The Summa Theologica is a compendium of theology written by Thomas Aquinas between 1265 and 1273. In Roman Catholicism it is the sum of all known learning and doctrine, of all that can be known about God and humanity's relations with God -- a landmark in the history of theology that famously offers five proofs of God's existence, the first three of which are cosmological arguments; the fourth, a moral argument; and the fifth, a teleological argument.
The third quarter of the thirteenth century marked the first decisive philosophical encounter between Hellenism and Christianity. The rediscovery of Aristotle's works after the Dark Ages ushered in a new era of intellectual fervor in Europe, and the work of Thomas Aquinas is a commentary on Aristotle, whose writings were lost to the non-Arabic world until the beginning of the Thirteenth Century. To many, Aristotle's worldview was a pagan threat to Christianity. To Aquinas, it provided an exciting cosmological framework on which to build an all-encompassing Christian worldview.
His thoughts unfolding with a calmness of order and an assurance of judgment, Aquinas explores in the Summa the primary role of the senses in the acquisition of knowledge and the metaphysical analysis of things in terms of matter and form. But unlike Aristotle's God, who did not care one whit about the world, the God of Christianity, insisted Aquinas, is a personal God. Like Aristotle, Aquinas believed that each human being has a soul and that all created things have a purpose. For Christians, all are part of a divine plan.
This dazzling synthesis of Catholic doctrine has had a profound impact on Christian thinking since the thirteenth century and has become the de facto official teaching of the Catholic Church -- the intellectual underpinning of the Church to this day.

In his reflections on Christianity, Saint Thomas Aquinas forged a unique synthesis of ancient philosophy and medieval theology. Preoccupied with the relationship between faith and reason, he was influenced both by Aristotle's rational world view and by the powerful belief that wisdom and truth can ultimately only be reached through divine revelation. Thomas's writings, which contain highly influential statements of fundamental Christian doctrine, as well as observations on topics as diverse as political science, anti-Semitism and heresy, demonstrate the great range of his intellect and place him firmly among the greatest medieval philosophers.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

A new translation in modern English of Thomas Aquinas's masterpiece.

Thomas Aquinas's Old Testament commentaries remain some of his most neglected writings due partly to the widely varying quality of both the commentaries themselves and their English translations, which often retain the terseness and opacity of the original Latin manuscripts. Nevertheless, Thomas's corpus of Old Testament commentaries contains some of his finest biblical exegesis and theology. Within them, we find dimensions of his thought and literary personality that do not appear in any of his other writings.

This volume aims to promote appreciation for Thomas's Old Testament exegesis by making his best commentaries more accessible. To this end, it offers a topically organized selection of the most theologically profound lectures from his premier Old Testament commentaries--those on the Psalms, Job, and Isaiah. Moreover, the translations used in this collection have undergone extensive editing and revision to enhance their accuracy, elegance, clarity, stylistic consistency, and overall readability. Lastly, hundreds of explanatory footnotes have been added to facilitate study, along with two indices and a bibliography.

Together with its companion volume, Thomas Aquinas: Selected Commentaries on the New Testament, this collection offers a curated introduction to Thomas's biblical commentaries, suitable for newcomers, students, and scholars alike.

St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) saw religion as part of the natural human propensity to worship. His ability to recognize the naturalness of this phenomenon and simultaneously to go beyond it--to explore, for example, spiritual revelation--makes his work as fresh and readable today as it was seven centuries ago.
This accessible new translation offers thirty-eight substantial passages not only from the indispensable Summa Theologicae, but from many other works, fully illustrating the breadth and progression of Aquinas's philosophy. It is an ideal introduction to this key figure in the philosophy of religion.

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Thomas Aquinas: Selected Commentaries on the New Testament is a selective anthology of Thomas Aquinas' New Testament commentaries, collected and organized to reflect the centrality of Christ in the saint's profoundly theological approach to the Bible. Complete with an introduction, explanatory footnotes, patristic source citations, and other research utilities, this volume offers an introduction to Thomas' biblical theology suitable for students and independent readers at any level of exposure to his thought.

'Summa Theologiae' ranks among the greatest documents of the Christian Church, and is a landmark of medieval western thought.

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Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Embark on an intellectual journey of unparalleled magnitude with The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas - a monumental work that remains a cornerstone of Western philosophy and theology. Spanning five volumes, this magnum opus offers a comprehensive exploration of Christian doctrine and moral philosophy, as Aquinas grapples with the deepest questions of existence and God's nature. With extraordinary erudition and logic, he examines matters of faith, ethics, and the human condition, bridging the gap between faith and reason. A pinnacle of medieval thought, Aquinas's Summa continues to inspire scholars and seekers of truth alike, as a profound testament to the unyielding pursuit of knowledge and understanding the divine.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.

This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.

Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

2022 Reprint of 1954 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. This selection from Aquinas' magnum opus, the Summa Theologica covers the great Catholic philosopher's words on the nature of God, the nature of sin, and how God's grace sanctifies and transforms the lives of Christians. Concerning the nature of God, this selection includes Aquinas' arguments for God's existence, his description of God's metaphysical attributes, and his exploration of how God interacts with creation and the people who inhabit it. In the portion of the selection focusing on sin, Aquinas asks and answers the questions of what sin is and how it affects human beings. The selection's last portion presents Aquinas' thoughts on sin's remedy, God's grace. For those seeking Aquinas' insight on the topics here presented, this selection may prove a less cumbersome and more streamlined alternative to the entire Summa. The editor has sought to present the view taken by Thomas Aquinas of the moral and spiritual world in which we live, and of the conditions of man's self-realization which are consequent upon it. The final end of man lies in God, through whom alone he is and lives, and by whose help alone he can attain his end. The teaching of Aquinas concerning the moral and spiritual order stands in sharp contrast to all views, ancient or modern, which cannot do justice to the difference between the divine and the creaturely without appearing to regard them as essentially antagonistic as well as discontinuous. For Aquinas, no such opposition obtains between God and the world which he has made.- General introduction.

Questions 1-4, 20-23. Q. 1. What sacred doctrine is, and what it concerns; Q. 2. The existence of God; Q. 3. Of the simple nature of God; Q. 4. The perfection of God; Q. 20. The love of God; Q. 21. The justice and mercy of God; Q. 22. Of divine providence; Q. 23. Of predestination -- Of sin: prima secundae, questions 82, 85. Q. 82. The essence of original sin; Q. 85. The effects of sin -- Treatise on grace: prima secundae, questions 109-114. Q. 109. Concerning the external principle of human actions, that is, the grace of God; Q. 110. The essence of God's grace; Q. 111. The divisions of grace; Q. 112. The cause of grace; Q. 113. The effects of grace; Q. 114. Concerning merit, which is the effect of cooperative grace -- Treatise on the theological virtues. Q. 1. The object of faith; Q. 2. The act of faith; Q. 3. The outward act of faith; Q. 4. The virtue itself of faith; Q. 5. Of those who have faith; Q. 6. The cause of faith; Q. 7. The effect of faith; Q. 17. Of hope, considered in itself; Q. 18. The subject of hope; Q. 19. The gift of fear; Q. 20. Of despair; Q. 21. Of presumption; Q. 23. Of charity, considered in itself; Q. 27. Of the principal act of charity, which is to love.

When Leo XII promulgated Aeterni Patris in 1879, he stipulated that the Leonine, or official, edition of the Summa should always be printed in conjunction with Cajetan's Commentary. For five hundred years they were studied together. Generations were trained by reading through the Summa article by article with Cajetan's commentaries in hand. Early printed editions of the Summa typically included them in a Talmudic arrangement, as marginal text running around each article by Aquinas. This edition imitates that example.

Recently, serious thinkers of all denominations - and none - have found new reasons to be interested in St. Thomas. His text is deceptively simple, yet important issues are handled in every article, sometimes below the surface. Cajetan extracts these hidden issues, and explains and elaborates on them with remarkable affinity to modern analytical philosophy. Part of that affinity lies in the use of modal logic, a tool whose importance was overlooked between the Renaissance and the twentieth century. The time is ripe for an analytically-inspired translation of Thomas: hence this volume.

Never until now has Cajetan's Commentary been put into English in its entirety. William Marshner's translation is consistent with fidelity to the technical force of the original. The translator's footnotes acknowledge what empirical science has made obsolete in the work of St. Thomas, and also make clear how much today's science would have saved Thomas useless labor. This volume will, for the first time, make Cajetan's help available to the modern reader.

Classic work of Aquinas, complete in a single book.

