Thomism

[Unfinished Draft]

Introduction

Norman Geisler was an evangelical Christian theologian, a classical Christian apologist (like Aquinas), and a Thomistic philosopher. He wrote, cowrote, or edited over one hundred books and many of have strong echoes of Aquinas. This quest for understanding provided him with the impetus to earn a bachelor’s degree in theology from William Tyndale College (formerly Detroit Bible College), a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Wheaton College, a master’s degree in philosophy from University of Detroit, a master’s degree in theology from Wheaton Graduate School, and a PhD in philosophy from Loyola University. His combination of evangelistic zeal, logic, and philosophy-rich theology caused many to introduce Norm as a something like “a cross between Billy Graham and Thomas Aquinas.” Like Aquinas, Norm saw harmony and cooperation between faith and reason and sought to commend and defend the faith with reason.

He was introduced to Thomistic metaphysics in a course named “The Metaphysics of Infinite Being,” taught by Jules J. Toner, S.J., at the University of Detroit around 1956-57. It was then that he became a lifelong Thomist. He carried his passion for Thomistic Metaphysics and Epistemology to Wheaton College, where his master’s thesis was titled “The Use of Analogy in Thomistic Theism” (1959). His Ph.D. dissertation, Religious Transcendence: Some Criteria, was thoroughly saturated with Thomistic thought. In 1998, during an interview, he stated that Aquinas has had the greatest influence on his life of any thinker and that if his house were on fire, he would rescue his wife first, his Bible second, and all sixty volumes of the Summa Theologiae from his library last. (Angela Elwell Hunt and Norman L. Geisler, “The World is His Classroom,” Fundamentalist Journal (September 1988): 20-21, reprinted in Norman L. Geisler, The Collected Work of Norm Geisler, Vol. 3: 1986-1994 (Bastion Books, 2019), 240.) He may not have been exaggerating! His four-volume Systematic Theology (2002-2005) often echoes the Summa. The last public lecture he gave, in 2017, was on the antidote to postmodernism being the first principles of thought, the reductive foundationalism of Aquinas. (“Defending the Faith in a Post-Modern World,” National Conference on Christian Apologetics, Charlotte, North Carolina, 2017. See below.) The last book contribution he wrote was titled “Who was Thomas Aquinas?” (Norman L. Geisler, “Who was Thomas Aquinas?” in The Comprehensive Guide to Apologetics, ed. Joseph M. Holden (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 2018), 423-427.)

Thomism versus Postmodernism

In 2017, at the National Conference on Christian Apologetics, hosted by Southern Evangelical Seminary, Norman Geisler gave his last public lecture. He was recovering from a stroke in his occipital lobe but wanted to continue fighting the four great battles: (1) the battle for God, (2) the battle for creation, (3) the battle for the Bible, and (4) the battle for truth. He knew his time left to speak was short and this was the topic he chose to speak about. It was the most important apologetic issue he wanted to speak to. It was a hill he wanted to die on, so to speak. With all the cognitive challenges from the stroke, he struggled to make it through the talk–but he pulled it off. After it was over, he told me that he was seeing characters all over his laptop screen that were not actually there. And then he insisted that we needed to create a primer for Thomism.

He critiques postmodernism while defending classical Christian apologetics. It begins by quoting Myron Penner, who claims modern apologetics undermines the gospel and poses a threat to faith.

He outlines postmodernism’s history: premodern (metaphysics, pre-1650), modern (epistemology, 1650-1950), and postmodern (hermeneutics, 1950-present). An umpire analogy illustrates the shift: premodern calls reality as is; modern as seen; postmodern as constructed. Forerunners include Hume, Kant, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Derrida. Contrasted with modernism’s unity, rationality, and absolute truth, postmodernism favors diversity, relativism, pluralism, and reader-determined meanings.

Rooted in atheism (“God is dead” via Nietzsche, Derrida, Foucault), it yields relativism in epistemology, semantics, history, hermeneutics, philosophy, teleology, and morality. Quotes from Dostoevsky, Sartre, and Huxley underscore ethical chaos without God.

To counter the relativism of postmodernism, Geisler advocates foundationalism: self-evident first principles as knowledge’s base. He argues for reductive foundationalism (Aquinas) over deductive (Descartes/Spinoza), arguing against infinite regress. Listed principles include existence, identity, non-contradiction, excluded middle, causality, and analogy, logically proving God’s existence.

Postmodernism’s flaws: unthinkable (denies principles it employs), unspeakable (self-defeating claims like “no objective truth”), and unlivable (atheists like Sartre, Camus, Nietzsche, Hume admit existential despair). Parodic hymns and humanist critiques highlight inconsistencies.

