Description
Book SynopsisDialectic and Narrative in Aquinas investigates the intent, method, and structural unity of Thomas Aquinas''s Summa Contra Gentiles. In this innovative study Thomas S. Hibbs goes against the grain of most traditional interpretations of the work, which claim it serves a missionary or apologetic end, and argues that the intended audience is Christian and that its subject is Christian wisdom. In the process of making his argument, Hibbs also demonstrates that the Summa Contra Gentiles is the most important of Aquinas''s texts on the relationship between faith and reason, theology, and philosophy.
Since the prologue to the Summa Contra Gentiles has been the focus of nearly all the debates over the work, Hibbs begins with an examination of it and the controversies it has provoked, and tests various interpretations of the prologue in light of the actual text. He then goes on to suggest that the method of the Contra Gentiles is dialectical and that
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“Thomas Hibbs has produced the definitive book on Summa Contra Gentiles, a book destined to become a permanent part of Thomistic studies." —International Studies in Philosophy
"One does not find in this book still another effort to explain what Aquinas was really about in the SCG; instead [Hibbs] interprets the text in a way that remarkably imitates Aquinas's own cogitatio fidei, his thinking about the truth of Catholic faith. The result is so brilliantly accomplished that one is led to ponder whether Hibbs works here as a philosopher or as a theologian. Whatever the answer, he renders a tremendous service to the world of Roman Catholic theology." —Theological Studies
“[Hibbs] make[s] a signal contribution to the discussion of Thomas’s intellectual project by emphasizing the ‘narrative’ at least as much as the ‘dialectic’ and by writing with a view to chastising those who would neglect the former in preference for the latter.” —Religious Studies Review
[A] provocative and engaging new study . . . " —The Review of Metaphysics
