Can a Protestant read Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologiae without converting to Catholicism? Nadya Williams welcomes Miles Smith IV (Hillsdale College) to take up the question currently churning on social media. Miles argues yes — and that the more interesting question lies upstream: what do Christians do with Aristotle? Along the way, they consider the Summa's 13th-century context, its reception alongside Dante and through the Black Death, the Socratic shape of Aquinas's method, and why certain books (the Summa, Willa Cather's My Ántonia, Lewis's Till We Have Faces) break us open while others simply don't.

—

Christians Reading Classics is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member today at http://mereorthodoxy.com/membership.

Apply for fall 2026 admission to Beeson Divinity School's MDiv (or M.Div., your choice) and be considered for a full-tuition scholarship.: https://bit.ly/OurRisenLord

—

• 00:00 - Aquinas's Prologue and Welcome
• 02:18 - Introducing Miles Smith IV
• 03:11 - What Makes a Classic?
• 04:18 - Reading Aquinas as a Protestant
• 08:34 - The Social Media Debate Behind This Episode
• 09:26 - Who Was Thomas Aquinas?
• 11:46 - Reason, Revelation, and What Evangelicals Already Assume
• 12:47 - The Aristotle Question
• 15:20 - Virtue, Flourishing, and the Knowledge of God
• 18:04 - How to Begin Reading the Summa
• 20:52 - The Socratic Method and Aquinas's Contemporaries
• 24:25 - The Summa, Dante, and the Black Death
• 29:02 - Theology, Philosophy, and Devotion
• 31:03 - Books That Break Us (and Till We Have Faces)
• 33:10 - The Classic Miles Wishes He Had Written