Summa Contra Gentiles, 4: Book Four: Salvation

The Summa Contra Gentiles is not merely the only complete summary of Christian doctrine that St. Thomas has written, but also a creative and even revolutionary work of Christian apologetics composed at the precise moment when Christian thought needed to be intellectually creative in order to master and assimilate the intelligence and wisdom of the Greeks and the Arabs. In the Summa Aquinas works to save and purify the thought of the Greeks and the Arabs in the higher light of Christian Revelation, confident that all that had been rational in the ancient philosophers and their followers would become more rational within Christianity. This exposition and defense of divine truth has two main parts: the consideration of that truth that faith professes and reason investigates, and the consideration of the truth that faith professes and reason is not competent to investigate. The exposition of truths accessible to natural reason occupies Aquinas in the first three books of the Summa. His method is to bring forward demonstrative and probable arguments, some of which are drawn from the philosophers, to convince the skeptic. In the fourth book of the Summa St. Thomas appeals to the authority of the Sacred Scripture for those divine truths that surpass the capacity of reason. The present volume is the second part of a treatise on the hierarchy of creation, the divine providence over all things, and man's relation to God. Book 1 of the Summa deals with God; Book 2, Creation; and Book 4, Salvation.


About the Author

St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) was a Doctor of the church. He was an Italian Dominican friar and Roman Catholic priest who was an influential philosopher, theologian, and jurist in the tradition of scholasticism. Canonized in 1323 by Pope John XXII, Aquinas was the foremost classical proponent of natural theology and the father of Thomism.

Charles J. O'Neil (1909-1988) was professor of philosophy at Loyola University from 1934 to 1947, Marquette University from 1947 to 1961, and at Villanova University from 1961 to 1976. He was a Navy captain during World War II. He is author of several philosophical works and translated the Summa Contra Gentiles of St. Thomas Aquinas into English.