A Short Introduction to Thomas Aquinas

by John Lord

A short introduction to the life and work of Saint Thomas Aquinas, from his early days to his later life as the pre-eminent theologian (the angelic doctor, they called him) of the Catholic Church.

38 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 27, 2013

About the author

John Lord was an American historian and lecturer. He graduated from Dartmouth and the Andover Theological Seminary.

Librarian note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

John^Lord

Reviews

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wanted to find out a bit more about Aquinas and his philosophy, motivated both by an interest in Catholic theology and some recent philosophy modules in an arts and humanities course. This book did the job, although I wouldn't say it did it superbly. It gives a perfectly good biography of Aquinas and then summarises his major works. You get a decent sense of what Aquinas was about, but I felt it goes into a little too much detail for a quick read, but not quite enough to help the reader who doesn't have a background in philosophy or theology get their head around a lot of the discussion. It might have been better to pick out fewer key themes and explain them a bit more than to skate over so much of Aquinas' work. After reading this, I picked up Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy and read the chapter on Aquinas in that, which felt as good as a summary, but is much shorter.