Was Thomas Aquinas a Proto-Protestant?

Francis Beckwith

Catholics are often surprised to learn that there are Evangelical Protestants who claim to be Thomists. When I was a Protestant, I was one of them. What attracts these Evangelicals are Thomas’s views on faith and reason, his philosophy of the human person, command of Scripture, and intellectual rigor. Some of them think that on justification, Thomas is closer to the Protestant Reformers than to the Catholic view (as taught in the 1994 Catechism of the Catholic Church). The late Presbyterian theologian John Gerstner, for instance, claimed that with St. Augustine, St. Thomas “taught the biblical doctrine of justification so that if the Roman Church had followed Aquinas the Reformation would not have been absolutely necessary.” Others have made similar arguments, but they are spectacularly wrong. As usual, it all hinges on understanding faith and works.

http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2010/was-aquinas-a-proto-protestant.html