Foreword by Michael A. G. Haykin
FOREWORD
A number of medieval theologians have gained wide respect from Reformed readers over the years: authors such as Anselm and Bernard of Clairvaux, John Wycliffe and Jan Hus. But Thomas Aquinas, who was in some ways the quintessential medieval theologian, has not been among them. Heavyset and taciturn, he was dubbed the “Dumb Ox” by his fellow Dominicans, but one of his teachers said of him, “This ox will one day fill the world with his bellowing.” Aquinas began teaching at the University of Paris in 1252. Four years later, he was awarded the doctorate in theology and appointed a professor of philosophy at the university. Over the next eighteen years, he primarily sought to organize the knowledge of his day in the service of his medieval Catholic faith.
Although Aquinas was indebted to Augustine’s theology of grace, which has deeply informed the Reformed tradition as well, his use of Aristotelian philosophy and his development of such Reformation bugbears as transubstantiation made Reformed thinkers generally wary of him. Moreover, the ardent opposition to the Reformation by a number of sixteenth-century Thomists such as Thomas Cajetan didn’t help make Aquinas popular among the Reformers and undoubtedly provided a further reason for the Reformed tradition’s suspicion of the Dominican theologian.
Yet the impact of Aquinas on such twentieth-century thinkers as G. K. Chesterton and Alasdair MacIntyre is indicative of the fact that he is undoubtedly a great theologian whose thought cannot be simply ignored. Thus the importance of this relatively slim monograph. Although Oliphint has limited this study of Thomas to a couple of areas of the medieval thinker’s thought—epistemology and the existence and character of God—they are both foundational issues and thus well serve the monograph’s twofold purpose: to reveal the strengths and weaknesses of the medieval theologian’s reasoning and to reflect on how Reformed theology can best utilize the thought of this great thinker. All in all, this monograph is an excellent example of theological ressourcement.
Michael A. G. Haykin
Louisville, Kentucky