What is the relationship between the gifts of the Holy Spirit and the action of grace? John Meinert’s The Love of God Poured Out enters into the major positions and debates within Thomism to forge a new synthesis on this topic within the greater body of scholarship existing today. Meinert reads Aquinas’s thought on the gifts of the Holy Spirit and grace in an integral and analogous way. Not only does The Love of God Poured Out aid scholars in understanding Aquinas’s thought on these two issues, it also once more clarifies the truth that the Holy Spirit and his gifts are neither a devout appendix to moral theology nor a pious nod to tradition. They are the heart and height of the moral life, a life lived subditus Deo.

About the author:

John Meinert, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Theology at Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady University in Baton Rouge, LA. He is the author of a moral theology textbook, Life in Christ, for Verbum Software (2016). His research has appeared in Nova et Vetera, The Angelicum, New Blackfriars, and Augustinian Studies.

Endorsements:

“Meinert stands squarely in the line of Pinckaers-influenced post-Vatican II Catholic moral theologians who deploy ressourcement Thomism to articulate the life of graced discipleship. The Love of God Poured Out is as technical and careful an inquiry as even the most ardent Thomist commentator could demand. Yet for all its command of Aquinas’s texts and his twentieth-century commentators, it rests on a very simple premise: We can better understand Aquinas’s thought on grace by attending to the gifts of the Holy Spirit and, conversely, we can better understand Thomas’s thought on the gifts of the Holy Spirit by turning to Thomas’s thought on grace.”

—William C. Mattison III, University of Notre Dame

“John Meinert argues convincingly that the Holy Spirit and his gifts are at the heart of Thomas Aquinas’s mature portrayal of the Christian life. Students of Aquinas often neglect the centrality of the gifts. Meinert’s book offers a timely corrective by showing how for Aquinas the gifts of the Holy Spirit are not the reserve of a chosen few, nor are they occasional aids that assist the Christian from time to time. Instead, for Thomas Aquinas, the gifts of the Holy Spirit render the Christian receptive to the Spirit’s animating action in all the events of daily life. Specialists will find Meinert’s book particularly helpful because he both details the different schools of Thomistic interpretation and draws on Aquinas’s treatise on grace to offer a convincing account of Thomas Aquinas’s mature theology.”

—Michael Sherwin, O.P., University of Fribourg

“In The Love of God Poured Out, John Meinert analyzes two very important concepts in Thomas Aquinas’s moral theology: grace and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. These topics have been vastly underappreciated and misunderstand in the past, and Meinert has all the scholarly skills that are necessary to both appreciate their important role in Aquinas’s thought and to understand them properly. He uses his excellent grasp of the deeper metaphysical issues, the Thomistic corpus as a whole (especially the biblical commentaries), and the secondary literature to show the centrality of grace and the Holy Spirit in the moral life. This profound and well-researched book will provide an excellent resource for those seeking a better understanding of Thomistic theology.”

—John Rziha, Benedictine College