Thomistic Themes in Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI’s Theology
Thomistic Themes in Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI’s Theology

Summary/Abstract: Among many other sources, Ratzinger received his formation from the “three great masters” – Augustine, Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas. While rejecting an unpersonal and essentialist scholasticism, he recognizes the authority of Aquinas – seen through an “Augustinian Thomism” – in anthropology, the doctrine of grace and creation, as well as in the nature of the act of faith and the method of theology. The German theologian tries to make the ontological perspective compatible with the historical-salvific perspective, the personalist perspective with the metaphysical point of view. In the synthesis between faith and reason, philosophy and theology, Ratzinger finds in Aquinas a good model, which is based not only on the order of grace but also on the order of creation.

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