Endorsements and Reviews forReading the
Sermons of Thomas Aquinas
“Aquinas was both preacher and enquirer. Randall
Smith’s splendid book takes us closer to understanding the
relationship between these two vocations than anyone else
has done so far. Aquinas’s sermons exemplify a rhetoric
structured by arts of memory, so that his listeners’ minds
were informed by Scripture and their desires focused on
Him of whom Scripture speaks.”
Alasdair MacIntyre
University of Notre Dame
“Randall Smith has written a book that for a very long
time has been an urgent desideratum. The sermons of Thomas
Aquinas arguably are the most underappreciated and least
read part of his theological oeuvre. They are a veritable
treasure, but like every true treasure, in need of
unlocking. With this excellent book, Randall Smith has
finally provided an interpretive key that allows us to
receive the treasure of Thomas’s sermons. This
well-written book is a piece of rigorous scholarship, a
must-read for all students of Aquinas's theology, also for
all who love Christ-centered, biblical preaching, and last
but not least for those who want to understand how
preaching worked in the world of medieval universities and
among the Dominican preachers.”
Reinhard Hutter
Duke University Divinity School
“St. Thomas is universally known as a theologian, but few
people know that he was also a skilled preacher. His
sermons represent an integral part of his work,
particularly illuminating for a better understanding of
his person and his spirituality. In reading them, one
discovers the constant concern of a master theologian to
extend his theology through a pastoral practice adapted to
the most humble settings. Professor Randall Smith has
perfectly grasped this intention. His book, aware of and
well informed by the most up-to-date scholarship, will
help today’s reader to penetrate more deeply into this
neglected part of the Thomistic corpus.”
Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P.
University of Fribourg, Switzerland