I CAN scarcely think of a more significant contribution to the study of Thomism than this handbook, edited by Matthew Levering and Marcus Plested. Running to 44 chapters, it charts the history of the “reception” of the thought of St Thomas Aquinas — creative engagements with his writings — across the 750 years since his death.
The volume is divided historically, with sections on medieval receptions of Aquinas, then moving on to periods described as “Reformation and Counter-Reformation”, “Baroque”, and “Modern” (Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries), followed by the Twentieth Century (split between “early” and “late”). The final two sections are “contemporary”, and thematic: one on philosophical responses to Aquinas, and the other theological.
Chapters generally cover a range of thinkers, although we find separate chapters on Tommaso Cajetan, Abraham Kuyper, and Karl Barth. John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham appear as a pair, although the author (Richard Cross) admits that finding a substantial influence of Aquinas upon them comes close to trying to make bricks without straw. As we would expect with Plested as an editor — given his groundbreaking Orthodox Readings of Aquinas (Oxford, 2012) — Orthodox traditions are covered to an unprecedented degree, charting reactions both receptive and averse.
An opening chapter on Aquinas as himself a “receiver” of earlier traditions sets the collection up admirably. Alongside that chapter (from Jean-Pierre Torrell), highlights for this reader included the chapters on 16th-century Reformed Reception (David S. Systma), for its account of the continuity in that tradition with what had gone before; the Spanish Renaissance (David M. Lantigua), as a snapshot of a moment of extraordinary intellectual brilliance and moral import; Neoscholastic philosophy (Schmacher), with luminaries such as Étienne Gilson, Jacques Maritain, and Josef Pieiper (although I would put them in quite a different camp from the writers more usually called “Neoscholastic”); Neoscholastic theology (Roger Nutt), for drawing our attention to spirituality and themes of religious transformation in what is otherwise generally seen as a dry, even obscurantist, tradition; and “contemporary” chapters on God as Trinity (Gilles Emery) and nature, grace, and the moral life (Daria Spezzano).
Discussion of Anglican writers in the historical material is chasteningly thin, appearing in chapters on attention to Aquinas in 17th-century Reformed Orthodoxy and Anglicanism, and 18th- and 19th-century Reformed, Anglican, and Lutheran thought.
The Apotheosis of St Thomas Aquinas (c.1631) by Francisco de Zurbarán (1598-1664), now in the Museum of Fine Arts of Seville
Among the chapters on more recent work, Anglicans feature prominently in the “postliberal” portion of the chapter on “Postliberal, Grammatical, and Historical Theology of the Late Twentieth Century”. In their introduction, the editors also note the prominent role of Anglican (and Lutheran) scholars in the revival of theological interest in Aquinas from 1990s onwards. The most obvious Anglican omission is Eric Mascall: for me, the pre-eminent Anglican Thomist of the past century.
Speaking about coverage more broadly, I would have liked a little more on whether Aquinas’s perspectives were enriched, or compromised, by their integration and cross-fertilisation with other scholastic schools within later Roman Catholic thought. While his Platonism is sometimes mentioned, the recovery of that element of his vision might also have been further emphasised, as a crowning achievement of the past century or so.
This volume is an astonishing achievement. At least, once it is out in paperback, the bibliographies alone would justify the cover price, never mind the other 90-95 per cent of the book. I have never before read a handbook from cover to cover. I did with this one, and it was a joy, as it will be for anyone whose thought has been nurtured by Friar Thomas of Aquino.
The Revd Dr Andrew Davison is Starbridge Senior Lecturer in Theology and Natural Science at the University of Cambridge, and Fellow in Theology and Dean of Chapel at Corpus Christi College.
The Oxford Handbook of the Reception of Aquinas
Matthew Levering and Marcus Plested, editors
OUP £125
(978-0-19-879802-6)
Church Times Bookshop £112.50