summa contra gentiles: book 3: providence, part ii

Book Three, Part 2 of the Summa Contra Gentiles series is the second part of a treatise on the hierarchy of creation, the divine providence over all things, and man’s relation to God.

The Summa Contra Gentiles is not merely the only complete summary of Christian doctrine that St. Thomas has written, but also a creative and even revolutionary work of Christian apologetics composed at the precise moment when Christian thought needed to be intellectually creative in order to master and assimilate the intelligence and wisdom of the Greeks and the Arabs. In the Summa Aquinas works to save and purify the thought of the Greeks and the Arabs in the higher light of Christian Revelation, confident that all that had been rational in the ancient philosophers and their followers would become more rational within Christianity.

Book 1 of the Summa deals with God; Book 2, Creation; and Book 4, Salvation.

St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) is a Doctor of the church. He was an Italian Dominican friar and Roman Catholic priest who was an influential philosopher, theologian, and jurist in the tradition of scholasticism. Canonized in 1323 by Pope John XXII, Aquinas was the foremost classical proponent of natural theology and the father of Thomism.

Vernon Joseph Bourke (1907-1998) was a Canadian-born American Thomist philosopher and professor at Saint Louis University. His area of expertise was ethics, and especially the moral philosophy of Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas.