St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) is a Doctor of the church. He was an Italian Dominican friar and Roman Catholic priest who was an influential philosopher, theologian, and jurist in the tradition of scholasticism. Canonized in 1323 by Pope John XXII, Aquinas was the foremost classical proponent of natural theology and the father of Thomism.Mark D. Jordan is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Christian Thought and Professor of Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality (Faculty of Arts and Sciences) at Harvard's Divinity School. Jordan won the annual Randy Shilts Award for nonfiction for his 2011 book, Recruiting Young Love: How Christians Talk about Homosexuality.

"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." —Review of Metaphysics"Jordan's translation of the treatise on faith meets an important need. . . . The notes and index of authoritative sources . . . help the student appreciate how much Aquinas depended on his theological and cultural forerunners. [Jordan's] brief introduction to each 'key authority': Scripture, Augustine, Pseudo-Dionysius, Gregory the Great . . . provides the essentials which a beginner in medieval studies requires to read Aquinas's own text intelligently. . . . Those who teach the theological virtues will welcome this volume as a textbook for classroom use." —The Thomist