGinn writes well, and kept my attention easily enough. It's not high level scholarship, but that's hardly the purpose of this series. Recommended.
July 28, 2014
This is a good book. It is well written, easy to understand, and it covers a whole lot of scholarship. I am not familiar with St. Thomas, so as a neophyte I learned much appreciated the categories of McGinn. It was a place to begin exploration, and made me desire to read more.
May 28, 2024
Like McGinn's other works, this book is erudite and brief for what such erudition might otherwise breed; the first of this book can easily be sourced from any book which discusses the biographical and historical background of the "Dumb Ox" who would yet bellow a ferocious noise throughout the ages. The utility of this book lies in two points McGinn masterfully conveys: firstly, that "Second Thomism" and the "Baroque Thomism" / Salamanca School's interpretation of St. Thomas were subject to the deviation which any system that prioritizes authentic commentary will invariably suffer; secondly, that the "Neothomist" movement as spawned at the behest of Pius IX and Leo XIII was destined to failure for its insistence upon integrating all of the "trappings" of modern science while refuting Descartes and Kant (which is laughably naive when one's reliance is upon equivocating philosophical inquiry with fideistic intransigence) solely by the commentaries of Cajetan and John of St. Thomas. Obviously, the Strict-Observance Thomists, such as Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, were forced to muster more recent Catholic thinkers like Pascal to have even a remote chance of confounding the modern world with Scholastic weapons—yet, the degree to which the revival of Thomism as the modus operandi of Catholicism was dependent upon anti-liberal sentiments would destine it to failure. Once the Catholic monarchies (or Catholic illiberal countries) faded away in relevance during the Interwar Period & the aftermath of the Second World War, all enforcement mechanisms over the university systems was dissolved. From there, the philosophical urbanity and theological reintroduction of the Ressourcement Movement & its Transcendental Thomists would win the day at Vatican II, whether by citation of the Church Fathers, or by their intimacy with the same half-Thomist philosophy they'd spent their seminary days being taught.
Of course, the many strands of Thomistic thinking cultivated by the likes of St. Edith Stein & Ferdinand Ulrich still carry great potential for adhering to the authentic dynamism of the Scholastic project. As things currently abide, however, the quality of Catholic theological thinking has diminished drastically; the bulk of Catholic thinking is squandered on politicking and "jockeying" in the great drama of ecclesial culture-posturing—with the various theologians of the past 200 years being used as rhetorical cudgels more than as mirrors of Divine Wisdom for deeper penetration of the mysteries which inhere in the Catholic tradition. Whether any thinkers will arise to claim that mantle (or more radically, whether the "Thomistic project" is even worth it in the long-run) is a debate which the secular doctors & masters of Biblical Studies are still out to lunch about. This work is an excellent introduction into the nuances, and the perennially question-raising nature of St. Thomas' theological opinions. In my opinion, grasping St. Thomas' mode of thinking necessitates at least a brief familiarity with Pico's 900 Theses, Peter Lombard, St. Albert, at least one Catholic mystical tradition & the Troubadours / Minnesangers. These help to maintain the fact that the Summa and half of St. Thomas' ouevre are all commentaries (and thus according to the medieval tradition, can be disputed or commented on for a deepening of divine wisdom,) while also being a theological analogue to Dante's theosophy.
