Introduction

This volume presents an application of the philosophical views of the medieval philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas to contemporary issues in bioethics. Though Aquinas lived and wrote in the thirteenth century, scholars continue to find merit and relevance in his ideas. Several distinct movements of “Thomism” throughout the twentieth century bear witness to Aquinas’s enduring influence in both philosophy and theology. For Aquinas, these disciplines are not in fundamental conflict with one another, as some scholars in both Aquinas’s time and even today contend. Aquinas was open to the results of pure rational inquiry and did not perceive such inquiry to be a threat to his Christian faith.