“Doting Thomists: Evangelicals, Thomas Aquinas, and Justification”

That’s the title of my most recent article published in the The Evangelical Quarterly 85.3 (July 2013): 211-227.  Here’s the abstract:

Over the past several decades, some Evangelical philosophers and theologians have embraced the metaphysics, epistemology, and natural law theory of Thomas Aquinas (1225-74), despite that fact that historically some of the leading lights in Evangelicalism have rejected Aquinas’s views because they believed these views are inconsistent with classical Reformation teaching. Some of these Evangelical Thomists have argued that on the matter of justification Aquinas is out of step with Tridentine and post-Tridentine Catholicism though closer to the Protestant Reformers.This article argues that such a reading of Aquinas is mistaken, and that Aquinas’s understanding of justification is of a piece with both his predecessors (Augustine, Council of Orange) as well as his successors (Council of Trent, Catechism of the Catholic Church)

In this article I critique the reading of St. Thomas embraced by R. C. Sproul, John Gerstner, and Norman L. Geisler. As I note in the article, “Although an entire generation of Evangelical Thomists, influenced by Geisler, Sproul, and Gerstner, has largely accepted this narrative, it is spectacularly false.” You can read the entire article here.

This article was originally presented as a paper at the 2010 meeting of the Evangelical Philosophical Society.