To Stir a Restless Heart: Thomas Aquinas and Henri de Lubac on Nature, Grace, and the Desire for God (Thomistic Ressourcement Series)

by Jacob W. Wood

Publisher:

Catholic University of America

, 2019

Overview

To Stir a Restless Heart tells for the first time the story of how Thomas Aquinas conversed with his contemporaries about the dynamics of human nature's longing for God, and documents how he deliberately utilized Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, and Latin sources to develop a version of Aristotelian natural desire that was uniquely Augustinian: natural desire seeks the complete fulfillment of human nature "insofar as is possible," and so comes to rest in the highest end that God offers to it. Depending on whether God offers the free gift of grace to humanity, one and the same natural desire can come to rest in knowing God through creatures or seeing God directly.

Tracing the reception of Aquinas in the centuries that follow, Jacob Wood argues that Aquinas's student from among the Augustinian Hermits, Giles of Rome, consciously transformed Aquinas's understanding of human nature. By insisting that every nature has a positive aptitude for one, specific end, Giles tied our natural desire positively and directly to the vision of God, setting up a 700-year challenge among the Augustinian Hermits to explain the integrity of a nature with a supernatural end, as well as the gratuity of the grace which perfects it. Showing how de Lubac's early discovery of that tradition served as a principal source for his "natural desire for a supernatural end," To Stir a Restless Heart argues that many recent criticisms of de Lubac's theological anthropology find ready answers among the Augustinian Hermits, but that a renewed understanding of Aquinas's Augustinianism offers a more complete way forward: it preserves Aristotle's commitment to the integrity of human nature, de Lubac's commitment to the transcendence of human perfection, and Augustine's insistence on the priority and gratuity of divine grace in the work of redemption.

Key Features

• Offers an arduous retrieval and analysis of the debates, publications, and ecclesial culture surrounding the concept of a natural desire for God
• Argues that Aquinas's student from among the Augustinian Hermits consciously transformed Aquinas's understanding of human nature
• Gives a new perspective on the interpretation of Aquinas’s thought on the relationship between nature and grace

Praise for To Stir a Restless Heart

A fine example of the level reached in the study of medieval figures by contemporary American PhD-level scholars, who now populate philosophy and theology faculties. Readers should be confident with Jacob Wood as their guide in this deeply informative book.

Mark F. Johnson, Marquete University

Carefully analyzes the assembly of St. Thomas’s mature position on the natural desire to see God, with fine-grained attention to his sources and interlocutors. Wood gives us a new point of departure for subsequent assessment of the relation of Cajetan, Suarez, and de Lubac to St. Thomas—and for the assessment of our relation to God.

Guy Mansini, OSB, author of Fundamental Theology (CUA Press)

The natural desire to see God is one of those nodal questions that invite and perplex the mind throughout the ages, attracting the attention of thinkers such as St. Thomas Aquinas and Henri de Lubac.... Jacob Wood’s To Stir a Restless Heart succeeds in shedding much new light on this old debate by a deep study of the sources, context, and development of St. Thomas’s writings on this topic, on the one hand, and the Augustinian and Aegidian sources for de Lubac’s position, on the other.

Lawrence Feingold, author of The Natural Desire to See God According to St. Thomas and His Interpreters

Product Details

• Title: To Stir a Restless Heart: Thomas Aquinas and Henri de Lubac on Nature, Grace, and the Desire for God
• Author: Jacob W. Wood
• Series: Thomistic Ressourcement Series
• Publisher: Catholic University of America
• Print Publication Date: 2019
• Logos Release Date: 2022
• Pages: 472
• Era: era:contemporary
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Reader Edition
• Subjects: Thomas, Aquinas, Saint, 1225?-1274; Lubac, Henri de, 1896-1991; Desire for God › History of doctrines
• ISBNs: 9780813234212, 9780813231839, 9780813231846, 0813234212, 0813231833, 0813231841
• Resource ID: LLS:STRRSTLSSHDSRGD
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2024-03-25T20:58:30Z