This is an amazing book explaining Thomas Aquinas's thinking. I had tried to read Aquinas and found him difficult to understand at best. Davies is a great teacher. Don't pass this one up. ( )

The Reverend Dr. Brian Davies, O.P. (of Blackfriars and St. Bennett's, Oxford University) presents St. Thomas' magnum opus, the Summa Theologiae. The Summa is of course overwhelming, intended by its author as an introduction, the English editions are 3 to 5 vols. (approx. 5000 dense pages) and the Latin & English editions (of which Blackfriars is the most deservedly famous) some 60 vols.

So, the search for a tour guide is a fait accompli for the beginner. As for requirements to approach St. Thomas’ thought, a good grasp of traditional logic, a dash of Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics (see Ed Feser’s Aquinas for this), and some Thomistic natural philosophy would be a good recipe to aspire to. Very few have this background however, and that is the beauty of Davies' book because this is one place anyone can dive in.

Who is Aquinas? Why should we be concerned with him. Anthony Kenny as editor of a collection of essays, Aquinas: A Collection of Critical Essays(London, 1969),had this to say:

“Aquinas is, I believe, one of the dozen greatest philosophers of the western world. His philosophy of nature has been antiquated, in great part, by the swift progress of natural science since the Renaissance. His philosophy of logic has been in many respects improved upon by the work of logicians and mathematicians in the last hundred years. But his metaphysics, his philosophical theology, his philosophy of mind and his moral philosophy entitle him to rank with Plato and Aristotle, with Descartes and Leibniz, with Locke and Hume and Kant.”

He was an Italian Dominican priest of the Catholic Church, and an immensely influential philosopher and theologian in the tradition known as scholasticism. “Aquinas” is not a surname (hereditary surnames were not then in common use in Europe), but is a Latin adjective meaning "of Aquino", his place of birth in Italy.

He was the foremost classical proponent of natural theology, and the father of an eponymous school of thought, Thomism. His influence on Western thought is considerable, and much of modern philosophy was conceived as a reaction against, or as an agreement with his ideas, particularly in the areas of ethics, natural law and political theory.

Thomas is held in the Catholic Church to be the model teacher for those studying for the priesthood. The works for which he is best-known are the Summa Theologica and the Summa Contra Gentiles. One of the 33 Doctors of the Church, he is considered the Church's greatest theologian and philosopher. Pope Benedict XV declared: "The Church has declared Thomas' doctrines to be her own." For Catholics, studying Thomas is a way to understand your faith.

In this book Davies aims to give a general and introductory overview of Aquinas's teaching – the problem as noted above is that the St. Thomas’ writings run to thousands of pages. Even Davies calls attention to the fact that “one simply cannot do justice to them in one volume.”

But, as Davies tells us, Aquinas himself comes to his rescue: “For, though there are significant developments in his thinking, there is also enormous continuity. His major conclusions can all be found in his first important work, the Commentary on the Sentences. He shifted in his emphases, but he did not change his mind radically. One cannot seriously speak of an `Early Aquinas' and a `Later Aquinas'. He was a man of many thoughts, but he always had a single vision, albeit one presented with varied nuances and with different degrees of attention to detail.”

So in a way Thomas is relatively easy to expound. Another feature of Thomas’ thought that Davies says assists greatly is that he is enormously systematic. What Thomas says on one topic almost always needs clarification in terms of what he says about something else. Expounding him on one subject can quickly lead to a flow of exposition and Davies says you can see this by the number of times he uses expressions like “as we have seen” or “as we shall see”.

Davies follows Thomas broadly in accordance with the scheme he provided in the Summa theologiae, widely regarded as his greatest achievement, and which is also the best-known synthesis of his thinking. “It presents the essentials of a lifetime's reflection in an order which he felt appropriate, so I presume that one will hardly be doing him an injustice if one tries to introduce him with that text, those essentials, and that order in mind.”

Lest you think this is just some forumulaic recapsulation of the Summa theologiae, Dr. Davies does note ways in which the contents of that work differ from Aquinas’ teachings presented by him elsewhere. He has also excised a lot of Aquinas’ writings on politics and aesthetics that you might find in the Summa and discussion of Aquinas's contribution to thirteenth-century debates about the legitimacy and running of certain religious orders in the Catholic Church -- which is now of only historical interest.

The result is a highly readable, cogent and lucid summary of the great Doctor’s thought. This is a must buy for those who wish to build a PATTS bookshelf. ( )