Unum Necessarium: Gerald Vann's Unifying Thomistic Vision

Abstract

AbstractWe note how Gerald Vann's pastoral context fired his concerns, and examine part of his output, especially his Lectorate thesis, Saint Thomas Aquinas, The Divine Pity, and The Son's Course. He popularised insights drawn from Aquinas and Neo-Thomists, developed in conversation with his brethren, while critically welcoming other traditions and modern culture. He rooted creative thought in Thomist doctrine, and offered Aquinas's vision as an answer to prevalent forms of disintegration. Some of his ideas and expressions are ‘of their time’; his urging an ever fresh contemplation of Christ, and his approach to the Gospel ‘paradox’ of renouncing all things for God's sake, while sharing God's love for creatures, are recognized as a powerful statement of recurring Christian themes. Vann was ahead of his time in sharing widely the distinctively Thomist account of the Spirit's role in guiding our pilgrimage, working unity, and divinizing our perceptions through his Seven Gifts. In this Vann was faithful to the Thomist vision he developed in his formal studies, of the eternal Processions of the Divine Wisdom and the Holy Spirit lying behind the coming of creatures from God and, more excitingly still, lying behind our return to our Triune Archetype.