Catholic Medical Quarterly Volume 75(2) May 2025
Book Review
Why Aquinas Matters Now
by Oliver Keenan
Bloomsbury Continuum
Does
Aquinas matter now, in a world that is becoming increasingly hostile to
Christianity? Surely, the "Benedict option" of withdrawing from the world
and creating quasi-monastic communities makes more sense? The author of
this intelligent and coherent work argues otherwise: Aquinas matters now.
We need to engage with the world as Christians.
But what can Aquinas teach us? The author examines the "architecture" of Aquinas's theology. One of the central themes is that God and human beings communicate with each other.
Even in our fallen state, Aquinas argues that we still have capacity to cooperate with God's grace. This Catholic teaching is anathema to classical Lutheranism and Calvinism and their teaching on human depravity. For Aquinas, grace perfects what we learn by reason. They are distinct but complementary.
Thus Aquinas matters now because he supplies us with the architecture to harmonise faith and reason, grace and nature. Aquinas matters now because, as Chesterton also exclaimed, he had such great respect for reason. In our post-modern world, we need to recover that respect for reason. So many of our contemporary philosophers have been entrapped by Wokeism. Aquinas will help us on this road to recovery.
A pity that the works on Aquinas by Aidan Nichols, the greatest living British theologian, is not mentioned in the Bibliography.