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BOOK REVIEWS 941 Summa Theologiae. By THOMAS AQUINAS. Latin Text, English Translation, Introduction, Notes, Appendices and Glossaries. New York: McGraw·· Hill Book Company, and London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1978. Vol. ~7. Effects of Sin, Stain and Guilt (la~ae. 86-89). Translated by T. C. O'Brien. Pp. 168. $10.00. Vol. 36. Prudence (~a~ae. 47-56). Translated by Thomas Gilby, 0. P. Pp. ~11. $15.00. Vol. 47. The Pastoral and Religious Lives (~a~ae. 183-189). Translated by Jordan Aumann, 0. P. Pp. ~03. $15.00. With the appearance of these three volumes almost fifty of the projected sixty volumes of this series are published. And the rest, according to General Editor Thomas Gilby, are in the barn. One can only applaud the work of this good Thomist scholar, applaud too the British publishers, Eyre & Spottiswoode, whose courageous and magnanimous financial backing made the project possible. David Tracy, in a recent Christian Century article, pointed to this series and especially to its editor as witness " to the continuing importance of a critically appreciative approach to the work of Thomas Aquinas." Gilby'~:~ .Prudence does not disappoint that witness. It also exemplifies his superior use of the English language in translating his brother's Latin. " Prudence deals with contingent actions, in which bad may be mixed with good, as true with false. This is because human deeds are multiform; rights are often entangled with wrongs, and wrongs wear the air of good." (~a~ae. 49, 8) . And it breathes the same spirit Gilby finds in the Summa: "a spacious Summa for theologians, not a practical handbook for spiritual plumbers. It is unembarrassed by the imbroglios of the casuists." Gilby'~ appendices-in this volume four of them, discussing prudence and laws, casuistry, conscience, and certainty-are always provocative but tantalizingly brief. O'Brien's work is a much tighter rendering, based no doubt on his own philosophy of what a translation should be about. " It should not by flare or folksiness put the reader off from the requirement of getting inside (the impersonal Latin) to the idea." Well, yes, but I prefer a controlled flare. It helps the readability. The Latin, which is always there to consult, is awfully dry going. Gilby's phrase translating the virtue gnome (which Thomas left in the Greek) is "the flair for the exceptional" {q. 51, 4, sed contra), and he manages to exhibit that virtue frequently in his translation . O'Brien's appendices on guilt and punishment, mortal sin, venial sin, and a long commentary on 89, 6 are excellent. This last commentary compares the position of Thomas that a man cannot commit a venial sin until he has chosen an ultimate end to the recent thought on the funda- 942 BOOK REVIEWS mental moral option. It is enlightening and I think quite accurate. So also his addenda on venial sin. This is a brief history of the problem of the "finality" in venial sin, O'Brien's choice of solutions and his defence of that choice; all done with a masterly knowledge of the corpus of St. ThomCM's thought. Both he and Gilby are superb in finding other texts of Aquinas t~ substantiate their points. I think, however, both should bring in modern discussions more explicitly. O'Brien remarks somewhere that the best interpreter of Aquinas is Aquinas himself (Sanctus ThomCM sui interpres). But a too great dependence on that rule shuts the door on modern criticism, tends to make a self-sufficient universe of the thought of Aquinas. E. L. Mascall has written in this journal recently of the gulf in philosophy, how philosophers are simply not listening to one another. He wonders if Thomism can act as a bridge. Of course, I think it can, and should; and I am certain Gilby and O'Brien think so too; but a greater explicit awareness of other people's thought in the appendices of these Summa volumes would help make that conviction more available to the scholarly world. Aumann's translation is accurate but even drier than O'Brien's, and that again is based on his deliberate approach to the job: "It is as close as possible to the original Latin...

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