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Truth in Aquinas
Provocative and sophisticated, Truth in Aquinas is a fascinating re-evaluation of a key area - truth - in the work of Thomas Aquinas. John Milbank and Catherine Pickstock's provocative but strongly argued position is that many of the received views of Aquinas as philosopher and theologian are wrong.
This compelling and controversial work builds on the amazing reception of Radical Orthodoxy (Routledge, 1999).
This compelling and controversial work builds on the amazing reception of Radical Orthodoxy (Routledge, 1999).
- GenresPhilosophyTheology
144 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
About the author
John Milbank
58 books83 followersProfessor John Milbank is Professor in Religion, Politics and Ethics and the Director of the Centre of Theology and Philosophy at the University of Nottingham. He has previously taught at the Universities of Lancaster, Cambridge and Virginia. He is the author of several books of which the most well-known is Theology and Social Theory and the most recent Being Reconciled: Ontology and Pardon. He is one of the editors of the Radical Orthodoxy collection of essays which occasioned much debate. In general he has endeavoured in his work to resist the idea that secular norms of understanding should set the agenda for theology and has tried to promote the sense that Christianity offers a rich and viable account of the whole of reality.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 27, 2015
Milbank and Pickstock (hereafter MP) attempt a postmodern (not in a perjorative sense) rereading of Aquinas that ironically gets back to the source of Aquinas. MP notes that many folks, protestants and Catholics alike, have read correspondence theories of truth back into Aquinas (cf Peter Kreeft's otherwise excellent *Summa of the Summa*). This misses what truth is for Aquinas. Truth is not only epistemological, but ontological. It has a proportion between the other transcendentals. MP illustrates "Truth" in chapters concerning Vision, Touch, and Language.
I will focus primarily on Truth and Touch. MP spends the entire chapter using Aristotle's *De Anima* as a foil. Common sense will tell us that a sense like "Sight" is much superior to "touch," but in a brilliant summary MP convinces us that this is not so. Touch, unlike sight or sound, is not mediated. Sight and Sound are mediated by light and air. Touch is immediate. (Actually, it is not but they take up that point on a chapter devoted to the Eucharist.). Space fails but they demonstrate how "touch", Incarnation, and Aesthetics interrelate.
Their Eucharistic theology foils both what they call Calvinism (which is actually Zwinglianism and U.S. Southern Presbyterianism). Traditional Catholicism, in Derridean terms, is a theology of "presence." E.g., the element is there. Christ is presence. Thus, postmodernism is dead. But maybe not. Protestantism (or what they call it) is a theology of "abscence." Christ isn't there in the elements. Thus, we see parts of a postmodernism. MP then shows how it is both.
Other neat points of controversy: According to MP's reading of Thomas, philosophy and theology aren't separated. They are different in degree,not in kind. This puts Thomas on the same floor with Van Til who said philosophy and theology are the same thing, just using a different vocabulary.
Concerns: If you are new to philosophy, theology, or church history, don't read this book. It is arguably the hardest book I have ever read. I know 3 or 4 languages and I needed several lingual dictionaries to keep up. But if you are interested in Thomism, the Eucharist, or philosophical theology, then this book is for you.
I will focus primarily on Truth and Touch. MP spends the entire chapter using Aristotle's *De Anima* as a foil. Common sense will tell us that a sense like "Sight" is much superior to "touch," but in a brilliant summary MP convinces us that this is not so. Touch, unlike sight or sound, is not mediated. Sight and Sound are mediated by light and air. Touch is immediate. (Actually, it is not but they take up that point on a chapter devoted to the Eucharist.). Space fails but they demonstrate how "touch", Incarnation, and Aesthetics interrelate.
Their Eucharistic theology foils both what they call Calvinism (which is actually Zwinglianism and U.S. Southern Presbyterianism). Traditional Catholicism, in Derridean terms, is a theology of "presence." E.g., the element is there. Christ is presence. Thus, postmodernism is dead. But maybe not. Protestantism (or what they call it) is a theology of "abscence." Christ isn't there in the elements. Thus, we see parts of a postmodernism. MP then shows how it is both.
Other neat points of controversy: According to MP's reading of Thomas, philosophy and theology aren't separated. They are different in degree,not in kind. This puts Thomas on the same floor with Van Til who said philosophy and theology are the same thing, just using a different vocabulary.
Concerns: If you are new to philosophy, theology, or church history, don't read this book. It is arguably the hardest book I have ever read. I know 3 or 4 languages and I needed several lingual dictionaries to keep up. But if you are interested in Thomism, the Eucharist, or philosophical theology, then this book is for you.
July 12, 2025
Before delving into this short, confusing, and inaccurate piece of work, read the following review by Lawrence Dewan, OP as it highlights serious problems with Milbank’s and Pickstock’s understanding of Aquinas:
https://www.scribd.com/document/20937...
https://www.scribd.com/document/20937...
June 24, 2013
I have read hundreds of books on theology, a fair number of which address Thomas Aquinas and the issues mentioned here. But I have never read an originally English-language work whose prose was so contorted and argument so tangled as this one's. One has to be very committed to the author's project even to finish the book.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews