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Aquinas Among the Protestants. Edited by Manfred Svensson and David VanDrunen. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2018. ix + 314 pp. paper.
Thomas Aquinas—“. . . the source and foundation of all heresy, error, and obliteration of the Gospel” (1): this was the earliest “Protestant” assessment of the Angelic Doctor, the one Martin Luther himself offered in 1524, and the one which more or less dominated Protestant thinking until the mid-twentieth century. Since then, two developments have decisively altered this conventional wisdom.
First, already prior to the Second Vatican Council of the 1960's, experts in Thomas Aquinas studies took up the task of what some called “freeing Thomas from Thomist custody.” This has meant the abandonment of time-worn clichés, a renewed search for the historical Thomas, the recognition of Thomas as a profoundly Augustinian theologian immersed in the heated controversies of his thirteenth-century context, as a professor of Biblical studies bearing the academic title magister in sacra pagina, and one who took this title with utmost seriousness. This ongoing reorientation is incomplete, but it has already left many traditional Thomists behind.
The second development has involved a new look at Luther, his knowledge of Thomas Aquinas, his situation within the context of the late...