Interesting News from Northern Colorado

I assume that few of our readers have ever tried out for a job as a sports announcer. I could be wrong.

But suppose you were in this situation and were asked just to make up a narrative on the spot of an imaginary athletic event. What might be some names of players that you might make up as you’re calling this imaginary game? Joe DiMaggio, Hank Aaron, Ty Cobb are names that might come to mind if you’re a baseball fan like me. Football fans might think of names like Roger Staubach or Lynn Swann I suppose.

A couple weeks ago the University of Northern Colorado held tryouts for a new public address announcer. Apparently one of the hopefuls for the position, Arnie Guin, was asked to do exactly what I just mentioned, call an imaginary game. What was the first name that came to Mr. Guin’s mind as he was trying to show off his stuff?

Thomas Aquinas.

Who would have thought? Perhaps no one was more surprised by the name of Mr. Guin’s imaginary athlete than Mr. Guin himself. Below is an excerpt from an article on the tryouts at UNC published in the Greeley Tribune, the local paper.

Even Arnie Guin couldn’t believe he said it as the words came tumbling off his tongue.

“And that was a 45-yard touchdown run from Thomas Aquinas,” echoed the voice of Guin through an empty Nottingham Field on Thursday.

Yes, the same St. Thomas Aquinas that was a renowned theologian and philosopher in the 13th century. It just happened to be the first name that popped into Guin’s mind as he participated in an open tryout to be the next voice of the University of Northern Colorado Bears.

UNC held the open tryouts Thursday for a public address announcer at UNC sporting events this season. Although only three participants showed up for the tryouts, they exuded tons of energy and enthusiasm as they tried out for the job by reading a prepared script by the UNC marketing department and then getting a chance to do their own little ad-lib at the end to show off their own unique style.

Guin, 45, rolled through the script like a veteran, but when it came to the ad-lib on the touchdown call, the only name he could think of was that of Aquinas.

“Right after I said it was one of those ‘Oh, no, where did that come from,” Guin said.

Actually, it made perfect sense when you consider that Guin is the campus pastor for Dayspring Christian Academy. His son, Seth, a basketball player at Dayspring Christian Academy saw the announcement for the tryouts while searching for UNC basketball season tickets online and encouraged his dad to try out.

Call for Papers: International Congress on Medieval Studies (May 10-13, 2012)

The call for papers is out for the 47th International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, MI. This year’s conference will be held May 10-13, 2012. Planned sessions on Aquinas are: 

• Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas
• Thomas Aquinas
• Faith and Certainty: Augustine and Aquinas on the Adequacy of Faith in Understanding God in This Life 

Other notable sessions include: 

• New Trends in Medieval Franciscan Thought: Bonaventure’s Epistemology and Aesthetics
• Natural Law and Political Thought
• Natural Law and Moral Philosophy
• Boethius and the Liberal Arts
• The Philosophy and Theology of Nicholas of Cusa
• Contingency and Necessity in Medieval Philosophy
• Veniat Pax: Gerson and His Contemporaries on War and Peace 

The submission deadline for paper proposals is September 15^th. And, as always, a large assortment of booksellers and publishers will be at the conference.

Aquinas, One of the Greatest Philosophers Ever?

In a “non-scientific” poll asking about the greatest philosopher in history, conducted six years ago by the BBC Radio 4 program “In Our Time,” which features academic discussions of famous people and ideas, Aquinas placed #7 overall.

It looks like Aquinas has come a long way since the time when modern historians of philosophy (e.g., Émile Bréhier) claimed that no philosophy was done in the Middle Ages (or, if it was, that it wasn’t worth remembering) and that there was a yawning chasm between the Greeks and Descartes.

Here are the top ten great philosophers according to the BBC poll results:

1. Karl Marx
2. David Hume
3. Ludwig Wittgenstein
4. Friedrich Nietzsche
5. Plato
6. Immanuel Kant
7. St. Thomas Aquinas
8. Socrates
9. Aristotle
10. Karl Popper 

Marx won by a landslide, receiving 27.93% of the vote. Aquinas only received 4.83% of the vote. Still, considering that this was probably a largely secular audience (not to mention non-Catholic), it is surprising that Aquinas even made the top ten. Moreover, there were a number of other philosophers nominated, who ranked lower than Aquinas. When the voting was finished, Aquinas had beat Socrates, Aristotle, Popper, Descartes, Epicurus, Heidegger, Hobbes, Kierkegaard, Mill, Russell, Sartre, Schopenhauer, and Spinoza. That’s pretty impressive for a pious primitive from the Dark Ages.

