New Books In Religion

Should you care how Protestant theologians and philosophers view a man generally regarded as of interest primarily to Catholics and as a pillar of Catholic thinking? Absolutely. Why? Because much of what has made our modern world in terms of law, philosophy and ethics comes from Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274). How would we benefit from reading a book about Aquinas by a noted scholar who has been a Protestant but who is now a Catholic? That is what we are going to find out in this interview with Francis J. Beckwith about his 2019 book, Never Doubt Thomas: The Catholic Aquinas as Evangelical and Protestant (Baylor University Press). The book is not dry-as-dust theology. It is approachable and often quite funny, even as it tackles some quite arcane subject matter (e.g., faith, works and justification). Beckwith engagingly critiques some of the arguments of recent years against natural law theory—which is more relevant than many of us have realized and which forms some of the background of the soul-searching and deba