Readers of Thomas Aquinas have long noted his interest in "wisdom." It is a term and theme that threads its way through the full range of his corpus, and it stands not only as a recurring area of focus but as an animating principle of his labors. In both its content and form, Aquinas's teaching is profoundly sapiential, yet the contours and underlying unity of its sapiential character—and its integral relation to his Christology—remain underexamined.

Christ the Wisdom of God in the Thought of Thomas Aquinas provides an in-depth account of this sapiential teaching, addressing its sources and methods and surfacing its presence across the entirety of his theological enterprise. For Aquinas, wisdom concerns the contemplation of divine things and the ordering of all else in that light. It is an intellectual perfection both speculative and practical, regarding God and what God has wisely ordained, and directing all that falls to its care to the attainment of God. Such wisdom is an essential characteristic of Christian life and theology, the contemplative ordering of which are themselves in imitation of the triune God, who enjoys perfect contemplation of himself and orders all things in their procession from him as origin and their return to him as end, accomplishing this through Christ, the incarnate Word.

This collection of original essays is offered in honor of Joseph Wawrykow, Professor Emeritus of Theology at the University of Notre Dame, who throughout his career has foregrounded attentiveness to wisdom and to the Christ-centered order God has established and revealed as a signature emphasis of Aquinas's teaching.