I don’t recall this poll getting much press at the time. Well, I suppose that’s not surprising. Philosophers don’t make the news much. It’s probably not unusual, then, that some non-scientific poll by the BBC about philosophers didn’t really cause a stir. So, I’ve taken it upon myself to generate a bit more press for this five-year-old poll. I imagine that the results would not be too different if the poll were taken again today.

There was also an episode on Aquinas originally broadcast by “In Our Time” on Sept. 17, 2009, with John Haldane, Martin Palmer, and Annabel Brett. You can listen to it here. It must be said, however, that Palmer and Brett are not the best guides to Aquinas. Haldane isn’t bad even if in this context his approach to Aquinas has to be introductory.

“In Our Time” generally deals with interesting topics and often has well-informed guests. It’s worth having a look at the old broadcasts in the program archive.

[A version of this post appeared last October on my now defunct blog “the end of the modern world, etc.”]

Aquinas the Italian

French-speaking authors dominated the Thomism of the 20th century and, although they continue to be a major force in the first decade of the 21st century, other language and national groups are also emerging as important players.

What of these other Thomists? What are their histories and prospects? With respect to these questions it would seem quite natural to ask first about the Thomism of Aquinas’s native land. Is Italian Thomism alive and well? What do we know of its history post-13th century?

Obviously I’m not going to try to answer these huge questions in a single post. But I think they would be good questions to delve into over a series of posts. In the present remarks we might begin a little closer to our own time.

Among 20th century Italian Thomists, the Stigmatine father Cornelio Fabro was undoubtedly the most prominent. He pioneered the study of participation in Aquinas, publishing La nozione metafisica di partecipazione secondo s. Tommaso d’Aquino in 1939.

                                                      

But Fabro was not only an exegete of Aquinas. He also penned numerous articles on Kierkegaard along with articles on other major philosophical figures, mostly modern, such as Hegel, Marx, Sartre, and Heidegger.

Nor was Fabro a mere historian. He pursued speculative questions too, especially metaphysical ones, and dealt with contemporary issues like atheism — indeed, as far as I know (readers, please correct me if I’m wrong), his only book translated in English is God in Exile: Modern Atheism, brought out by the Newman Press in 1968.

The Institute of the Incarnate Word has undertaken the project of publishing critical editions of Fabro’s opera omnia and generally promoting his work. They have an excellent and extensive website dedicated to Fabro. Unfortunately for non-Italophones, the site is entirely in lingua italiana.

One of the resources on the site is a collection of Fabro’s aphorisms compiled by his secretary Sr. Rosa Goglia. The first one is a gem (as I suspect are many of the others):

In fondo all’uomo c’è sempre l’Ulisse eterno che cerca nuovi approdi.

Roughly translated: “In man’s depths there is always the eternal Ulysses who seeks new shores.”

Benedict XVI on the enduring value of Peter Lombard

Below are two interesting excerpts from a General Audience (December 30^th, 2009) of Benedict XVI reflecting on the life and work of Peter Lombard.  In this audience Benedict highlights several aspects of The Lombard’s famous work, The Sentences, which are particularly important contributions to the history of theology.

Like all theology teachers of his time, Peter also wrote discourses and commentaries on Sacred Scripture. His masterpiece, however, consists of the four Books of the Sentences. This is a text which came into being for didactic purposes. According to the theological method in use in those times, it was necessary first of all to know, study and comment on the thought of the Fathers of the Church and of the other writers deemed authoritative. Peter therefore collected a very considerable amount of documentation, which consisted mainly of the teachings of the great Latin Fathers, especially St Augustine, and was open to the contribution of contemporary theologians. Among other things, he also used an encyclopedia of Greek theology which had only recently become known to the West: The Orthodox faith, composed by St John Damascene. The great merit of Peter Lombard is to have organized all the material that he had collected and chosen with care, in a systematic and harmonious framework. In fact one of the features of theology is to organize the patrimony of faith in a unitive and orderly way. Thus he distributed the sentences, that is, the Patristic sources on various arguments, in four books. In the first book he addresses God and the Trinitarian mystery; in the second, the work of the Creation, sin and Grace; in the third, the Mystery of the Incarnation and the work of Redemption with an extensive exposition on the virtues. The fourth book is dedicated to the sacraments and to the last realities, those of eternal life, or Novissimi. The overall view presented includes almost all the truths of the Catholic faith. The concise, clear vision and clear, orderly schematic and ever consistent presentation explain the extraordinary success of Peter Lombard’s Sentences. They enabled students to learn reliably and gave the educators and teachers who used them plenty of room for acquiring deeper knowledge. A Franciscan theologian, Alexandre of Hales, of the next generation, introduced into the Sentences a division that facilitated their study and consultation. Even the greatest of the 13th-century theologians, Albert the Great, Bonaventure of Bagnoregio and Thomas Aquinas began their academic activity by commenting on the four books of Peter Lombard’s Sentences, enriching them with their reflections. Lombard’s text was the book in use at all schools of theology until the 16th century.

