For Roman Catholics Thomas Aquinas is a doctor of the church. His teachings, therefore, have a timeless quality and his opinions are authoritative even in contemporary theological debate. In Protestant circles his works have slowly emerged from Reformation suspicions and now enjoy a well-deserved place of honor. However, some aspects of his teaching have been noticeably neglected. His extensive reflections on angels, for example, are not of interest to most theologians, Protestant or Catholic. More broadly, Thomas’s whole pneumatology seems neglected. Why? Perhaps because his highly rational approach to other doctrines appeals to modern sensibilities, whereas hierarchies of angels, prophecy, miracles and the like seem to belong to an earlier age. This series of blog entries will examine one aspect of Thomas’s pneumatology: his teaching on the charisms of the Holy Spirit, what he calls the gratuitous gifts. It is not a speculative or extraneous subject for Thomas. Rather, the charisms of the Holy Spirit are a component part of grace itself, an integral aspect of one of Christianity’s central doctrines. Thomas makes important contributions to the on-going theological understanding of grace. Above all he helps to rescue grace from unnecessary abstraction by personalizing it. For in Thomas’s thought there is a real sense in which grace is the Holy Spirit.
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