Solution: Thomism’s rational framework.
Conclusion: Defend faith with logical arguments from first principles, combating bad reason with good.

Thomas Aquinas: An Evangelical Appraisal

Norm surprised the evangelical world by publishing a favorable appraisal of Thomas Aquinas’s thought in 1991.

Directions in Neo-Thomism

In 1988, Norm wrote the following:

Thomism is a movement which follows the thought originating with Thomas Aquinas. Upon his death, his teachings were adopted by various individuals, most notably by his Dominican brothers. Several propositions of Aquinas were condemned by church authorities in 1277, but primarily due to Dominican efforts his system was eventually established. Aquinas was canonized in 1323.

Thomists used an Aristotelian mode of thought and expression, in contrast to Franciscans who were more Platonic. This led to lively debates between the orders through the ages.

A central figure in developing Thomism was Thomas de Vio Cardinal Cajetan (1469–1534) who opposed Martin Luther. Cajetan held several distinctive interpretations of Aquinas. Notable is his view that analogy is best understood as the possession of an attribute by two essences, rather than properly by only one. He also thought more in terms of abstract essences than existing substances. Finally, he raised doubts concerning the provability of God’s existence and man’s immortality.

By the sixteenth century Thomism became the leading school of Catholic thought. The Jesuit order (approved in 1540) aligned itself with Aquinas, and in many of its pronouncements the Council of Trent consciously expressed itself in Thomistic phrases. In the seventeenth century John of St. Thomas (1589-1644) was a major representative of Thomism. But it became ingrown in the eighteenth century and faded. Thomism experienced a revival in the nineteenth century, due largely to its emphasis on human dignity in the face of the Industrial Revolution. By the time of the First Vatican Council (1869–70), Thomism was again in vogue and triumphed in 1879 when Pope Leo XIII, in Aeterni Patris, gave official recommendation to it, which gave impetus to a movement known as Neo-Thomism.

Neo-Thomism is a twentieth-century revival of Thomistic thought. Two main groups emerged: the Transcendental Thomists, such as Joseph Maréchal (1878–1944), Bernard Lonergan, and Karl Rahner, adapted Thomism to Kantian thought; others under the leadership of Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange (1877–1964), Etienne Gilson (1884-1978), and Jacques Maritain (1882-1973) sought to expound Aquinas himself. Thomism crossed denominational lines and included Anglicans such as E. L. Mascall (1905-1993) and even many non-Catholics.

The distinctive teaching of Neo-Thomism is the maxim that ‘existence precedes essence.’ By this it is meant that one knows by intuition that something exists before one knows what it is. For this reason, Maritain claimed that Thomism is the origination of existentialism.

The Neo-Thomist tradition has been carried on by notables such as Frederick Copleston (1907–94) in Great Britain, Joseph Owens (1908–2005) in Canada, and James D. Collins (1917–85) and Vernon Bourke (1907–98) in the United States.

Norman L. Geisler, “Thomism and Neo-Thomism,” from The New Dictionary of Theology: Historical and Systematic, 2nd Edition, edited by Martin Davie, Tim Grass, Stephen R. Holmes, John McDowell, and T. A. Noble. Copyright © 2016, 1988 by Inter-Varsity Press. Used with permission of InterVarsity Press, P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515, USA. www.ivpress.com. Included in Norman L. Geisler, Thomas Aquinas: An Evangelical Appraisal (Bastion Books, 2025).

As of 2025, Neo-Thomism seems to have splintered into a bewildering array of voices. We hear of Analytical Thomism, Aristotelian Thomism, Augustinian Thomism, Baroque/Suárezian Thomism, Cartesian Thomism, Christocentric Thomism, Classical Thomism, Critical Thomism, Digital Thomism, Eclectic Thomism, Ecumenical Thomism, Environmental Thomism, Essential Thomism, Existential Thomism, Feminist Thomism, Fribourg Thomism, Hillbilly Thomism, Hong Kong Thomism, Laval Thomism, Leonine Thomism, Liberation Thomism, Lublin Thomism, Krakow Circle Thomism, Palamite Thomism, Phenomenological Thomism, Platonic Thomism, Postmodern Thomism, Reformed Thomism, River Forest Thomism, Romantic Thomism, Semiotic Thomism, Thomistic Personalism, Toulouse Thomism, Transcendental Thomism, Whig Thomism, Wide Thomism, and more.

