Recommended for Further Reading
Recommended for Further Reading
There are too many books by and about Aquinas for anyone with a normal lifestyle to cover. The list below is highly selective, but does provide an adequate overview of Thomas and his work.
These two Summas will show the best and worst of Thomas:
Aquinas, Thomas. The Summa Contra Gentiles of Saint Thomas Aquinas. Translated by the English Dominican Fathers. 5 vols. London: Burns Oates and Washbourne, 1923–29.
______. Summa Theologica. Translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province. Complete English edition. Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, 2009.
It is useful for interested readers to read experts in the field in order to understand both the breadth of Thomas’s work and the ambiguities that remain among Thomists. Good places to begin would be:
Davies, Brian, and Eleonore Stump, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Aquinas. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.
Kretzmann, Norman, and Eleonore Stump, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Aquinas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
See especially the biography of Aquinas as a helpful guide to his emphases and his overall approach. The best one-volume assessment of Aquinas is:
Stump, Eleonore. Aquinas. London: Routledge, 2003.
A good resource for the “new view” of Thomas is:
Gilson, Étienne. The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas. New York: Random House, 1956.
For a powerful critique of the new view as well as a call for traditional Thomism, see:
McInerny, Ralph. Praeambula Fidei: Thomism and the God of the Philosophers. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2006.
Swafford, Andrew Dean. Nature and Grace: A New Approach to Thomistic Ressourcement. Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2014.
The best overall assessment and critique of Thomism can be found in:
Van Til, Cornelius. Defense of the Faith. 4th ed. Edited by K. Scott Oliphint. Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2008.
______. “Nature and Scripture.” In The Infallible Word, edited by N. B. Stonehouse and Paul Woolley, 263–301. Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1978.
______. The Protestant Doctrine of Scripture. Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1967.
______. The Reformed Pastor and Modern Thought. Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1980, esp. chs. 2 and 5.