Abstract

Aquinas’s questions, Jenkins asserts, are not necessarily our questions nor is his terminology our own. The contemporary questions and terminology that Jenkins has in mind are those of analytic philosophy. The gap between Aquinas and contemporary philosophy is especially pronounced when it comes to knowledge, where a welter of terms “such as cognito, intelligere, notitia, credere, opinio, fides, and especially scientia” would need to be properly translated and understood before engagement with contemporary positions could take place. But it is not just that we need to be more careful in our translations; rather we must locate the “elements” of Aquinas’s philosophy within the “specifically Christian wisdom that is its telos”. Jenkins’s book succeeds admirably at doing just that.