The Thought of Thomas Aquinas by Brian Davies, O.P. (review)

166 BOOK REVIEWS Those who read this handsome book and study the paintings and sculptures of Zarlenga in excellent color will be able to follow the phases of his artistic development and find many subjects for medita· tion and enjoyment. Aquinas Institute of Theology St. Louis, Missouri BENEDICT M. ASHLEY, O.P. The Thought of Thomas Aquinas. By BRIAN DAVIES, O.P. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992 (cloth); Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993 (paper). Pp. xv + 391. An establishing circumstance of the ' restoration ' of Christian philosophy at the end of the last century, and the turn of this century, was that the medieval authors whom Christian philosophers turned to were, by profession, theologians whose appropriation of philosophy was for explicitly theological ends. By and large, however, the modern authors who set about retrieving medieval thought had an agenda quite different from that of their medieval luminaries. Still reeling from the philosophical fall-out of the Enlightenment, and encountering rationalism , idealism, and empiricism on all sides, committed Christian thinkers sought a source of philosophical reflection and, perhaps more importantly , justification, that could buttress the claims made by Christianity for those who were within the believing community, and defend the faith from the intellectual attacks of those who were not. The enduring philosophical inheritance of the Middle Ages, and particularly the philosophia perennis of St. Thomas Aquinas, was that source, wrote Leo XIII in his Aeterni patris, and Catholic philosophers soon collected. But the inheritance was not fully collected. With distinctive philosophical goals in mind, Christian philosophers focused upon the putative philosophy of medieval writers, particularly Aquinas, and largely left theological reflection alone. And, when theological contentions on the part of medieval authors did make their way into the discussion, they were almost inevitably appropriated as a legitimate incorporation of revealed teaching into what somehow remained the philosophical project. The result was 'Christian Philosophy.' Although this resulted in the flurry of Catholic philosophical study during the first half of this century, the picture that emerged of the medieval authors, and of Thomas in particular, was inevitably one-sided, and incomplete. An overly pessimistic assessment of the situation would be to say that, for all the hard work of the Gilsons and Maritains, Van Steenberghens and DeKonincks, we are no nearer to Thomas today than we were in the 1870s. BOOK REVIEWS 167 Brian Davies's endeavor seeks to change that, because it attempts to provide the modern reader with a comprehensive introduction to the great expanse of Thomas's thought according to the manner in which Thomas himself presented it in his mature theological masterpiece, the Summa theologiae. Fr. Davies has succeeded magnificently, and his book will become, as it should, a mainstay on the bookshelves of university libraries, students, and teachers alike. Professional philosophers whose work never leads them to Thomas's discussion on Christ, say, can readily get a good working knowledge of how Thomas approaches this center of Christian faith and practice. And the student who is altogether new to Aquinas can grasp something of the ' movement ' of Thomas's thought by reading, and re-reading, Davies judicious renderings of Thomas's doctrine on human acts. This is a book of many uses, all of them instructive and helpful. Considering this book to be an introduction, as Fr. Davies does (p. viii), does not do justice to the quantity of his achievement in writing it, or of the student's investment in reading it. The work occupies some 391 pages, reading made difficult by the tightly-knit character of Thomas's thought, though Davies' easy writing helps to allay the burden. The physical constitution of the book, in slightly off-white octavo paper and an 11-point base font, makes for comfortable reading. Davies has avoided excessive footnoting, giving references to Thomas's text judiciously, and he also provides a well-tailored and impressively diverse bibliography at the end .of the volume which can be effectively consulted by his reader. The author himself is a foundational theologian at Blackfriars in Oxford, so one might expect him instinctively to address the particular audience he encounters in his work. But, save on a very few occasions, Fr. Davies is mindful that in...