Like many companion-essay collections published by Cambridge and other UK-based firms, this volume joins the contemporary effort to bring newcomers to a place of readiness for reading the great works of great authors. The present volume seeks to bring readers into successful contact with a work the editors suggest is the “most influential work of theology in the history of Christianity” (p. i), the Summa theologiae of St. Thomas Aquinas, the medieval Christian saint (1225–1274). The tripartite book, like Aquinas's tripartite Summa theologiae, braces the reader for the onslaught of terms, modes of writing, and doctrines that comprised Thomas's medieval theological world. It is a supremely useful book.
Aquinas's Summa is a book not merely in the sense of being a series of pages touching upon a given topic, bound together; it is rather an intentional structure, an edifice, that needs to be appreciated and somewhat understood before entry, so that its form can aid in the learning it promises. Any work about theologia is first and foremost a work about God, so Aquinas structured his work as being about God in himself (Part One); and God's image, the human being (Part Two); and Christ, the God-become-human (Part Three). Cued by Aquinas's design choice, the editors also use a tripartite scheme to present the Summa as: a work (Part One: the work and its intrinsic structure); a source of theological content (Part Two: God, Trinity, humans, morals, grace, Christ, redemption, sacraments); a branch in the larger Christian tradition, related to other traditions (Part Three: Catholic, Orthodox, Reformed, and non-Abrahamic traditions).
The editors then filled each section with contributions that are on point: Part One addresses Aquinas's understanding of Dominican spirituality, his application of structure, use of philosophy, scripture, and method; Part Two addresses his arguments about God, Trinity, Creation, humanity and its happiness, grace, Christ and his life, redemption, and sacraments; and then, finally, Part Three is a consideration of the traditions of thought that Thomas was part of, and to which he contributed, intentionally or not (e.g., orthodox and non-Abrahamic). Reading the Summa can be fruitful for a diversity of readers, from varying paths.
A volume such as this cannot be uniform in style and scholarly approach. The essays from the twenty-four distinct scholars range in style and substance. Some read almost as orally presented papers (e.g., Kathryn Tanner [142–155] and Denys Turner [168–180]), and the late Herbert McCabe's (d.2001) contribution on “eternity” (102–116) was in fact a lecture he gave in the 1980s. Others feel as though they are journal articles (e.g., Paul Griffiths [291–304] and Andrew Louth [305–318]). The volume's contributors are known and well regarded in the world of Aquinas studies, and each contributor seems genuinely to have ‘caught the bug’—each seems infected, that is, with enthusiasm for the subject matter of his or her assigned topic (e.g., Jean Porter on human happiness [181–193]). The nine-page index, half-populated by names, feels skimpy when one notes that the book has 349 pages of academic content, covering every facet of Christian theology, plus considerations of philosophical teaching. But then one might argue that the Summa’s very encyclopedic divisions and content already form an index to be used by its reader; if one is interested in topics concerning Christ, for instance, one would naturally turn to the third part of the Summa; the nature of procession when it comes to the Trinity sends one to the first part (on God), question 27 (the initial presentation of Trinitarian matters). No mysteries here.
While Aquinas might have been able to specialize in the totality of theology in his day, modern Aquinas scholars, because of interest and necessity, tend to focus on sub-areas, such as ethics, and indeed natural law within ethics (alas, as it happens, there is no treatment of law or natural law in this volume; choices presumably had to be made). So specialists in a given area will naturally gravitate toward the chapters dedicated to their preferred topics (e.g., the Holy Spirit, grace, or redemption in Christ), and newcomers to these standard topics will do likewise to gain an overview of what might be treated in a seminar they are participating in. The result could be that portions of the book may go unread because the reader cannot devote the time. This would be a bad thing, given the volume's high quality. At the very least, I would recommend that all who pick up the book read Pim Valkenberg's chapter on scripture (48–61) and John Marenbon's on method (74–82); all the chapters in part one of the volume (these latter two included) would genuinely speed the reader to successful engagement with the rest of the volume's contents.
No matter a contribution's content or style, every single one left me prepared and keen to consider its correlative section in Thomas's Summa, which is the ultimate purpose of the book. Aquinas scholars, students in theology generally, and church historians will profit from having this book in their library, whether personal or institutional.
