Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas by John Wippel (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 703 vide such answers, but the lines of connection between theory and practice , between Bonaventure and his sources and contemporaries, need to be more clearly shown. Perhaps I am looking for too much here, but it seems that many loose ends remain unconnected, and that with a bit more probing the author could have drawn them together for us. Despite this reservation, however, I am grateful for the appearance of this study. It opens up a door to a vast new world which up to now has remained terra incognita. Washington Theological Union Silver Spring, Md. DOMINIC V. MONTI, O.F.M. Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas. By JOHN WIPPEL. (Studies in Philosophy and the History of Philosophy, Vol. 10.) Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of .America Press, 1984. Pp. xi + 293. No price given. In this volume the author brings together previously written articles on teachings of St. Thomas .Aquinas. In addition to these articles, however , the book contains new materials: a response to Fr. Owens regarding .Aquinas's teaching on the real distinction between essence and existence (the second part of chapter 5) and further elaboration on how St. Thomas dealt with this problem (the whole of chapter 6). Such collections risk a lack of overall unity. The author shows that he is aware of this danger in the opening lines of his Introduction. The title he chooses for the volume, Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas, however, serves as an announcement of his intention and an answer to anyone who might complain that he did not write another and more unified kind of exposition. The present volume for the most part addresses issues neglected by the (relatively few) philosophers who today concern themselves with the medieval period. Such scholars give the lion's share of their interest to issues of logic and semantics. Hence the author's work is a welcome complement in that it delves into questions of a different sort-the kinds of questions scholars, mainly European, liked to take up some generations ago. The opening essay nicely sets the tone and prepares the reader for what is to come, viz. a succession of topics treated by .Aquinas qua Christian philosopher. The author's purpose here is to review the opinions of certain workers, especially Gilson, and to clarify from his own standpoint what it means to speak, of .Aquinas (or anyone) as a Christian philosopher. 704 BOOK REVIEWS This first chapter is particularly apposite, for it lays out the necessary context for issues that otherwise might strike many contemporary philosophers as strictly theological. Much rides, of course, on how one chooses to think about the meaning, or indeed the very possibility, of Christian philosophy. The author presents his case soberly and clearly, arguing that one can indeed choose as a philosopher to enter into questions which others might regard as more properly not philosophical but theological. If one accepts his view here, then the way is open for the Christian philosopher to move in what can be taken as rather obvious directions: " Granted that the Christian philosopher has the right to investigate each and every philosophical problem, in fact he is selective. Questions concerning the existence and nature of God and the origin and nature and destiny of man will be of paramount importance" (p. 13). The rest of Part One, i.e., chapters 2, 3, and 4, deal with St. Thomas's account of how metaphysical knowledge works in comparison with natural philosophy and mathematics. This entails an explanation of separatio, sometimes refeITed to as the third degree of abstraction. The author appropriately focuses on Aquinas's relatively early but most thorough treatment of the question in his commentary on the De Trin.itate of Boethius. In these chapters, the author explains in considerable detail St. Thomas's carefully thought out theory of how the human mind goes about the task of formulating a body of systematic and scientific knowledge, with special emphasis on precisely how he justifies the possibility of human thought regarding immaterial substance. As Aristotle had done, Aquinas calls this enterprise by three different names, viz. ' first philosophy', ' divine science', and 'metaphysics' (or trans-physics), and Wippel discusses...