Who's a Fan of St. Thomas?

[richardwy]

Looking for tutor. Someone all jazzed about our great Doctor who loves teaching others about him.

Good reader on this end. Used to teach college English. Have the Summa, but have not found the sticktoitiveness to keep at it.

Who’s all but ready to bust if they don’t have a chance to get someone all up to snuff on St. Thomas?

 

[cpayne]

Looking for tutor. Someone all jazzed about our great Doctor who loves teaching others about him.

Good reader on this end. Used to teach college English. Have the Summa, but have not found the sticktoitiveness to keep at it.

Who’s all but ready to bust if they don’t have a chance to get someone all up to snuff on St. Thomas?

Sorry to immediately steer you toward another book, but you might try Peter Kreeft’s *A Summa of the Summa *to get started. His extensive footnotes are quite user-friendly.

 

[Contarini]

Looking for tutor. Someone all jazzed about our great Doctor who loves teaching others about him.

Good reader on this end. Used to teach college English. Have the Summa, but have not found the sticktoitiveness to keep at it.

Who’s all but ready to bust if they don’t have a chance to get someone all up to snuff on St. Thomas?

I’m always happy to talk about St. Thomas. I’m no expert, but I have read quite a bit of him and as I have time am working my way through the ST in Latin. (I have not yet got out of the parts I’ve mostly already read, fairly early in Part 1–this may be a lifetime project!)

Start a thread on something specific, or send me a private message/email.

Edwin

 

[richardwy]

Thanks Payne for the recommendation and thank-you Ed for the offer!

Readers who reviewed on Amazon also agree with you Payne. Will buy it

FWIW, did read Chesterton’s “The Dumb Ox” and loved it!

Ed, while reading Kreeft, when I run across something, I’ll post it in the Phil Forum. Thanks again for your kind offer.

Lastly, Ed, is there a common spot were readers of Thomas get him “wrong?” Common beginner errors I asking about.

Thanks!

 

[CapIV]

Thomas Aquinas got closer to truth than any man who has ever lived.

 

[Contarini]

Thanks Payne for the recommendation and thank-you Ed for the offer!

Readers who reviewed on Amazon also agree with you Payne. Will buy it

FWIW, did read Chesterton’s “The Dumb Ox” and loved it!

Ed, while reading Kreeft, when I run across something, I’ll post it in the Phil Forum. Thanks again for your kind offer.

Lastly, Ed, is there a common spot were readers of Thomas get him “wrong?” Common beginner errors I asking about.

Well, you will get a number of different views on that, I expect. I think it’s easy to read Aquinas as more of a rationalist and as a more optimistic/humanistic thinker than he is. Because he speaks a lot more about natural law than many other theologians conservative Christians are used to, it’s easy to overemphasize that part of his theology. One specific point that is relevant these days is his famous “five proofs”–I think that 1, 2, and 5 in particular are too often read in the context of later arguments. His concept of “movement” is primarily movement from potentiality to actuality–essentially any kind of change. So when he says God is the “prime mover” he’s not just talking about physical movement. Similarly, the fourth argument is sometimes misinterpreted as essentially the same thing as modern “intelligent design” or the older “watchmaker” argument. However, for Aquinas this is not a scientific argument. It’s not saying that you can’t explain some feature of created existence and so it must be designed, but rather that precisely because reality is intelligible it must have a mind behind it.

The common thread here is that God is not a being among other beings. God is Being, pure and simple. God acts in creatures–God does not “push” them from outside. We have inherited this “watchmaker” image from the 18th century, and it’s easy to read Aquinas through that lens.

One other trap–into which I carelessly fell in my doctoral prelims–is Aquinas’ concept of necessity. If you start with his doctrine of providence, it’s easy to start speaking as if everything happens necessarily. But if you start with his strong affirmation of free will, it’s easy to fail to appreciate what he says about providence. He holds together a lot of things that other philosophers and theologians separate. This is one of the things that makes him a difficult thinker, in spite of the clarity of his presentation.

Edwin

 

[Cajetan]

I’m a Thomist, philosophical and theological. That said, it’ll be awhile before I could teach St. Thomas’ doctrines with any authority. I guess I’m a decent enough student regarding his natural theology, but there are many mountains I have yet to climb.

 

[Hastrman]

I couldn’t tell you what in my Scholasticism is Thomas and what’s Aristotle and what’s Adler, but I could probably teach the basics (four causes, act and potency, participation, etc.) if I had to.