Thomas Aquinas
by K. Scott Oliphint
P & R Publishing


Christian
Pub Date 30 Nov 2017


I am reviewing a copy of Thomas Aquina's through P&R Publishing and Netgalley:

In this book we learn of Thomas Aquina's the thirteenth century theologian and thinker whose words impacted those inside and outside the Roman Catholic Church.


This unique study by Scott Oliphinit focuses on Aquina's dualistic approach to the natural and revealed knowledge of God and his use of Aristotelian Metaphysics.

We learn of Thomas Aquina’s unique theology in this book, and it allows us to explore the way he thought!

This book will be beneficial for Pastors, Theologians , Philosophers and students.

I give Thomas Aquina's five out of five stars!
Happy Reading!

This is the first book in the Great Thinkers series published by Presbyterian and Reformed. It is written by Christian theologian and apologist K. Scott Oliphint in which he examines and critiques the thought of medieval philosopher and apologist Thomas Aquinas. In this series introduction Nathan Shannon tells us the threefold goal for each volume in the series: First it is intended to be academically informed. Second it seeks to maintain a high standard of biblical and theological faithfulness. Third the series aim is to be accessible for readers without unnecessary difficult jargons and vocabulary.
It would be of course impossible to cover all of Aquinas’ theology in a work that is a 168 pages. As the author made it clear in the beginning of the introduction Aquinas composed over sixty works during his short lifetime and these included multi-volume sets. Instead given the task at hand this work has the modest goal of looking at two specific area of Thomas’s thought: the first being Aquinas view of the knowledge of God and second being Aquinas view of God. These two areas are covered in chapter two and three respectively while the first chapter served as an introduction to Aquinas. I thought Oliphint was wise in covering these two areas as these are foundational in shaping the rest of Aquinas’ theological and philosophical method and readers get a better grasp of Aquinas’ methodology. Of these chapters the longest was chapter three in which the chapter was nearly half of the book. The chapter covered a lot of ground looking at both Aquinas’s arguments for the existence of God and also what his actual view of God was.
I learned a lot from this work. Each chapter was jam packed with information and food for thought. In the beginning of chapter two Oliphint gave a good presentation and critique of Thomas’ particular idea of what is self-evidencing and also Aquinas’ rejection of the knowledge of God being self-evidencing. It always baffles me when apologists don’t take into account Romans 1 in how they pursue apologetics, theology and philosophy; likewise as Oliphint demonstrated Aquinas was weak as an exegete with other passages of Scripture and he pretty much neglected Romans 1 and its implications.
I enjoyed the discussion of Aquinas’ epistemology in reciprocal relationship with his metaphysics. I enjoyed this since those who are epistemologically conscious would know that the two fields are inter-related and that they both shape one another. The inter-relationship of metaphysics and epistemology is not a popular theme today given our age’s overall dislike of metaphysics but this was an important theme of Cornelius Van Til, who was the father of Presuppositional Apologetics and the author’s mentor. Oliphint in the book also noted Thomas’ own foundationalism although he stated that this is to be understood differently than modern foundationalism.
There were also things that I assumed about Aquinas that the book corrected me on. For instance I always thought Aquinas believed in two different modes of knowledge but the work mentioned that lesser known is Aquinas’ third way of knowing. This third way of knowing is more obscure and indirect and is somewhat ambigious and wasn’t viewed as highly by Aquinas, hence he talked more about the other two way of knowing truth about God. The book also confirmed somethings that I have read in secondary sources about Aquinas but would like to see a quote directly from Aquinas concerning his view. Here I appreciated that Oliphint quoted Aquinas to show his view of faith presupposes natural knowledge and also grace presupposes nature, etc.
What I most enjoyed about this book is Oliphint’s critique of Aquinas. I thought Oliphint did a good job showing how Aquinas improperly interpreted and misapplied John 1:9 in order to justify his epistemology. Some of his critique also gave good examination of the philosophical assumptions such as that of Aquinas’ five ways of knowing God’s existence.
In light of the recent discussion about God’s divine simplicity and the role of Aquinas’ dependence on Aristotle and the theological method of scholasticism this work would be a welcome contribution to the discussion as Oliphint spends a lengthy portion on divine simplicity since this is one of Aquinas’ important doctrine that he holds to. This work critiques Aquinas’ version of divine simplicity and argues for something more faithful to a biblical view of divine simplicity. The latter portion of chapter three’s discussion of divine simplicity is probably the most rigorous and difficult part of the book.
Overall I recommend this book although I think the book could have avoided a little more technical jargon which was one of the stated intent of this series. I realize that sometimes certain terminology is unavoidable but I can’t help but to wonder if Oliphint enjoys quoting Latin phrases a little too much even from his other writings. There is a glossary at the end of the book which is helpful.