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Teaching Bodies: Moral Formation the Summa of Thomas Aquinas
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Barnes and Noble
Teaching Bodies: Moral Formation the Summa of Thomas Aquinas
Current price: $100.00
Barnes and Noble
Teaching Bodies: Moral Formation the Summa of Thomas Aquinas
Current price: $100.00
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Size: Hardcover
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In
, leading scholar of Christian thought Mark D. Jordan offers an original reading of the
of Thomas Aquinas. Reading backward, Jordan interprets the main parts of the
, starting from the conclusion, to reveal how Thomas teaches morals by directing attention to the way God teaches morals, namely through embodied scenes: the incarnation, the gospels, and the sacraments. It is Thomas's confidence in bodily scenes of instruction that explains the often overlooked structure of the middle part of the
, which begins and ends with Christian revisions of classical exhortations of the human body as a pathway to the best human life. Among other things, Jordan argues, this explains Thomas's interest in the stages of law and the limits of virtue as the engine of human life.
Rather than offer a synthesis of Thomistic ethics, Jordan insists that we read Thomas as theology to discover the unification of Christian wisdom in a pattern of ongoing moral formation. Jordan supplements his close readings of the
with reflections on Thomas's place in the history of Christian moral teachingand thus his relevance for teaching and writing in the present. What remains a puzzle is why Thomas chose to stage this incarnational moral teaching within the then-new genres of university disputationthe genres we think of as "Scholastic." Yet here again the structure of the
provides an answer. In Jordan's deft analysis, Thomas's minimalist refusal to tell a new story except by juxtaposing selections from inherited philosophical and theological traditions is his way of opening room for God's continuing narration in the development of the human soul.
The task of writing theology, as Thomas understands it, is to open a path through the inherited languages of classical thought so that divine pedagogy can have its effect on the reader. As such, the task of the
, in Mark Jordan's hands, is a crucial and powerful way to articulate Christian morals today.