…

Among the most important contributions offered by Peter Lombard to the history of theology, I would like to recall his treatise on the sacraments, of which he gave what I would call a definitive definition: “precisely what is a sign of God’s grace and a visible form of invisible grace, in such a way that it bears its image and is its cause is called a sacrament in the proper sense” (4, 1, 4). With this definition Peter Lombard grasps the essence of the sacraments: they are a cause of grace, they are truly able to communicate divine life. Successive theologians never again departed from this vision and were also to use the distinction between the material and the formal element introduced by the “Master of the Sentences”, as Peter Lombard was known. The material element is the tangible visible reality, the formal element consists of the words spoken by the minister. For a complete and valid celebration of the sacraments both are essential: matter, the reality with which the Lord visibly touches us and the word that conveys the spiritual significance. In Baptism, for example, the material element is the water that is poured on the head of the child and the formal element is the formula: “I baptize you in the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”. Peter the Lombard, moreover, explained that the sacraments alone objectively transmit divine grace and they are seven: Baptism, the Eucharist, Penance, the Unction of the sick, Orders and Matrimony (cf. Sentences 4, 2, 1).

A new and welcome edition of Aquinas' "De Unione Verbi Incarnati" is now available

Students and scholars interested in Medieval Christology, Aquinas’ theology of the hypostatic union, and the hotly debated question of Christ’s esse will welcome the new volume prepared by Prof. Klaus Obenauer of the University of Bonn. Thomas von Aquin: Quaestio disputata ›De unione Verbi incarnati‹ (Frommann-holzboog: 2011, ISBN: 978-3-7728-2563-7) includes a new critical Latin text prepared by Walter Senner, Barbara Bartocci, and Obenauer, as well as a German translation and a formidable 500+ page commentary by Prof. Obenauer.

The Leonine Commission has yet to prepare its own edition of the De Unione so the critical Latin text alone—not to mention the massive commentary—makes this volume a noteworthy contribution to Medieval and Thomistic studies.

My own initial examination indicates a number of interesting and (at times) substantial differences between the new critical text and the text used in the Marietti edition. In case any of you are curious: the oft-quoted and frequently debated “esse secundarium” remains in the body of the fourth article.

http://www.frommann-holzboog.de/site/index_neuerscheinungen.php

Dr. Jeremy Wilkins Appointed Director of the Lonergan Research Institute at Regis College, University of Toronto

While Bernard Lonergan, S.J. may be most commonly known in some circles by his later work, such as his book Method in Theology, students of the thought of Thomas Aquinas only ignore at their peril Lonergan’s reading of Thomas in his earlier works such as Grace and Freedom, Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas and Insight. Lonergan’s work on Thomas will certainly not fade into the background with the appointment of the rather magnanimous Dr. Jeremy Wilkins as the director of the Lonergan Research Institute in Toronto. The University of St. Thomas in Houston’s loss is Regis’ gain:

http://www.regiscollege.ca/regis/news/2011/06/11/lonergan_research_institute_appoints_jeremy_wilkins_new_director

Lonergan Research Institute Appoints Jeremy Wilkins as New Director

Submitted by gordon.rixon on Sat, 2011-06-11 06:14

The Lonergan Research Institute at Regis College is delighted to announce the appointment of Professor Jeremy D. Wilkins as the new Director of the Lonergan Research Institute, effective July 2nd, 2012. The Board thanked the current Director Gordon Rixon, S.J. and Associate Director Michael Vertin for their years of capable transitional service, which will continue for the coming year until Professor Wilkins assumes his new role.

