Lives of Great Religious Books

A Biography

Bernard McGinn

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781400850068
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: History of Religion

The life and times of the most important theological work of medieval Christendom This concise book tells the story of the most important theological work of the Middle Ages, the vast Summa theologiae of Thomas Aquinas, which holds a unique place in Western religion and philosophy. Written between 1266 and 1273, the Summa was conceived by Aquinas as an instructional guide for teachers and novices and a compendium of all the approved teachings of the Catholic Church. It synthesizes an astonishing range of scholarship, covering hundreds of topics and containing more than a million and a half words—and was still unfinished at the time of Aquinas's death.Here, Bernard McGinn, one of today's most acclaimed scholars of medieval Christianity, vividly describes the world that shaped Aquinas, then turns to the Dominican friar's life and career, examining Aquinas's reasons for writing his masterpiece, its subject matter, and the novel way he organized it. McGinn gives readers a brief tour of the Summa itself, and then discusses its reception over the past seven hundred years. He looks at the influence of the Summa on such giants of medieval Christendom as Meister Eckhart, its ridicule during the Enlightenment, the rise and fall of Neothomism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the role of the Summa in the post–Vatican II church, and the book's enduring relevance today.Tracing the remarkable life of this iconic work, McGinn's wide-ranging account provides insight into Aquinas's own understanding of the Summa as a communication of the theological wisdom that has been given to humanity in revelation.

The World That Made Thomas Aquinas

CHAPTER 1

The intimate relation between culture and religion in the Middle Ages is helpful for understanding Thomas Aquinas. As Bernard Lonergan once put it, “Besides being a theologian and a philosopher St. Thomas was a man of his time meeting the challenge of his time. What he was concerned to do may be considered as a theological or philosophical synthesis but, if considered more concretely, it turns out to be a mighty contribution towards the medieval cultural synthesis.”¹ In order to comprehend the significance of Thomas’s synthesis, it is helpful to consider three contexts that formed Thomas’s life and work: first, the papal reordering of Western medieval Christianity; second, the rise of the university and scholastic theology; and third, the birth of the mendicant religious life, including the Dominican Order to which Thomas belonged.

In early medieval Latin Christianity the bishops of Rome often had little influence over what went on in other parts of Europe. Popes, bishops, and priests were mostly under the control of lay lords, especially the Carolingian and German emperors. In the mid-eleventh century, however, a group devoted to reforming Christian society emerged in Rome, one whose adherents not only argued for freeing ecclesiastics from lay control, but also held that the pope, not the emperor or any layman, had ultimate authority over Christian society. These reformers, of whom the most forceful was Pope Gregory VII (r. 1073–85), set out an agenda for the cleansing of church and society that led to ideological clashes and even armed conflict between the emperors and their followers and Gregory and his adherents. As is often the case with revolutionary movements, several decades of turmoil eventually led to a compromise based on a clearer distinction between what belonged to Caesar and what belonged to God. The Gregorian Reform, by freeing the papacy from lay control, helped spur important advances in the legal, financial, and administrative machinery of the pope and his court. The growth of papal government in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was not only a material reality, but also a symbolic triumph as the popes came to be seen as the direct masters of Western ecclesiastical structures and the arbiters of Western religious beliefs and values. The Gregorian Reform emphasized the separation between the clergy and the laity, while encouraging efforts to support more effective education of priests. Precisely how much authority the popes had in what today we would call political decisions remained a contentious issue; subsequent conflicts between popes and lay rulers disturbed Europe throughout the later Middle Ages. Nevertheless, no good Christian in Thomas’s time doubted the pope’s supremacy over the church, and Thomas and his fellow Dominicans were among the papacy’s most loyal supporters.