What would Norman Geisler recommend today to someone who read his appraisal on Thomas Aquinas and was eager to dive into the world of Neo-Thomism? In the 1980s, when Dr. Geisler wrote the article on Neo-Thomism, Neo-Thomism had three main branches or schools:

(1) a Neo-Scholastic Thomism (alternatively Aristotelian Thomism, pre-Conciliar Thomism, or Strict Observance Thomism)

(2) Existential Thomism (or Thomistic Existentialism)(not to be confused with secular Existentialism)

(3) Transcendental Thomism (or Phenomenological Thomism)

While all three streams of Thomism flowed into the Second Vatican Council, it was the Transcendental Thomism gained dominance in Catholic institutions. Not surprisingly, at the two Jesuit schools he graduated from, Norm was exposed mainly to the transcendental variety of Thomism—with Bernard Lonergan at the forefront and Rahner, Lubac, and W. Norris Clarke trailing not far behind. But he grew to appreciate the writings of the first two camps far more than the third. The first two were a posteriori in their epistemology, receiving the real, while the third tried to project the knower upon the real, as John F.X. Knasas once put it. In private conversation Norm refused to acknowledge Transcendental Thomism as a legitimate form of Neo-Thomism. It did not deserve the name. When asked for guidance, he warned his students against wasting time with the transcendental Thomists. The challenge of trying to “separate the chaff from the wheat” from a system that blended so little of Aquinas’s premodern wheat with so much modern and postmodern chaff—Cartesian and Kantian idealism, the phenomenology of Heidegger and Husserl, Nietzschean existentialism, and more—would require a herculean effort to make it worthwhile. He also did not seem very optimistic about the value of the synthesis of analytical Thomism (a synthesis of Thomism and Analytical Philosophy) or any other blend of Thomism with other -isms.

From 1956 to 2019, Norm was most intrigued with the thinkers in the Existential Thomism and Neo-Scholastic/Aristotelian Thomism schools. In the advice webpage where some of Dr. Geisler’s advice from his private email correspondence between 2013 and 2018, and from some of his interviews, Dr. Geisler recommended students of philosophy and apologetics read the writings of several Neo-Thomists:

  1. Étienne Gilson Being and Some Philosophers (1949)
  2. Étienne Gilson God and Philosophy (1941)
  3. Joseph Owens An Elementary Christian Metaphysics (1963)
  4. James D. Collins A History of Modern Philosophy (1967)
  5. Armand Maurer’s translation of Aquinas’s On Being and Essence
  6. Battista Mondin The Principle of Analogy in Protestant and Catholic Theology (1963)

Secondarily, he recommended the writings of Jacques Maritain, Alasdair McIntyre, Reginald Marie Garrigou-Lagrange, and Mortimer Adler.

The syllabi from his “Introduction to Metaphysics” and his “Introduction to Epistemology” courses at Veritas International University in the 2008-2015 era required the following Thomistic textbooks:

  1. Thomas Aquinas, On Being and Essence (de ente et essentia)
  2. Étienne Gilson, Unity of Philosophical Experience (1937)
  3. Joseph Owens, An Elementary Christian Metaphysics (1963)
  4. Louis Regis, Epistemology (1959)
  5. Louis Regis, Thomas and Epistemology (1946)
  6. Norman Geisler Systematic Theology, Vol. 2 (2003, 2025)
  7. Baptista Mondin, The Principle of Analogy in Protestant and Catholic Theology (1963)
  8. Reginald Garrigou-LaGrange, God: His Existence and Nature (1934)
  9. Frederick Wilhelmsen, Man’s Knowledge of Reality (1959)

In the syllabus for his course on the History of Ancient and Medieval Philosophy at Veritas Evangelical Seminary, 2010, the list of required reading included several books by Aquinas and Thomistic authors:

  • Aristotle, Categories (all)
  • Aristotle, Metaphysics (Book 12)
  • Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles (Book I, chaps. 13-34).
  • Joseph Owen, History of Ancient Philosophy
  • Armand Maurer, History of Medieval Philosophy
  • Étienne Gilson, History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages
  • Copleston, History of Philosophy
  • After 2013, Norm added his own two-volume set on History of Western Philosophy

Molinism versus Thomism

Dr. Geisler saw the debate between Thomism and Molinism as a precursor to the Calvinism versus Arminianism debate. He may have held that the Thomism-vs-Molinism debate was of greater importance than the Calvinism-vs-Molinism debate. (Citation needed.) See Molinism.

The Metaphysical Argument and De Ente reasoning

quick summary ….

and redirect to How did Norm argue for God?]

Agnosticism, Analogy, Analogical Reasoning

[redirect to /analogy]

[This draft is being written by Christopher T. Haun, webmaster of normangeisler.com and director of Bastion Books. Some of this comes from memories of private conversations with Norm.]