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Books > Religion & Spirituality > Christianity > Orthodox Churches
Matthew Briel examines, for the first time, the appropriation and
modification of Thomas Aquinas's understanding of providence by
fifteenth-century Greek Orthodox theologian Gennadios Scholarios.
Briel investigates the intersection of Aquinas's theology, the
legacy of Greek patristic and later theological traditions, and the
use of Aristotle's philosophy by Latin and Greek Christian thinkers
in the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries. A Greek Thomist
reconsiders our current understanding of later Byzantine theology
by reconfiguring the construction of what constitutes "orthodoxy"
within a pro- or anti-Western paradigm. The fruit of this
appropriation of Aquinas enriches extant sources for historical and
contemporary assessments of Orthodox theology. Moreover,
Scholarios's grafting of Thomas onto the later Greek theological
tradition changes the account of grace and freedom in Thomistic
moral theology. The particular kind of Thomism that Scholarios
develops avoids the later vexing issues in the West of the de
auxiliis controversy by replacing the Augustinian theology of grace
with the highly developed Greek theological concept of synergy. A
Greek Thomist is perfect for students and scholars of Greek
Orthodoxy, Greek theological traditions, and the continued
influence of Thomas Aquinas.
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