Theology Needs Philosophy brings together essays by leading theologians and philosophers on the fundamental importance of human reason and philosophy for Catholic theology and human cultures generally. This edited collection studies the contributions of reason, with its acquired wisdom, science, and scholarship, in five sections. Those sections are: (1) the inevitable presence and service of philosophy in theology; (2) the metaphysics of creation, nature, and the natural knowledge of God; (3) the history of Logos as reason in the fathers, in St. Thomas Aquinas, and Medieval Biblical commentaries; (4) the role of reason in Trinitarian theology, Christology, and Mariology; and finally (5) reason in the theology of Aquinas. The general reader, as well as students and faculty, will be introduced to a constant, but sometimes neglected, element of Catholic intellectual traditions. Pope Francis follows Popes Benedict XVI and John Paul II in emphasizing the light of faith in his first encyclical Lumen Fidei, showing how human reason is healed and elevated by faith. Not to act according to reason is contrary to the nature of God, as Pope Benedict's Regensburg Lecture reminded the world. An abandonment of Catholic faith, and its incorporation of the ancient discoveries of reason, has led to a darkening of reason in secularist modernity. The light of reason is from the Word (Logos) who is God (John 1:9), calling everyone to live attentive to the cultivation of reason. Modern popes have therefore called for a recovery of reason since faith in Jesus Christ heals and intensifies the light of reason so fundamental to the God-given dignity of every human being.
Matthew L. Lamb holds the Cardinal Maida Chair in Theology at Ave Maria University, USA.
"Summing up: Recommended"--P. K. Moser, Loyola Univ Chicago, CHOICE "The essays are of uniformly high quality the essays offer very solid scholarship on difficult material in the thought of Thomas Aquinas This collection is an important addition to the collection of any university at which there is upper-level undergraduate or graduate work with a Thomist orientation..."--Catholic Library World "This splendid and formidable volume has a number of objectives, one of which is to honour the contribution to philosophical theology of Ralph McInerny, an ex-Marine from Minnesota who turned himself into a writer of extraordinary achievement"--Ann Loades, Univ St Andrews Divinity School, Theology "One should think of this as a resource for those interested in thinking about philosophy's role as a handmaid to theology as understood within the Thomist tradition. In either an advanced undergrad or grad setting, this is the type of book one would recommend to a student who is reading Aquinas and in need of an introduction to the terrain of recent scholarship. Beyond that, students, admirers, and friends of Ralph McInerny as well as of Matthew Lamb himself would find here a fitting tribute and happy reminder that their legacies are alive and well."--Krom, Michael, Horizons: The Journal of the College Theology Society
