SOURCE: "Faith as Knowledge, Faith as Belief: Calvin vs. Aquinas" in Aquinas, Calvin, and Contemporary Protestant Thought, Christian University Press, 1985, pp. 1-20.

In the following excerpt, Vos contends that the seemingly diametrical differences between Calvin's and Aquinas's positions on the nature of faith are not substantive but the result of ambiguous terminology.

Among Protestants today Thomas Aquinas is best known for his natural theology, specifically the famous Five Ways found in the second question of the Summa Theologiae. Indeed, for many Protestants this is the only part of Aquinas's writings known with a firsthand acquaintance. By contrast, they know little of his much more extensive discussions of faith, despite the fact that this discussion is at least as, if not more, essential to his position. Two factors have contributed to this imbalance.

On the one hand, treatments of Aquinas's writings have traditionally given his proofs for God's existence...