Doubting Thomas presents a deep analysis of four key debates between Aquinas and his contemporaries, offering a fresh perspective on behalf of the saint's major critics. While Thomas Aquinas remains by far the most influential philosopher and theologian of the Middle Ages, many of his contemporaries considered him a dangerous innovator whose enthusiasm for the newly rediscovered Aristotle at points led him astray. Some theologians of the Franciscan Order, especially, were vocal critics of his thought. In Doubting Thomas, Brendan W. Case examines four interrelated critiques of Aquinas leveled by Franciscan theologians Bonaventure of Bagnoregio and his student Peter John Olivi over the nature of human knowledge, the proper way to understand how unity and trinity relate in God, the nature of time, and the nature of matter and its relation to spiritual beings. By arguing that the Franciscans had the better of Aquinas in each of these debates, Case offers a much-needed corrective to the one-sided focus on Aquinas's thought in recent theology and philosophy.
Brendan W. Case is the associate director for research of the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University, and the author of The Justification of the Sinless: On Supralapsarian Christology and the Goodness of the Incarnation and The Accountable Animal: Justice, Justification, and Judgment.
Acknowledgements Introduction: Friendly Rivals in a Time of Ferment 1. Intuiting God: Divine Illumination and the Ontological Argument 2. The Father's 'Auctoritas': The Priority of Act to Relation in the Trinitarian Processions 3. Measuring Creation: Bonaventure and Aquinas on the Finitude of Time 4. Spiritual Matter I: Bonaventure and Aquinas on Angelic Mutability 5. Spiritual Matter II: Olivi and Aquinas on the "Real Distinction" Epilogue: Sanctity and Theology: Aquinas's Critique of Bonaventure Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index
"This book is masterfully written, and it is a must-read for anyone interested in Christian dogmatics. Case offers a highly worthwhile retrieval of Bonaventure and his early followers, constructively criticizing various positions taken by Aquinas." - Matthew Levering, author of Aquinas's Eschatological Ethics and the Virtue of Temperance "Doubting Thomas brings to light the philosophical arguments between Bonaventure and Aquinas across a range of issues. This well-written and well-informed book expertly illuminates what was at stake in their disagreements. You will not see the thirteenth century the same way after reading this book." - Christopher Cullen, author of Bonaventure: Great Medieval Thinkers "It is with good reason that St. Thomas Aquinas has been named the Common Doctor of the Church. However, as Brendan Case argues in his insightful and provocative book, it is for equally good reasons that St. Thomas has not been named the only doctor of the Catholic Church. Theologians of all stripes will benefit, therefore, from Case's engaging and detailed display of the numerous theological gifts on offer from St. Bonaventure, Blessed John Duns Scotus, and the wider Franciscan tradition." - T. Adam Van Wart, author of Neither Nature nor Grace
