Bernard McGinn, Thomas Aquinas’s “Summa theologiae”: A Biography (Lives of Great Religious Books) (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014), xi + 260 Pps., $24.99.
Bernard McGinn is the Naomi Shenstone Donnelley Professor Emeritus of Historical Theology and the History of Christianity at the University of Chicago Divinity School. His many books include Antichrist: Two Thousand Years of the Human Fascination with Evil (Harpercollins, 1994) and multiple titles upon the history of Western Christian mysticism. In this concise book, McGinn tells the story of the most important theological work of the Middle Ages, the Summa theologiae (ST) of Thomas Aquinas. The ST holds a unique place in Western religion and philosophy; written between 1266 and 1273, it was conceived by Aquinas as an instructional guide for teachers as well as a compendium of the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. No matter what type of theology one decides to pursue in life, there is no avoiding Aquinas. From the perspective of religious thought, the ST has a unique place, in terms of both its profundity and its influence.
This text is a biography of the ST, introducing its intellectual gestation in the mind of Aquinas, and some of its later impacts on history. The account is forthrightly selective and personal – one scholar’s attempt to present what an interested and curious reader might want to know about the ST and its reception. McGinn has been guided by something that was dear to what Aquinas was attempting to do in the ST – what he called sapientia, that is, wisdom. The wisdom found in revelation and the wisdom that is the gift of the Spirit go beyond any wisdom we can acquire by our pursuits – they are what Aquinas calls “supernatural gifts.” They come from God, and are integral in our return to God, meaning that they are salvific. For Aquinas, there is a cycle of wisdom, a circular process of emanation and return to God, following the circular model of the creation and return of the universe to God. This cycle, McGinn asserts, is written into the very fabric of the ST.
McGinn contends that in order to comprehend the significance of Aquinas’s synthesis of theology and philosophy in the ST, it is helpful to consider three contexts that formed his life and work: the papal reordering of Western medieval Christianity, the rise of both the university and scholastic theology, and the birth of the mendicant religious life, which included the religious order of Dominicans to which he belonged. McGinn notes that Aquinas absorbed much from both Aristotle and the Neoplatonists, but he would not have been happy being considered as either an Aristotelian or a Neoplatonist. In its original form, McGinn notes, the ST’s three parts consisted of no fewer than 2,668 articles, or mini-disputations. Each of these mini-disputations follows a standard form: 1) posing the question to be examined; 2) giving a series of arguments against the answer that Aquinas intends to support; 3) citing an authoritative text as the proof of the position to be taken; 4) arguing for his own position in the body of the article; and 5) answering the objections one by one.
Importantly, McGinn asserts that Aquinas was one of the few scholars of his era who insisted that sacra doctrina was a real scientia in the Aristotelian sense. For Aristotle, scientia is sure knowledge through causes, best demonstrated by rigorously deductive disciplines like mathematics. Aquinas claims that sacra doctrina meets the essential requirements of Aristotelian scientia in that it argues from principles revealed by God, shows the causal relationships between revealed doctrines, and demonstrates new conclusions. After discussing sacra doctrina in article 1, the Prima Pars begins with Aquinas’s teaching about God. This section, notably, includes probably the most read section of Aquinas’s ST: that is, the “five ways.” McGinn asserts that the Secunda Pars, despite its length, has a symphonic consistency, featuring as its theme how humans move toward or away from God through habits or actions. McGinn contends that the first five questions of the Prima Secundae are the key for all that comes after, as Aquinas herein analyzes happiness as the goal of human freedom. The Secundae Secundae, McGinn notes, targets human acts insofar as they are salvific, that is, those that proceed from grace as their primary cause. Within the Tertia Pars, Aquinas focuses upon Christ – as an in-depth treatment of Christ is necessary for the consummation of the whole work of theology.
In sum, Bernard McGinn herein vividly describes the world that shaped Aquinas, explicates the Dominican friar’s life, examines Aquinas’s reasons for writing the ST, explores the subject matter of the ST, and explains the way he organized it. McGinn then discusses its reception over the past seven hundred years. In so doing, he looks at the influence of the ST on the theological giants of medieval Christendom, the ridicule it endured during the Enlightenment, the rise and fall of Neothomism in the nineteenth century, its role in the post-Vatican II church, and its enduring relevance today. Highly recommended to all comers.
Bradford McCall
Holy Apostles College and Seminary