Wilkins is currently Associate Professor of Systematic Theology at the University of St Thomas School of Theology in Houston, Texas, where he has served since 2004. After completing undergraduate studies at Washington University in St Louis and divinity studies at Regis College, he received his doctorate from Boston College in 2004 with a dissertation on the development of Thomas Aquinas’s trinitarian theology. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Thomist, Theological Studies, Pro Ecclesia, Irish Theological Quarterly, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, and other journals and edited volumes. His current project is a book entitled Order and Analogy in Trinitarian Theology: The Achievement of Thomas Aquinas. He has also served the local church in various capacities.

Wilkins will have an academic appointment at Regis College and teach two courses each year, beginning in the fall of 2012.

Professor Jeremy Wilkins Jeremy and his wife of twelve years, Maureen, have two sons: Abraham (11) and Thomas (8). Hitherto they have home schooled. They enjoy camping, cycling, travel, working on their house, and, of course, books!

Gratian on the Web

Postings here occasionally note Aquinas’s use of Gratian (see here and here). Recently while tracking down some items in the Decretum I was surprised to find a wealth of online Gratian-related canon law resources. The 1582 Editio Romana of Gratian’s Decretum and the Glossa ordinaria are available in a wonderful format at UCLA’s digital canon law collection. (N.B.: the Glossa ordinaria on Gratian should not be confused with the 12^th century commentary on the Latin vulgate with the same name). Emil Friedberg’s edition of Gratian’s work can be found in a variety of formats (e.g., 1, 2, 3). There are also assorted 19^th-century editions of the Decretists on Gratian’s Decretum (e.g., Paucapalea, Rolandus, Rufinus, Stephen of Tournai) on various sites.

What other treasures have I missed?

Cheap Summas!

I recall to this day them moment a fellow student presented to me a fresh set of the 3-volumes of the English Dominican translation of the Summa Theologica (in the boxes!); seems he came across them in the former St. John’s Seminar library on the “overflow” for-sale book shelf for the princely sum of $5/volume, and thought I might make good use of them.

As I look here at volume one, with its worn spine, separating fly-leaf and dirty thumbed pages, my thought turns to the day I might need to replace it with a fresh copy. I also have been looking for an inexpensive version, perhaps of individual parts, that I might assign to my Thomas students.

I have been pleasantly surprised, then, to have discovered that the Summa, while not quite at the $2.50/pars rate that I paid for mine, has never been so inexpensive to acquire. Note that I offer these observations, not as a commercial endorsement, but as useful information for students and teachers of St. Thomas.

Of course, you can’t get much more inexpensive than free; and with the web, there are numerous versions of the English Dominican translation available, with the PDF version on the main website for the Dominican friars being my favorite:

http://www.op.org/summa/

The HTML version hosted by the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C. is more web-friendly:

http://dhspriory.org/thomas/

and also contains a number of other translated works, plus a link to the invaluable Latin version of Thomas’ works that has been mentioned in these pages before:

http://www.corpusthomisticum.org/

If you wish to have access to that HTML version even when you are unhooked from the web, you should scroll down to the bottom of the CCEL page of the Summa and download the ZIP archive, unzip it to a folder (directory for us older DOS folks) and open up the “index.html” file as your starting point to having your Summa on your computer:

http://www.ccel.org/ccel/aquinas/summa/home.html

Finally, manybooks.net has the parts of the Summa available in an assortment of e-reader formats:

http://www.manybooks.net/authors/aquinast.html

While these versions may be great for those comfortable reading from computer-screens, if you go to print them out in order to work from hard-copies, the costs of paper, toner or ink can add up quite quickly, and you’ve still got a pile of loose pages to 3-hole punch or otherwise bind together. In that case, purchasing a printed version may be the most cost-effective way to read the Summa.

This option used to relegate you to the used-book market, which was hit-or-miss in pre-internet days, but these days is far more user-friendly for finding what you want. Unfortunately, used-books tend to command a premium, making freshly-printed editions sometimes less-expensive than used volumes.

If you want a fresh edition of the English Dominican translation, the full set is available through Ave Maria Press in Indiana:

http://www.avemariapress.com/

Summa Theologica, Complete 5-Volume Set

Hardcover: ISBN: 978-0-87061-063-9

Softcover: ISBN: 978-0-87061-069-1

and discount outlets such as Christian Book Distributors can get that set to you for under $170 hardcover or under $140 softcover.

