Description: This book is an interpretation of the moral teaching of Thomas Aquinas's Summa of Theology. It argues that teaching on the virtues can only be understood by turning to the patterns of divine teaching in the incarnation and the sacraments. It presents this not only as Thomas's great originality in the Summa but also as his contribution to Christian thought in the present.
Brief description: Mark Jordan is R. R. Niebuhr Research Professor at Harvard Divinity School. His recent books include Recruiting Young Love: How Christians Talk about Homosexuality and Convulsing Bod-ies: Religion and Resistance in Foucault. He is also author of the groundbreaking work The Invention of Sodomy in Christian Theology.
Review Quotes: Aquinas never finished Summa 3, of course. He had his famous vision, or so the hagiographers tell us, and stopped writing: "All I have written seems as straw to me." In its abandonment as in its arguments, the Summa points beyond itself to God. Jordan points us to both.-- "Christian Century"