This major new book provides an introduction to Thomas Aquinas’s influence on Protestantism. The editors, both noted commentators on Aquinas, bring together a group of influential scholars to demonstrate the ways that Anglican, Lutheran, and Reformed thinkers have analyzed and used Thomas through the centuries. Later chapters also explore how today’s Protestants might appropriate the work of Aquinas to address a number of contemporary theological and philosophical issues.
The authors set the record straight and disavow the widespread impression that Aquinas is an irrelevant figure for the history of Protestant thought. This assumption has dominated not only Protestant historiography but also Roman Catholic accounts of the Reformation and Protestant intellectual life. The book opens the possibility for contemporary reception, engagement, and critique and even intra-Protestant relations and includes:
- Information on the fruitful appropriation of Aquinas in Anglican, Lutheran, and Reformed theologians over the centuries
- Important essays from leading scholars on the teachings of Aquinas
- New perspectives on Thomas Aquinas’s position as a towering figure in the history of Christian thought
Aquinas Among the Protestant is a ground-breaking and interdenominational work for students and scholars of Thomas Aquinas and theology more generally.
Contributed essay titled: “Johann Gerhard’s Reception of Thomas Aquinas’ Analogia Entis”
Denis R. Janz, Provost Distinguished Professor of the History of Christianity Emeritus at Loyola University, New Orleans on Church History wrote:"A new collection of essays, Aquinas Among the Protestants, demonstrates the impact that Thomas Aquinas has had on Anglican, Lutheran, and Reformed thinkers and explores the ways in which contemporary Protestant Christianity could benefit from Aquinas’s insights, particularly regarding natural law and virtue ethics....
It is time for the fruits of recent historical and theological scholarship to be harvested in the churches of the Reformation and helpfully applied to the many challenges, internal and external, theological and ethical, that we all now face. This book is a fine start to precisely such a needed recovery."
Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt, Professor of Theology at Loyola University Maryland and a permanent deacon of the Archdiocese of Baltimore on The Thomist: A Speculative Quarterly Review wrote:"Most of the contributors to this book are experts on Reformed Orthodoxy. And most agree: '. . . serious and accurate wrestling with the texts and legacy of Thomas Aquinas can only benefit Protestant [read Reformed] intellectual life' (17). The book's first seven essays are concerned with “The Protestant Reception of Aquinas,” that is, setting the historical record straight.... Jack Kilcrease gives us a lucid account of the Lutheran Johann Gerhard's embrace and critique of Aquinas's analogia entis" (Church History 87, no. 3 [Sep 2018]: 882-883).
"This collection of essays testifies to the revival of constructive engagement with the thought of Thomas Aquinas among Protestant theologians in recent years... This collection goes some way toward showing that Protestant theologians in the centuries following the Reformation made constructive use of Thomas as well as showcasing contemporary Protestant engagements with Thomas" (The Thomist 84, no. 3 [July 2020]: 501).