Of course, the many strands of Thomistic thinking cultivated by the likes of St. Edith Stein & Ferdinand Ulrich still carry great potential for adhering to the authentic dynamism of the Scholastic project. As things currently abide, however, the quality of Catholic theological thinking has diminished drastically; the bulk of Catholic thinking is squandered on politicking and "jockeying" in the great drama of ecclesial culture-posturing—with the various theologians of the past 200 years being used as rhetorical cudgels more than as mirrors of Divine Wisdom for deeper penetration of the mysteries which inhere in the Catholic tradition. Whether any thinkers will arise to claim that mantle (or more radically, whether the "Thomistic project" is even worth it in the long-run) is a debate which the secular doctors & masters of Biblical Studies are still out to lunch about. This work is an excellent introduction into the nuances, and the perennially question-raising nature of St. Thomas' theological opinions. In my opinion, grasping St. Thomas' mode of thinking necessitates at least a brief familiarity with Pico's 900 Theses, Peter Lombard, St. Albert, at least one Catholic mystical tradition & the Troubadours / Minnesangers. These help to maintain the fact that the Summa and half of St. Thomas' ouevre are all commentaries (and thus according to the medieval tradition, can be disputed or commented on for a deepening of divine wisdom,) while also being a theological analogue to Dante's theosophy.
April 28, 2023
As printing began with Guttenberg bibles in 1455, the Summa Theologiae was churning off the presses by 1463. By 1501 there were 29 Incunabula versions of the Summa. The purpose of this book is to explain this popularity and perceived importance.
The first half of this book is an explanation of the contents of the Summa, and the life of its author, St Thomas Aquinas (d.1274). The second half of the book explains the Summa’s use and distribution.
The Summa got off to a somewhat rocky start when it was left unfinished at Aquinas’ death and then in 1277 some 16 propositions from Aquinas’ teaching were condemned by the bishop of Paris. Almost immediately Aquinas’ Dominican confreres rallied around, but it was only his canonisation fifty years later that gave the Summa an unquestionable authority across the wider Church.
Its role in universities was initially limited, because there was a well established tradition of Peter Lombard’s Sentences as the main University Theology text book. New Masters of theology cut their teeth commenting on the Sentences, and University Conservatism meant that they were to remain doing so until the Reformation.
However, that didn’t mean that Aquinas’ Summa wasn’t quickly recognised as a masterpiece. Passages were used for teaching aids almost immediately, and parts of the ethical sections circulated as a guidebook for confessors.
In the immediate post-Reformation era, the Summa found a new champion when it became a preferred text book for the newly established Jesuits. But by the seventeenth Century the intellectual climate had changed. Descrates, and then Kant, drove Philosophy inwards into Subjectivism. This led to a general disparagement of the objectivity and realist Metaphysics which the Summa presupposed, and so it became unfashionable. We hear how the new convert John Henry Newman went to Rome in the 1850s, hoping to learn more about the Summa, but only to find that it was no longer being taught in Roman colleges.
Towards the end of the nineteenth century Leo XIII relaunched the Summa, as a bulwark against the liberalism and relativism which was sweeping Europe. He wanted a unified intellectual framework for Philosophy and Theology, and he found it in Aquinas. So the Summa was relaunched in a wave of NeoThomism, as the standard theological text book for around 100 years until 1970.
Almost immediately it was subject to divergent interpretations and pressures. Existentialists read it as an existentialist text, Transcendentalists read it in a Kantian style, and it was mined for solutions to problems that went beyond what Aquinas had actually considered and written about.
As a result of this the author has reservations about the success of the NeoThomist revival, but also recognises that it might be too soon to be able to form a considered opinion.
Overall this is an enjoyable and easily readable romp through a thousand years of Thomism. But it is a bit skimpy on details in places. Devoting the first half of this book to setting the scene meant that there wasn’t enough room to fully discuss developments such as the emergence of ‘analytic Thomism,’ as Thomism has entered into conversation with Analytic Philosophy over the last fifty years.
The first half of this book is an explanation of the contents of the Summa, and the life of its author, St Thomas Aquinas (d.1274). The second half of the book explains the Summa’s use and distribution.
The Summa got off to a somewhat rocky start when it was left unfinished at Aquinas’ death and then in 1277 some 16 propositions from Aquinas’ teaching were condemned by the bishop of Paris. Almost immediately Aquinas’ Dominican confreres rallied around, but it was only his canonisation fifty years later that gave the Summa an unquestionable authority across the wider Church.
