A few weeks ago, after nearly three and a half years of on and off reading, I finally finished St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica. It is a monumental work, which in printed form extends over five volumes and three thousand densely printed pages. So it is not surprising that it took me this long to ...more
One of my favorite books. I am reading it for the second time now. Aquinas is incredibly important but ill-suited to our microwave and fast-food culture: he must be digested slowly, not scarfed down on one’s tailgate in the stadium parking lot :-)
Prospective readers should really have at least a min ...more
Aquinas can do more in one laconic section than most modern theologians, even analytics, can do in 200 pages. If this were written with the self-consciousness of philosophers after the epistemic turn, it would probably be 100,000 pages or more long - and that's what you're getting. The roughly 7,000 ...more
204 days. It's done. Well, I say it's done - I did skip or lightly skim over large swathes of it, and after about a third of the way through I started just ignoring the objections/replies as I found them confusing. Some parts made me cry 'Amen, brother' aloud; some parts were a real challenge to me ...more
St. Thomas Aquinas is one of the greatest philosophers I have read. His structured writing and rational methodology will do incredible things to your mind. ...more
I read selections from the summa (Aquinas on Nature and Grace, A. M. Fairweather), and while at times I found it confusing, I thought it was mostly absolutely illuminating. By reading this book I was not only able to understand better who God is, but what He did for us. ...more
obviously i have not read all the volumes, but everytime i open them i am astoished at the depth and insights that he had. he is honestly on of my heros ...more
St. Thomas Aquinas was a beautiful human being, and his approach to Socratic Philosophy (which dominated the minds of his counterparts) blended with Unique Spiritual incite is breath-taking. I recommend it to the world... especially if you're looking for a pure (if slightly slanted) view on Life, Lo ...more