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Book Reviews Thomas Aquinas’s Summa theologiae: A Biography. Lives of Great Religious Books. By Bernard McGinn. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2014. Pp. xii+260. ISBN: 978-0691154268. $24.95. In one of the many delightful surprises in Bernard McGinn’s ‘‘biography’’ of the Summa theologia of St. Thomas Aquinas, we read that ‘‘Thomas had come to think that the whole of theological education was out of whack’’ (51). The solution Thomas offered, as one part of a lifetime of vigorous intellectual work punctuated by polemic and surrounded with prayer, was quintessentially Dominican. McGinn’s sensitivity to mysticism as an important element of intellectual history allows him to place the Angelic Doctor’s signature work in its time and milieu, and to skillfully outline the reception and transmission of his work down to the present. McGinn’s biography of the Summa proceeds in five stages. An exploration of ‘‘The World That Made Thomas Aquinas’’ in chapter 1 provides some very helpful distinctions among meanings of ‘‘Scholasticism,’’ a summary of the relationship between Lombard’s Sentences and later theology, and a brief background on the revival of preaching that led to the founding of the Franciscans as well as Thomas’s Dominicans. Chapter 2, ‘‘Creating the Summa theologiae,’’ offers many of the insights readers will have come to a ‘‘biography’’ seeking, perhaps especially concerning the implications of Thomas’s primary concern with sacra doctrina, rather than philosophy or theology as sciences, in the Summa. Chapter 3 conducts the reader through ‘‘A Tour of the Summa theologiae,’’ offering the practical guide to understanding its innovative objection and response method, as well as its notoriously various organization schemes, that many readers new to Thomas will need; this guide is wrapped in a lucid discussion of how various purposes for reading Thomas have called forth various interpretations of that organization. McGinn proceeds to trace this history of interpretation, and in many cases of misinterpretation, of Thomas as his initially controversial synthesis gained widespread recognition in ‘‘The Tides of Thomism, 1275–1850’’; I think it fair to summarize by saying that understanding of Thomas dwindled as the homage offered by commentators peaked. McGinn may arguably be a little too hard on the possibility of contemporary understanding of the Summa, but the history traced in chapter 5, ‘‘The Rise and Fall of Neothomism,’’ will tend to lead the reader toward agreeing that the Thomistic Revival was, in large part, a revival of the misreading of the Summa. At the same time, McGinn’s recounting of the various responses to Christianity & Literature 2017, Vol. 66(2) 326–359 ! The Author(s) 2017 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/ journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0148333116679046 journals.sagepub.com/home/cal Thomas among theologians and philosophers in the 20th century give evidence to the continuing fecundity of his work, and its capacity to enrich and test various efforts toward a fresh synthesis. The apparatus is also quite helpful, with front and back matter that provide McGinn’s perspective and permit the reader to establish a proper relationship with the subject matter. Copious explanatory endnotes do not intrude on the page, but provide what amounts to an excuse to selectively reread the text when one has finished. Note 49 alone, for example, could probably provide an M.A. student with a head start on a thesis discussing Thomas’s various uses of sapientia. The topical index is supplemented with a separate index of names, greatly improving the utility of the book for those who are not medievalists but are keenly interested in the history of ideas and traditions. Not to be missed, especially, is a very helpful bibliography, suggesting authoritative translations and compilations as well as standard overviews and commentaries; the list is long enough to be a very solid introduction, but short enough to be used as the basis for a graduate seminar. For this alone, McGinn’s work should probably be on any ‘‘recommended reading’’ list for interested scholars. Perhaps the most useful section for most readers looking to McGinn for background on the Summa is the second chapter, ‘‘Creating the Summa theologiae.’’ Bearing in mind the profound way that prayer and eucharistic devotion...

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