
Today’s feast of St. Thomas Aquinas is of special importance as this jubilee year 2025 also marks 800 years since the birth of Thomas Aquinas. Join us in celebrating 800 years of St. Thomas with the release of his earliest major work, appearing for the first time in English: the two volumes of Aquinas’s Commentary on the Sentences, Book I: Volume 1: Distinctions 1–20 and Volume 2: Distinctions 21–48.
The Sentences of Peter Lombard is famous for having been the standard textbook for theology students from the twelfth through the fifteenth century. Thomas Aquinas’s own Commentary on the Sentences was written when he was still a young man, in order to complete the qualifications for becoming a professor at the University of Paris. But this Commentary of Aquinas’s is not a mere commentary, in the sense of a line-by-line analysis of the Lombard’s text; instead, it is the product of lively classroom discussions. In this commentary, Aquinas enjoys the liberty to take up any inquiry inspired by the text, treating topics not found anywhere else in his many works.
These first two volumes of the entire Opera Omnia series are fittingly concerned with questions revolving around the greatest mystery of the Holy Catholic Faith: the Most Holy Trinity. For, as Aquinas himself wrote: “The whole of our life bears fruit and comes to its end in the knowledge of the Trinity” (In I Sent., d. 2, exp.). And indeed, these reflections of the young Aquinas are the fruit of a life of prayer and study, whose sole aim was only the knowledge of, and union with, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In his book, The Trinitarian Theology of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Rev. Gilles Emery, O.P., puts it well: “Reflecting on the Trinitarian faith is . . . the theologian’s primary task and this is where the heart of St. Thomas’s teaching rests.” In particular, continues Fr. Emery, it is “in his ‘Writing on the Sentences’ that St. Thomas created his most expansive treatise on the missions of the divine persons; this was the work which medieval commentators pored over most minutely. . . . What St. Thomas taught in his theology, he had received and channeled into his own life experience through living faith and charity, remaining constantly open to the gift of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” It is our great hope that this new translation will also bear great fruit in those who take up its pages, for “this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (John 17:3).
Dr. Christopher Decaen, a member of the faculty at Thomas Aquinas College in California, here presents us with a fresh translation of Book I of the Commentary. It is a translation that is attentive both to the original, thoughtful language of Aquinas and to the depth of the unfathomable mystery at hand. Students, scholars, and all lovers of theology alike will enjoy reading the Angelic Doctor's own careful reflections in this theological text, which is presented in two hardcover volumes of side-by-side English and Latin in the Opera Omnia series’ signature formatting, distinguished for its beauty and practicality.
Emmaus Academic is offering a 40% discount on all of Aquinas’s works for their Ave Maria Conference. The discount code AVE25 will be available to use until February 28.
Both volumes of Book I of The Commentary on the Sentences are available now for pre-order here (Volume 1: Distinctions 1–20) and here (Volume 2: Distinctions 21–48).
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