This is a new English translation of St. Thomas Aquinas's Treatise on Law, found in Questions 90-108 of the First Part of the Second Part of the Summa Theologiae. In fact, it is the only free-standing English translation of the entire Treatise, which includes both a general account of law (Questions 90-92) and also specific treatments of what St. Thomas identifies as the five kinds of law: the eternal law (Question 93), the natural law (Question 94), human law (Questions 95-97), the Old Law (Questions 98-105), and the New Law (Questions 106-108). All other extant editions of Treatise on Law stop with the human law, and are thus approximately one-third the size of the full Treatise.
St. Thomas's account of law is firmly embedded within a general moral theory that begins with a rich conception of human flourishing, i.e., the good for human beings (Questions 1-5). This good consists, first and foremost, in our ultimate and intimate union with the Persons of the Blessed Trinity - a union that in our present state we can grasp intellectively and pursue affectively only with God's supernatural assistance. It is within this framework that we order our loves and pursue the more proximate goals they open up to us as human beings in this life. Given the appropriate goals, the next question is how we can get from where we are, in the grips of the consequences of Original Sin, to where we want to be. The answer is: by means of (a) human actions that are good, i.e., rightly ordered toward our ultimate end and (b) the habits that these actions either engender or flow from. In analyzing human actions (Questions 6-21) and their relation to the passions (Questions 22-48), St. Thomas gives a general account of what he calls the 'intrinsic principles' of human actions and their associated habits - both virtues (Questions 49-70) and vices (Questions 71-89). It is only then that he turns to what he calls the 'extrinsic principles' of good human actions, viz., law (Questions 90-108) and grace (Questions 109-114).
According to St. Thomas, law, far from supplanting virtue as a basic principle of action, serves as an independent principle of action that complements virtue and is itself capable of being factored into practical deliberation. The reason is that all of God's
precepts, prohibitions, and punishments are aimed at promoting the good of the whole universe and, more particularly, the good for human beings, both individually and within the various forms of social life. Because of this, law serves as both a restraint on bad actions and a spur to good action, i.e., a restraint on actions that take us away from virtue and genuine human flourishing and a spur to actions that promote virtue and flourishing.
There are many benefits of having the whole treatise rather than just the first few questions, as has been the standard practice in previous editions of the Treatise on Law. To mention just a few of these benefits, the question on the moral precepts of the Old Law (question 100) helps to illuminate in many different ways the earlier questions on natural law and human law (questions 94-97). Again, the questions on the ceremonial and judicial precepts of the Old Law (questions 101-105) demon-strate in depth the symbiotic relationship that St. Thomas takes to obtain between the Old Testament and the New Testament. The questions on the New Law provide an introduction to the Christian way of life that will be described in incomparable detail in the Second Part of the Second Part, the bulk of which is structured around the treatment of the three theological virtues and the four cardinal virtues.

The present work, the Compendium of Theology, was the last St. Thomas Aquinas undertook before his death. Thus the Compendium contains the central elements of St. Thomas's far-reaching theological vision after a lifetime of study and teaching. Here, in a seemingly effortless display, Thomas demonstrates one final time his marvelous clarity of mind, no matter the subject on which it is trained.

The brevity of the work has the advantage of giving at a glance and in summary form the mature theological conclusions of the Angelic Doctor. A new introduction by Rev. Richard A. Munkelt provides in brief compass a lucid and wide-ranging presentation of the fundamentals of Thomas's thought. For someone approaching Thomas for the first time, the Compendium of Theology is an ideal place to begin; for one long acquainted with his works, here is friendly and familiar sustenance.

When Leo XII promulgated Aeterni Patris in 1879, he stipulated that the Leonine, or official, edition of the Summa should always be printed in conjunction with Cajetan's Commentary. For five hundred years they were studied together. Generations were trained by reading through the Summa article by article with Cajetan's commentaries in hand. Early printed editions of the Summa typically included them in a Talmudic arrangement, as marginal text running around each article by Aquinas. This edition imitates that example.

Recently, serious thinkers of all denominations - and none - have found new reasons to be interested in St. Thomas. His text is deceptively simple, yet important issues are handled in every article, sometimes below the surface. Cajetan extracts these hidden issues, and explains and elaborates on them with remarkable affinity to modern analytical philosophy. Part of that affinity lies in the use of modal logic, a tool whose importance was overlooked between the Renaissance and the twentieth century. The time is ripe for an analytically-inspired translation of Thomas: hence this volume.

Never until now has Cajetan's Commentary been put into English in its entirety. William Marshner's translation is consistent with fidelity to the technical force of the original. The translator's footnotes acknowledge what empirical science has made obsolete in the work of St. Thomas, and also make clear how much today's science would have saved Thomas useless labor. This volume will, for the first time, make Cajetan's help available to the modern reader.

When Leo XII promulgated Aeterni Patris in 1879, he stipulated that the Leonine, or official, edition of the Summa should always be printed in conjunction with Cajetan's Commentary. For five hundred years they were studied together. Generations were trained by reading through the Summa article by article with Cajetan's commentaries in hand. Early printed editions of the Summa typically included them in a Talmudic arrangement, as marginal text running around each article by Aquinas. This edition imitates that example.

Recently, serious thinkers of all denominations - and none - have found new reasons to be interested in St. Thomas. His text is deceptively simple, yet important issues are handled in every article, sometimes below the surface. Cajetan extracts these hidden issues, and explains and elaborates on them with remarkable affinity to modern analytical philosophy. Part of that affinity lies in the use of modal logic, a tool whose importance was overlooked between the Renaissance and the twentieth century. The time is ripe for an analytically-inspired translation of Thomas: hence this volume.

Never until now has Cajetan's Commentary been put into English in its entirety. William Marshner's translation is consistent with fidelity to the technical force of the original. The translator's footnotes acknowledge what empirical science has made obsolete in the work of St. Thomas, and also make clear how much today's science would have saved Thomas useless labor. This volume will, for the first time, make Cajetan's help available to the modern reader.

The present work, the Compendium of Theology, was the last St. Thomas Aquinas undertook before his death. Thus the Compendium contains the central elements of St. Thomas's far-reaching theological vision after a lifetime of study and teaching. Here, in a