Summa Contra Gentiles Book Four: Salvation

In the final volume of the Summa Contra Gentiles, St. Thomas Aquinas moves from what natural reason can discover about God and creation to what God himself has chosen to reveal through Scripture and the tradition of the church. Book Four represents Aquinas's treatment of sacred theology in its fullest sense: the doctrines of the Trinity, the Incarnation, the sacraments, and the final consummation of all things in the eternal purposes of God. If the first three books demonstrate the extraordinary power of natural reason to know God, govern moral life, and understand divine providence, this fourth and final book demonstrates why reason alone is not sufficient, why the deepest mysteries of the Christian faith, though not contrary to reason, exceed what reason could have reached on its own and require the gift of divine revelation to be known at all. This movement from philosophy to theology, from natural wisdom to revealed truth, is the culminating argument of the entire Summa: that faith and reason are not rivals but partners, and that all genuine wisdom finds its highest expression in the light of Christian Revelation. Translated by Charles J. O'Neil, this volume completes one of the greatest apologetic works in the history of Christian thought, essential for any serious student of Aquinas and Western theology.