The Second Vatican Council changed the direction in Roman Catholicism away from any ‘official’ prescription for the study of the works of Thomas Aquinas; surprisingly, since then, a genuine renaissance in studies of Aquinas has emerged, often from areas where Aquinas had been hardly discussed. These two books are part of that renaissance, although they are different from each other in their architectonic thrust in several fundamental ways. None the less, both are substantive studies in the interpretation of Thomas.

Denys Turner's book begins with a sophisticated discussion of the metaphysical and philosophy-of-mind issues that underlie much of Aquinas's theoretical philosophy. This is an externalist and realist interpretation of Aquinas's texts, treating themes that one finds reiterated by more than several recent contemporary analytic philosophers. Turner, rightly I submit, teases out the important metaphysical and philosophy-of-mind issues as propaedeutic to a discussion of Aquinas's moral theory which one can reasonably include under the rubric of ‘virtue ethics’. For both Turner and Bauerschmidt, Aquinas's account of ‘friendship’ is a necessary condition for understanding his moral theory and ultimately an interpretation of sanctity and Christ's relationship with human persons. Next, Turner begins his analysis of Aquinas's philosophical theology by indicating how Aquinas works his way around these difficult issues in theodicy. Finally, Turner embarks on a serious analysis of those significant but thorny issues in what Aquinas refers to as matters of religious faith alone, with emphasis on the teaching of a triune Godhead and then an adroit discussion of transubstantiation. This method of interpreting Aquinas's philosophical and religious approach to his material is what Bauerschmidt refers to as a ‘bottom up’ approach, meaning that one interprets Aquinas's philosophical method as beginning in ‘natural philosophy’, proceeding into metaphysics, then philosophy-of-mind, and finally moral theory rooted in the Nicomachean ethics. Following this fundamental realist philosophical analysis, Aquinas – using his operating principle that ‘grace perfects nature’ – ventures into his philosophy of religion and then to those issues that transcend a rational approach, the divine mysteries of religion that are totally dependent upon divine revelation. In my judgement this is the correct philosophical approach to understanding Aquinas's method in undertaking both rational philosophy and revealed theology. Turner looks at the texts of Aquinas through the lens of a philosopher and finds there a significant philosopher in the Western tradition. Turner's work is rooted in many twentieth-century analyses of Aquinas put forward by English Dominicans like Fergus Kerr, Herbert McCabe and others. This excellent ‘portrait’ can be read with profit by both fledgling and more senior students of Aquinas.

Frederick Bauerschmidt, a member of a theology department, argues in principle that the methodological approach undertaken by Turner towards interpreting and understanding the texts of Aquinas is misguided. In the tradition of Aquinas scholarship, Bauerschmidt sides with Gilsonian Thomists, European Thomists like de Lubac and Chenu, and Mark Jordan, among others, and against readers of Aquinas like the late Ralph McInerny whose significant Praeambula fidei: Thomism and the god of the philosophers (2006) argues, like Turner, that Aquinas begins with a philosophical base before discussing the issues of revealed theology. Bauerschmidt suggests, with a subtle yet interesting argument following the insights of the late Irish Dominican, Leonard Boyle, that one should regard Aquinas's principal work, the Summa theologiae, as a handbook of theological positions – admixed with some philosophy – written especially for Dominican students who were about to embark on a ministry of preaching and hearing confessions. According to Bauerschmidt, in order to comprehend what Aquinas was all about, one must take seriously the goals of the Dominican order, whose motto is ‘Contemplata aliis tradere’ (‘To study and to give to others the fruits of one's study’); Aquinas made a conscious decision to enter this then newly-established religious order and did not, against some parental pressure, become a Benedictine monk associated with Monte Cassino, the monastery near the ancestral home in central Italy. Given the apostolic thrust of the religious order founded in 1216 by St Dominic, Bauerschmidt argues that one must understand the guiding principles of the Dominicans in order to understand why Aquinas developed the philosophical and theological texts that he did. Bauerschmidt refers to this method of understanding Aquinas's work as a ‘top down’ approach. Of course, this method focuses attention on the theological claims, both philosophical and revealed, in Aquinas's works and argues that all the philosophical investigations were undertaken only in light of our understanding that Aquinas's goal was principally theological and never philosophical. This would be an interpretive thrust in Aquinas's work towards Aristotelian practical reason with speculative reason reducible to an instrumentalist position for practical reason. Bauerschmidt argues that the goal always at the forefront of Aquinas's work was to illustrate and carry out ‘holy teaching’.

What is one to make of Bauerschmidt's position? One is reminded of the argument once proposed by Bertrand Russell that all philosophers know where they wish to go, and the arguments are constructed to get there. While probably more or less true, none the less, Russell's point does not help us to understand what the philosophical substance might be of the texts under consideration. With Aquinas, one might take into consideration one specific set of philosophical issues; given the intense interest in many of the externalist and non-representationalist positions discussed in Aquinas's texts in the philosophy of mind – especially in perception theory – one witnesses Aquinas operating as a first-rate philosopher. Philosophers like John McDowell, Eleonore Stump, Christopher Martin and John Haldane, among others, have focused significant attention on these philosophical issues that are at the wellspring of much recent analytic philosophy. The philosophical merits of these arguments found in Aquinas are one thing; any theological goal is irrelevant conceptually to the specific analysis under consideration. None the less, Bauerschmidt's discussions of the philosophical concepts used by Aquinas are illustrative along with the account of Aquinas's life within the historical narrative of thirteenth-century university culture in Western Europe.

In one sense, both Turner and Bauerschmidt end up with a similar set of observations about Aquinas – that he offered significant analyses of major theological issues under his scholarly belt, with special reference to the role of Christ in one's spiritual life. Yet Turner's is, in my judgement, the better way to approach these issues. Furthermore, one need not go all the way to the theological issues to confront a first-rate philosophical mind taking tough-minded analysis to significant philosophical issues, ones that are percolating to the top of major analytical philosophical work in the first decades of the twenty-first century. Turner's monograph is a well-structured narrative with a developed architectonic, while Bauerschmidt's text is a bit choppy in places. None the less, both offer substantive studies that merit serious reading and sustained discussion.