Its role in universities was initially limited, because there was a well established tradition of Peter Lombard’s Sentences as the main University Theology text book. New Masters of theology cut their teeth commenting on the Sentences, and University Conservatism meant that they were to remain doing so until the Reformation.
However, that didn’t mean that Aquinas’ Summa wasn’t quickly recognised as a masterpiece. Passages were used for teaching aids almost immediately, and parts of the ethical sections circulated as a guidebook for confessors.
In the immediate post-Reformation era, the Summa found a new champion when it became a preferred text book for the newly established Jesuits. But by the seventeenth Century the intellectual climate had changed. Descrates, and then Kant, drove Philosophy inwards into Subjectivism. This led to a general disparagement of the objectivity and realist Metaphysics which the Summa presupposed, and so it became unfashionable. We hear how the new convert John Henry Newman went to Rome in the 1850s, hoping to learn more about the Summa, but only to find that it was no longer being taught in Roman colleges.
Towards the end of the nineteenth century Leo XIII relaunched the Summa, as a bulwark against the liberalism and relativism which was sweeping Europe. He wanted a unified intellectual framework for Philosophy and Theology, and he found it in Aquinas. So the Summa was relaunched in a wave of NeoThomism, as the standard theological text book for around 100 years until 1970.
Almost immediately it was subject to divergent interpretations and pressures. Existentialists read it as an existentialist text, Transcendentalists read it in a Kantian style, and it was mined for solutions to problems that went beyond what Aquinas had actually considered and written about.
As a result of this the author has reservations about the success of the NeoThomist revival, but also recognises that it might be too soon to be able to form a considered opinion.
Overall this is an enjoyable and easily readable romp through a thousand years of Thomism. But it is a bit skimpy on details in places. Devoting the first half of this book to setting the scene meant that there wasn’t enough room to fully discuss developments such as the emergence of ‘analytic Thomism,’ as Thomism has entered into conversation with Analytic Philosophy over the last fifty years.
July 11, 2024
A helpful overview of the historical context, content, and subsequent history of one of Aquinas's most important text. There are errors in some of the attempts to explain some of Aquinas's philosophical arguments. And some of the subsequent history was perhaps a little too detailed for a book of this kind, but this was definitely a worthwhile read, and I will probably look at some of Bernard McGinn's other work.
March 5, 2025
This took a while to read. I enjoyed probably 4/5ths of the book, but the ending felt unnecessary and abstracted from the rest of the text. The book is structured: 1) a background on Aquinas and the time that he is writing, 2) main points of the summa theologica, 3) historical impact of the summa up to modern day.
I’m happy I read it but I would probably do some research and select a different Aquinas biography or a different exposition on the summa next time.
I’m happy I read it but I would probably do some research and select a different Aquinas biography or a different exposition on the summa next time.
June 1, 2025
An engaging exploration of the Summa, one of the great works of Christian systematic theology and its historical reception. It was interesting to read about how Aquinas, a deep thinker, grappled with fundamental theological questions, especially the complex relationship between philosophy and theology. McGinn highlights Aquinas’s wrestling with the limits of human reason and his efforts to balance faith and rational inquiry.
October 29, 2019
This lucidly written book provides provides a biography of Aquinas. It places the Summa in historical context and provides a summary of the book. It then discusses reactions to it over the centuries. For someone like me, with little background in the history of Christianity, but an interest in the history of ideas, this book was very helpful.
June 22, 2025
Decent overview of the Summa Theologiae. The second half of the book, which focuses on the reception of the Summa in the centuries after St Thomas Aquinas' death, as well as on the way that the Catholic Church made his theology central to their teaching was quite interesting.
September 4, 2017
An excellent introduction book on ST's creation and influence. I plan to re-read it again in my own study of certain parts of ST.
May 22, 2024
After reading this book I feel that I'm better prepared to start reading the Summa.
July 20, 2016
quite interesting but verged on the encyclopedia entry towards the end
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