The Pinckaers Reader: Renewing Thomistic Moral Theology

Description

Pinckaers, O.P., was a Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., student who wrote his dissertation on the virtue of hope.

Avrillé Dominican Fr. Marie-Dominique wrote a positive review of Pinkaers's Le Renouveau de la morale, a collection of papers he wrote up to circa 1962. Fr. M.-D. quotes ++Lefebvre's Itinéraire spirituel, where the archbishop says (ch. 5) "Saint Thomas a préféré l’étude des vertus d’une manière approfondie en reliant les commandements aux vertus. " ("St. Thomas preferred the study of the virtues in a more profound way, connecting the commandments with the virtues."); he also quotes a Sept. 1988 sermon where ++Lefebvre says "saint Thomas d’Aquin, contrairement à beaucoup de manuels, a préféré exposer la théologie morale selon les vertus plutôt que selon les commandements de Dieu. " ("St. Thomas Aquinas, contrary to many manuals, preferred to express moral theology according to the virtues more than according to the commandments of God."). Fr. M.-D. also cites Fr. G.-L.'s Les Trois ages de la vie intérieur, "dont l’exposé sur les vertus est particulièrement remarquable " ("whose exposé on the virtues is particularly remarkable").

However, Pinckaers is sympathetic to De Lubac's Modernist views on the natural desire to see God; cf. essays #6 and #7.

Contains "The Sources of the Ethics of St. Thomas Aquinas (2002)" p. 4 (PDF p. 29), based on the concordance of Busa, S.J., of Summa secunda pars :

1. Augustine 1,630×
2. Aristotle 1,546×
3. Gregory the Great 439×
4. Dionysius 202×
5. Cicero 187×
6. Jerome 178×
7. John Damascene 168×
8. Ambrose 151×
9. Isidore of Seville 120×
10. Roman Law 102×
11. Gregory of Nyssa (actually Nemesius of Ephesus) 41×
12. Macrobius 33×
13. Boethius 30×
14. Prosper of Aquitaine 19×
15. Benedict 18×
16. Basil 13×
17. Plato 12×
18. Hilary of Poiteiers 12×
19. Bernard 9×
20. Caesar 8×
21. Ptolemy 1×

Servais Pinckaers, O.P., is one of the preeminent Catholic moral theologians of his generation. His highly acclaimed works, among them The Sources of Christian Ethics , offer a thoroughly Thomistic and contemporary vision of the Christian moral life. They reflect the philosophical and spiritual prowess of a moral theologian who is estranged neither from philosophical ethics nor from dogmatic theology, neither from Scripture nor from spirituality. The first collection of its kind available in any language, this volume features the twenty most significant essays written by Pinckaers since his highly praised Sources. The essays offer profound reflections that are only possible by a contemporary moral theologian who knows the thought of Aquinas from lifelong study. Rather than taking a simply historical approach to Aquinas, Pinckaers seeks the basis of the intelligibility of the moral life, providing rich spiritual and theological insights along the way. He plumbs the depths of fundamental moral theology in these essays, where he treats Thomistic method and the renewal of moral theology, beatitude and Christian anthropology, moral agency, and passions and virtues, as well as law and grace. Such a detailed treatment of key issues in fundamental moral theology and Christian philosophical anthropology will certainly demand attention from every theologian and advanced student interested in Aquinas and in a virtue approach to Christian ethics. Pinckaers's work has been an important source for the revival of interest in virtue-oriented moral theology in recent years and will continue to be a major source for debates over the place of Scripture and the Holy Spirit in moral theology.