Beautiful books physically, the Oxford Handbook series offers state‐of‐the‐art surveys of thinking and research in the chosen field. Brian Davies OP, who teaches philosophy at Fordham University, is author of The Thought of Thomas Aquinas (1992), the standard introduction. Eleonore Stump, who teaches philosophy at Saint Louis University, published Aquinas in the Routledge Arguments of the Philosophers series (2003), and, in Wandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering (2010), offers a defence of Aquinas's theodicy. Such editors could not but attract colleagues well qualified to write about Thomas Aquinas.
The plan of the book is as follows. The historical background is provided by Jean‐Pierre Torrell OP (life and works); James Doig (Aristotle); Alexander Fidora (Augustine), Wayne J. Hankey (Platonism) and David B. Burrell CSC (Jewish and Islamic authors). Part II — Metaphysics and the Existence of God — deals with being (John F. Wippel), matter, form, and individuation (Jeffrey E. Brower), causation (Michael Rota) and the Five Ways (Timothy Pawl). Part III — The Divine Nature — expounds Aquinas on divine simplicity (Stump); divine goodness (Ludger Honnefelder); God's knowledge and will (James Brent OP); divine impassibility, immutability, and eternality, and divine omnipotence (two chapters by Brian Leftow). Part IV — Ethics and Action Theory — covers human freedom and agency (Thomas Williams); emotions (Peter King); happiness (Davies); law and natural law (Michael Baur); conscience (Tobias Hoffmann); virtues and vices (Jean Porter); practical reasoning (Thomas M. Osborne, Jr) and the theological virtues (Joseph Wawrykow). Part V — Epistemology and Philosophy of Mind — deals with human knowledge (Martin Pickavé); the intellectual virtues (Tobias Hoffmann); reason and faith (Bruno Niederbacher SJ); and philosophy of mind and human nature (Robert Pasnau). In Part VI Gyula Klima considers Aquinas's theory of language while Davies discusses analogy. Part VII — Philosophical Theology — covers providence and the problem of evil (Stump); Trinity (Gilles Emery OP); Incarnation (Michael Gorman); Redemption (Rik Van Nieuwenhove); sacraments (Dominic Holtz OP); resurrection and the separated soul (Stump); prayer (Davies); the Gifts of the Holy Spirit (Andrew Pinsent); and finally, in Part VIII, Giorgio Pini surveys the internal development of Aquinas's thought, and Christopher Upham his influence. The volume concludes with the usual scholarly paraphernalia, including nearly 30 pages of bibliography.
Davies and Stump are of course professors of philosophy. Perhaps the forthcoming Cambridge Companion to the Summa Theologiae, co‐edited by Denys Turner and Philip McCosker, both theologians, may have a different slant. It may seem odd, for example, to place Aquinas's consideration of Christian doctrines under the heading of Philosophical Theology. While the bibliography lists Aquinas on Scripture: An Introduction to his Biblical Commentaries, edited by Thomas G. Weinandy OFMCap, Daniel A. Keating and John P. Yocum (2005) — one flourishing area on which the Handbook does not report — it omits Aquinas on Doctrine: A Critical Introduction (2004), the companion volume, which self‐consciously breaks away from the allegedly Thomistic focus on Aquinas as philosopher. On the other hand, the Handbook lists The Theology of Thomas Aquinas, edited by Rik Van Nieuwenhove and Joseph Wawrykov (2005): a collection which engages with the deeply metaphysical character of Thomas's theological work without (however) treating his philosophical options on their own.
These collective enterprises bear witness to the renewal of interest in Aquinas, at least in the English‐speaking world (is there as much innovative work in other cultures, especially traditionally Catholic ones?). Of the 32 contributors most are, or have been, engaged in expounding Aquinas in North American universities. Among the authors may be noted five Dominicans (two of whom are French), at least two secular priests, and one Jesuit (Austrian as it happens): Aquinas is no longer in mainly clerical hands. While about a third of the authors are serious medievalists, their contributions are very accessible to non‐specialists. According to Upham, ‘some disciples of Wittgenstein, notably Peter Geach and Anthony Kenny, have learned to critique modernity from Wittgenstein and have discovered an alternate way of thinking in Aquinas’ (p. 526): claims that would bear unpacking. In general, the book is written by scholars, and intended for readers, who, if not always trained in analytic philosophy, take that way of thinking for granted. In other words, none of the authors shows any interest in viewing Aquinas in a post‐Heideggerian light. Heidegger appears once, when Holtz feels obliged to engage with Louis‐Marie Chauvet's influential dismissal of Aquinas on sacramental causality on supposedly Heideggerian grounds (pp. 453–4) — Chauvet's understanding of Heidegger, as it happens, is convincingly dismantled by Hal St John Broadbent in his forthcoming Heythrop College dissertation: Heidegger‐Chauvet‐Benedict XVI: The Call of the Holy.
Apart from being a thoroughly reliable introduction for newcomers, the Handbook touches many matters to intrigue old hands. On pure scholarship, for example, Torrell doubts if the marginalia in the Lincoln College manuscript are the lost second course on the first book of Peter Lombard's Liber Sententiarum, which Thomas abandoned in frustration in order to start what became the Summa Theologiae (pp. 20–21). As regards his fundamental philosophical as well as theological motives and intuitions Aquinas owes far more to the Latin‐Christian tradition than to Aristotle and/or Arabic thinkers — a thesis perhaps accepted, Fidora says, though not yet seriously developed (p. 52). People say that Aquinas thought he could prove the existence of God, but he thought no such thing: ‘God's existence is identical with his essence, which Aquinas takes to be incomprehensible to us’ (p. 11). Rather, while Aquinas thought that a philosophical case for ‘God exists’ being true can be made (differing here from most of his contemporaries, one may add)— even this was only on a certain understanding of ‘God’, as the editors add, referring us to the neglected book by Lubor Velecky, Aquinas’ Five Arguments (1994). Against commentators who delight in citing the famous ‘anima mea non est ego’ remark, Stump argues that, while he denies that a human being is identical to his soul (Platonic dualism he thought), Thomas should not be taken to mean that the human being ceases to exist at death, to be reconstituted only at the resurrection (pp. 458–466). But every chapter in this splendid book contains some equally stimulating contention.
