This paper offers a new reading and interpretation of Aquinas's doctrine of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. In the contemporary +omist literature on ethics, there is far more discussion-and a far more developed discussion-of the nature and role of a virtue-habitus than a gi5-habitus. Why might there be so little discussion of the giftss and their distinctive habitus? Is it because Aquinas devotes many more questions to the virtues than to the gifts s? Is it because the majority of self-professed +omist ethicists have not been taught the gifts, and are either unaware or have merely a notional awareness that the giftss have a principle of action distinct from and superior to that of the virtues?1 Regardless of the reason, this paper seeks to mitigate the current paucity of analysis of the gifts and the gifts-habitus. +is paper will discuss Aquinas's doctrine of the gi5s of the Holy Spirit from a resolutely gi5-centered perspective. I do so because discussions of the gi5s o5en presume a virtue-centered perspective. +at is, treatments of the gi5s typically interpret what Aquinas says about the gi5s through the lens of a pre-existing virtue framework, the gi5s then being made to 8t into that pre-existing framework. I will argue that we see this not only in interpretations of Aquinas on the gi5s, but also in English translations of the Summa theologiae [ST] on the question of the gi5
