About Aquinas: St Thomas Aquinas lived from 1224/5 to 1274, mostly in his native Italy but for a time in France. He was the greatest of the medieval philosopher/theologians, and one of the most important of all Western thinkers. His most famous books are the two summaries of his teachings, the Summa contra gentiles and the Summa theologiae. About this book: Norman Kretzmann expounds and criticizes Aquinas's natural theology of creation, which is 'natural' (or philosophical) in virtue of Aquinas's having developed it without depending on the data of Scripture. The Metaphysics of Creation is a continuation of the project Kretzmann began in The Metaphysics of Theism, moving the focus from the first to the second book of Aquinas's Summa contra gentiles. Here we find Aquinas building upon his account of the existence and nature of God, arguing that the existence of things other than God must be explained by divine creation out of nothing. He develops arguments to identify God's motivation for creating, to defend the possibility of a beginningless created universe, and to explain the origin of species. He then focuses exclusively on creatures with intellects, with the result that more than half of his natural theology of creation constitutes a philosophy of mind. Kretzmann gives a masterful guide through all these arguments. As before, he not only expounds Aquinas's natural theology, but advocates it as the best historical instance available to us.

Kretzmann's lucid analysis of the arguments, and his patient teasing out of their difficult steps, is a service to the learned world, both theological and philosophical. * Anthony Kenny, Times Literary Supplement *
Kretzmann's presentation of this argument is more plausible than any other argument for God's existence of which I am aware. * Anthony Kenny, Times Literary Supplement *
significant ... Throughout, critical remarks and illuminating footnotes abound. * Desmond Paul Henry, British Journal for the History of Philosophy *

Norman Kretzmann, Sage Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Cornell Univerisity, New York, completed this book at the beginning of 1998, and died in the summer of that year. He taught philosophy at Cornell for more than thirty years, and also held appointments at Bryn Mawr College, Ohio State University, and the University of Illinois, and visiting positions at Wayne State University and the Universities of Minnesota, Arizona, and Oxford. This is the follow-up to Professor Kretzmann's 1997 Clarendon Press volume The Metaphysics of Theism: Aquinas's Natural Theology in Summa contra gentiles I. He also published scholarly editions of various medieval texts (by William of Sherwood, William of Ockham, Paul of Venice, and Richard Kilvington), many learned articles and essays, and a number of edited collections. He was the principal editor of The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy (1982), and co-editor with Eleonore Stump of The Cambridge Companion to Aquinas (1993).