If you want to assign particular parts of the Summa to your students, you can order reprints of the individual volumes from Cosimo books out of New York City:

http://www.cosimobooks.com/cosimo/

which sells their volumes through Amazon:

http://www.cosimobooks.com/search-summa

Softcover (about $25/each):

• ST I: ISBN-13: 978-1-60206-553-6
• ST I-II: ISBN-13: 978-1-60206-555-0
• ST II-II: ISBN-13: 978-1-60206-557-4
• ST III, part 1: ISBN-13: 978-1-60206-559-8
• ST III, part 2 & Suppl.: ISBN-13: 978-1-60206-561-1

Hardcover (about $35/each):

• ST I: ISBN-13: 978-1-60206-554-3
• ST I-II: ISBN-13: 978-1-60206-556-7
• ST II-II: ISBN-13: 978-1-60206-558-1
• ST III, part 1: ISBN-13: 978-1-60206-560-4
• ST III, part 2 & Suppl.: ISBN-13: 978-1-60206-562-8

Finally, an adventurous project from NovAntiqua is the publication of the English Dominican translation with a facing-page Latin version of the Summa in Ten Volumes:

http://novantiqua.com/

Not really a competitor to the Blackfriars edition that as noted on this blog is being reprinted in paperback, with all its notes and accompanying articles:

http://thomistica.net/news/2007/1/25/blackfriars-translation-of-the-summa-to-be-republished.html

this edition seems to be a usable and affordable version from which everyday work can be done, always being prepared to reference the full critical editions when necessary.

They have released the first four volumes in paperback, which covers the Prima Pars and the Prima Secundae, each of which is only about $25:

• ST I, Qq. 1-64: ISBN-13: 978-1440484988
• ST I, Qq. 65-119: ISBN-13: 978-1441438669
• ST I-II, Qq. 1-70: ISBN-13: 978-1450563260
• ST I-II, Qq. 71-114: ISBN-13: 978-1456320188 

If you know of any other affordable editions which I have overlooked, please post a reply.

Reflections on Ralph McInerny

St. Augustine’s Press has published a volume that gathers memorial notices and reflections on the life of Ralph McInerny. Edited by Christopher Kaczor, O Rare Ralph McInerny contains 33 contributions by friends, students, and colleagues. Contributors include Jude Dougherty, John Haldane, Lawrence Dewan OP, John Hittinger, Tony Lisska, Janet Smith, Alasdair MacIntyre, among others.  (I did notice that over a third of the essays in this collection were previously published and are freely available on various online outlets: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and one behind a paywall here). The volume also includes some short pieces by McInerny, including his 2009 ACPQ article “Why I am a Thomist.” The publisher’s blurb notes that proceeds from the volume go to the Women’s Care Center of St. Joseph County, Indiana. A wonderful tribute!

Thomistic Philosophical Terms (part 4)

While looking through the Notre Dame Press catalogue this morning I came across a forthcoming book by John W. (Jack) Carlson titled Words of Wisdom: A Philosophical Dictionary for the Perennial Tradition. Here is part of the publisher’s blurb:

It offers precise, yet clear and understandable accounts of well over a thousand key philosophical terms, richly cross-referenced. It also explains significant terms from other philosophical movements with which Thomism (and the Catholic intellectual tradition more generally) has engaged—either through debate or through judicious and creative incorporation. Moreover, it identifies a number of theological and doctrinal expressions to which perennial philosophy has contributed. Finally, it provides a comprehensive bibliography of works by Aquinas in English, expositions and discussions of perennial themes, and representative examples from the writings of all philosophers and theologians mentioned in dictionary entries.

While the book is not available until December, I thought it could be added to the growing list of resources on Thomistic philosophical terms (see parts 1, 2, 3).

New book on Christian Philosophy debates

Gregory Sadler has published a book with CUA Press presenting English translations of French articles on the contested issue of Christian philosophy. Reason Fulfilled by Revelation: The 1930s Christian Philosophy Debates in France begins with a substantive 96-page introduction and is followed by translations of articles by Etienne Gilson, Maurice Blondel, Gabriel Marcel, Antonin Sertillanges OP, Fernand van Steenberghen, and others, that originally appeared from 1931-1936. The book also contains a generous chronological bibliography of works on the French debates from 1927-2010. On his website, Sadler has posted some introductory videos that present his book.