Abstract
This work, the second collection of Maynooth lectures, presents a very interesting collection of reflections on the work of Aquinas. It is fittingly dedicated to the memory of Rev. Professor James McEvoy (1943–2010) who died during the preparation of the lectures for publication. The 12 essays in the collection are presented in two parts. Part One of the collection has essays by renowned scholars working in the area of Aquinas studies, while in Part Two the work of three students for whom Prof. McEvoy was their Doktorvater is presented, alongside an essay enticingly entitled ‘Heidegger on Aquinas on God’ by Thomas F. Kelly.
It is appropriate that an article on God closes this collection, while one on Eucharist begins it. These were the two great interests of Aquinas. Indeed as Liam Walsh states in his ecumenical reading of Aquinas on Eucharist—any consideration of the Eucharist by Aquinas is fundamentally a ‘question of what and how we think about God’ (p. 20). Taking us beyond discussion on virtue William Desmond presents an interesting exposition on the Beatitudes, which in Aquinas he says take the human beyond virtue. A very interesting idea is introduced and developed here, that of porosity, specifically religious porosity. Desmond suggests that poverty and weeping call into question modern culture’s vision of the human as being of autonomous self-determination and self-sufficient morality. In the simple phrase ‘stones do not weep, only a creature of flesh weeps’ we find perhaps one of the most profound insights into what it is to be human in this book. Philip Rosemann’s essay is interesting on the question of charity while Eleonore Stump’s work further develops the question so prominent in this collection, and in Thomas’s work, that of human flourishing. In this essay she explores the relation between suffering and a person’s flourishing. Her positing of suffering as loss of the desires of one’s heart results in a very interesting and creatively presented article.
Sarah Borden Sharkey explores the meaning of being in Thomas Aquinas and Edith Stein. While she concludes by agreeing that Thomas’s understanding of being as act is correct, and Stein’s unfolding ‘Entfaltung’ or ‘entfalten’ wrong, she makes the important comment that while Stein was wrong ‘she was not wrong in any simple or unimportant manner’ (p. 96) and so we are urged to read her also, and learn from her. Vivian Boland uses recent scholarship to explore in very interesting fashion Aquinas’s doctrine of divine ideas. The need for philosophy and theology to be in continuous discussion is emphasized.
John F. Boyle and Denys Turner are the authors of two very interesting papers, which in different ways explore Aquinas the teacher. Indeed ‘Thomas the Teacher’ is Turner’s title for his essay. Thomas, he suggests, is virtually absent from his writings, unlike Augustine for example, whose personality permeates his work, and there is something intensely holy about this humble absence. While Turner speaks of the absence of Aquinas from his theology, Boyle suggest that in Thomas’s Parisian Scriptum, which may date from the 1270s and has a lovely illuminated initial of a Dominican teaching, ‘we may presume to have an image of Thomas himself’ (p. 73). This essay explores in great detail the second Roman Commentary of Thomas on Book I of the Sentences discovered by Fr Leonard Boyle in a manuscript of Lincoln College, Oxford (Lat. 95). John F. Boyle’s work reveals this commentary to be ‘a remarkable work of St. Thomas’ maturity.’
In Part Two of the collection Gaven Kerr’s piece entitled ‘Ontological commitment and Thomistic realism’ presents a lucid account of Aquinas on metaphysics. In this he gives a clear account of what Thomas meant in his teachings on metaphysics and ontology, and demonstrates how Aquinas’s philosophy can provide a robust response to the Kantian challenge. Two other doctoral students of Prof. McEvoy, Declan Lawell and Julia Hynes, also present papers in this section. Lawell’s work explores the intellectual interpretation of the pseudo-Dionysius in the thought of Aquinas and Albert, while Hynes in her paper argues for the advantages of virtue theory over the rival positions of deontology and consequentialism.
The collection fittingly closes with Kelly’s masterful piece, ‘Heidegger on Aquinas on God.’ In this work Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Aquinas, and Augustine all are drawn into conversation.
This volume, the second collection of the Maynooth Aquinas Lectures, as well as containing a very interesting collection of works on Aquinas, is also beautifully presented. The jacket design incorporates a beautiful detail from the 13th-century Italian manuscript Lat.95, (Lincoln College, Oxford), which was the focus of John F. Boyles’s work.