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Commentator’s Conclusion: Preamble to What?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 November 2024

J. Budziszewski
J. Budziszewski
Affiliation:
University of Texas, Austin
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Summary

We saw at the outset of the book that Thomas Aquinas considers reason a preamble to faith. But to faith in what? Human life is triply haunted, by the specter of absurdity, by the burden of brokenness and guilt, and by the dread of mortality and incompleteness. Can there be meaning, can there be healing and forgiveness, can we be everlastingly fulfilled? According to St. Thomas, the answers to these three questions are provided in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, who bore our sins and opened the path to the Father. This scandalizes us because if the Gospel is true, then the facile and comforting proposal of “many roads to heaven” is false. It scandalizes us even more because it asks something of us. And so the Treatise on the One God is not the end of our investigation, but the beginning.

Keywords

Final endGospelsalvationfaith and reason
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Commentary on Thomas Aquinas's Treatise on the One God , pp. 409 - 412
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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