The Essential Summa Theologiae: A Reader and Commentary

Saint Thomas Aquinas's masterwork, the Summa theologiae, can be daunting to beginners. This volume by an expert on Aquinas's theology offers an ideal introduction. It presents key selections from the Summa along with accessible commentary designed to provide background, explain key concepts, and walk readers through Aquinas's arguments. Previously published as Holy Teaching, this new edition has been fully revised and includes a substantial amount of new material. The book draws from the entire Summa and incorporates selections that focus on moral theology, providing a fuller picture of Aquinas's thought.
From the Back Cover
An expert on the theology of St. Thomas Aquinas presents selections from Aquinas's masterwork, the Summa theologiae, along with commentary designed to provide background, explain key concepts, and walk readers through Aquinas's arguments.
"This is it: the ideal set of Summa selections for most classrooms as well as for readers who wish they could take a class on Thomas Aquinas with a professor capable of paraphrasing the Angelic Doctor, explaining and illustrating his thought while pointing to further readings both medieval and modern."
--Fred Sanders, Torrey Honors College, Biola University
"In this expanded edition of his reader and commentary, Bauerschmidt has done students of St. Thomas a tremendous service--giving them a sense of the work as a whole by zeroing in on its essential parts and showing how those parts bear on the whole. His commentary is admirably clear, replete with easily grasped examples that bring complex theological ideas back to ordinary life. An excellent resource for the classroom and for anyone interested in the thought of Thomas Aquinas."
--Jennifer A. Frey, University of South Carolina
"An indispensable learning tool for anyone who wants to come to grips with the thought of St. Thomas. The addition of crucial texts from the second part of the Summa in this second edition brings out even more Aquinas's profound vision of the unity of theological science, where moral theology is enfolded at the heart of dogmatics. Bauerschmidt's insightful introduction offers readers a fuller picture of this friar-theologian and equips them to approach his penetrating texts for themselves."
--Simon Francis Gaine, OP, Thomistic Institute Angelicum, Pontifical University of St. Thomas, Rome
"Like Thomas Aquinas himself, Bauerschmidt here aims for pedagogy, and he attains it admirably. This carefully chosen selection of key texts from the Summa theologiae, accompanied by in-depth commentary, captures and clarifies the grand scope of this complex work for 'beginners' in theology. Expanded treatment of questions on the moral life in this revised edition especially assist the study of Aquinas's unique vision of graced human action as the way to perfect happiness found in the knowledge and love of God. As a classroom text or for personal study, this volume is an invaluable resource for students and teachers."
--Daria Spezzano, Providence College