Christian Classics publishes the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, and I find the disclaimer on the back cover interesting:
The Church believes today, as she believed from the first, that Thomism is an ark of salvation, capable of keeping minds afloat in the deluge of doctrine. She does not confuse it with faith, nor yet with knowledge in all its fullness, she knows that it is fallible, and that in respect of passing theories, it has shared the errors of different times, but she judges that its structure as a whole corresponds to the constitution of reality and of the intelligence, and she notes that both knowledge and faith converge on it, because it has taken up its position between them like a fortress at a meeting of the roads."Now, this Dominican says that the Summa has "shared the errors of different times" - I wish he'd said more words and given specific examples. Would it be obvious, when reading the Summa, what was simply an error of the time? Biological, historical, or theological?
-A.G. Sertillanges, O.P., The Intellectual Life
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