Abstract

For two principal reasons, this is a welcome translation of Thomas Aquinas's treatment of faith. First, it is one of the very few English translations of Aquinas that has heeded Aquinas's own sage advice on translating--preserve the sense of the original but adapt its style to suit the language into which it is being translated. Most anglophone translators make Aquinas appear as if he concocted a highly technical language to impress his brother Dominicans. Jordan, on the other hand, rightly understands that while Aquinas uses words and phrases in very precise ways, he never does so at the expense of their common, ordinary meanings. In fact, Aquinas's precise language is unintelligible without its being seen as rooted in ordinary language and naturally developed through the philosophical and theological traditions he inherited. Thus, by avoiding the obscure Latinate English that plagues other translations and, instead, rendering Thomas into felicitous English with due attention to the sources, Jordan's translation well reflects the accessibility of the original.