In contrast to a truncated Thomism that rightly became an object of polemical attack by Reformation thought, [this essay--"Gratia Præsupponit Naturam {Grace Presupposes Nature}: Reflections on the Meaning and Limits of a Scholastic Axiom"--] attempts to call to mind again that other side of Scholasticism which is perhaps best characterized by the name of Bonaventure. Of course it also tries to defend the right of "nature" in faith against Barth's one-sidedness. Today, at some remove from the battle lines drawn then [having been written around ten years previous for the Festschrift in honor of Gottlieb Söhngen's seventieth birthday in 1962], I would emphasize this aspect [the ontological dimension] even more clearly: Since Thomas can no longer be presupposed, he should now be discussed as a contrast to Bonaventure.
Footnote: In this connection I would like to refer the reader to the recently completed dissertation by my student Michael Marmann, Gratia præsupponit naturam, a penetrating study, by means of a contrast between Augustine and Thomas, of the indispensable contribution of Saint Thomas to this question.
Dogma and Preaching, Joseph Ratzinger, San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2011, 143.
Plinthos: This line by Ratzinger expresses perfectly what I felt throughout my seminary training in the 1990's every time the seminary professors, I thought wrongly, presumed that the students had a clear foundation in Thomist metaphysics, twenty years after Ratzinger wrote these words, something which could in no way any longer be presupposed!
There's a new epistemology, but the new epistemology must be well grounded in the old metaphysics at least in its total reliance on the reality of God, of man and of the world: viz., creation with all of its relations must continue to be the bedrock for all of knowledge. That is reality! Without reality and the impinging responsibilities it entails, the new epistemology becomes, at best, a dream of selfish willfulness, and often devolves into a nightmare: e.g. abortion, the terrorism of spontaneous massacres, gaydom.
Cf. Christian Civilization Urgently Needs to Revive and Redevelop the Doctrines of Creation, Metaphysics and Eschatology; and,
Apathy is a Daughter of Indifferentism, Two Different Sins Which Destroy Man and Society.