Last week, I announced a guided tour of St. Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae. But there is just one problem: if you have never read the Summa before, it can feel totally unapproachable just to begin. For example, if you open the book, it looks like this:
A few obvious questions:
What does Aquinas even think here?
Why are there objections at the beginning?
What is the difference between an article and a question?
What should you read first?
So, in preparation of my Guided Tour of the Summa Theologiae, I created a road-map for first time readers of the Summa Theologiae. You can get it here:
Believe it or not, you don’t have to be intimidated by the Summa. You can read it confidently, understand Aquinas’s point and follow the format like a theologian. You just have to understand how and why he wrote it. With this road map, you will.
Paired with a premium subscription, this road map and the guided tour of the Summa will have you thinking like the Angelic Doctor in no time. You will go from someone who only knows about the Summa to someone who understands Aquinas’s theology and philosophy better than most, including your average internet Thomist.
If you haven’t upgraded your membership yet, make sure you do so! The first entry will be out next week. We are going to start with the basics, and I would hate for you to miss Aquinas’s groundwork. So be sure to get in on the ground floor of this project so you don’t have to catch up later:
Any suggestion on what edition to get to read along?