The emergence of the medieval university and its distinctive style of theology, that is, scholastic theology, are also important for grasping Thomas Aquinas’s intellectual world. Scholasticism, understood in the broad sense as a structured, “rationalized” interpretation of religious belief, was integrally related to the growth of the university as the distinctive institution for higher learning between the late eleventh and the early thirteenth centuries. The eleventh century witnessed the beginnings of a revival in both the monastic and the episcopal schools that had experienced serious decline in the ninth and tenth centuries. The French monastery of Bec, under the leadership of Lanfranc (d. 1089) and Anselm (d. 1109), both later archbishops of Canterbury, became a center of advanced theology. Episcopal schools in Germany (e.g., Cologne) and especially in France (e.g., Chartres, Laon, Paris) acquired reputations as effective places for the education of the clergy. By the mid-twelfth century the episcopal schools of northern France had begun to acquire an organization showing much similarity to modern universities, including structures of administration, basic curricula of teaching, and the employment of famous “masters” (magistri) who could attract students on an international level. The stages in the development of the schools in Paris (there were several in the twelfth century) into the full-fledged university which emerged between about 1150 and 1215 are not fully clear, but by the time Thomas Aquinas went to study there in 1245, the university had been flourishing for about a half century.²

Many disciplines were taught in the medieval universities, but theology was the highest, “the queen of the sciences,” as some put it.³ This was certainly the case at Paris. But what exactly was the scholastic theology of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries? Scholastic theology is a particular way of thinking about belief, done in a special location, the formal setting of the university and the lower theological institutions that prepared students for the university. In other words, scholastic theology is distinguished primarily by a method or approach, as well as by a style of teaching.⁴ We should not think of the scholastic method as uniform and rigid. Different modes of argumentation—expositive, deductive, inductive, axiomatic, analogical, and more—were all employed by the scholastic masters. These masters used the same materials (the Bible, the Fathers of the church, the councils, papal decrees, etc.); they employed logical modes of argument based directly or indirectly on Aristotle; and they argued to new conclusions. Nevertheless, their ways of arguing and the conclusions they reached were often diverse, so we cannot summarize scholastic theology according to any particular set of teachings, or to a single system of thought. We should rather see it as a rationalized system of ways of appropriating Christian faith in an organized academic setting.

The scholastic theologians were professional educators and rigorous scientists in their pursuit of an understanding of belief. In line with the search for order and logical clarity that marked twelfth- and thirteenth-century society in general, they strove to organize the diversity of patristic theology (the thought of the Christian Fathers of East and West), with its inconsistencies, contradictions, and unsolved problems, into a coherent and teachable model that would not only educate the clergy and instruct the faithful, but also rebut attacks on Christianity both from without (Jewish and Arabic thought) and from within (i.e., heresy). The schoolmen were convinced that there was a reasonableness to faith, albeit they saw this in different ways. In this sense, there was a common purpose to the scholastic endeavor, despite the differences among its practitioners.

The scholastic masters based their curriculum on the Bible, but as taught in formal courses that demanded organized tools for scriptural study and using methods that subjected the text to philological and logical investigation. The earliest great textbook of the medieval schools, composed by different authors in the first half of the twelfth century, was the Ordinary Gloss (Glossa ordinaria), an immense running commentary on the entire Bible culled from the Fathers, especially Augustine. Glossing, or explaining, the Bible by citing authorities was not new, but the academic context of the professional classroom demanded a new and more extensive kind of textbook. Classroom study of the Bible produced a more positive sense of the importance of the literal meaning of the text, though not to the detriment of spiritual readings.⁵

Education in the schools was based on reading and explaining the text (lectio), both of the Bible and of a variety of other textbooks. What was essential to scholasticism, however, was the second academic operation: the quaestio, that is, asking what the issues revealed in the texts meant. Aristotle had said that questioning was the essential operation of the human mind, a passage often quoted by the schoolmen. Setting the “question” was a complex endeavor, involving not only attempting to know what could be known about the truths of faith, but also discerning the limits of reason in investigating belief. In studying the Bible and Christian tradition, scholastic teachers encountered a mass of “authorities” (auctoritates), that is, positions argued by the early church Fathers and found in ecclesiastical texts. These authorities often seemed to be (or actually were) in conflict, but the need to order church and society sought to bring coherence out of differing viewpoints. Legal scholars led the way at the end of the eleventh century in pursuing a “concord of discordant views,” and the early twelfth-century theologians soon followed their example. The first task in working toward the solution of discordant positions was to create textbooks that would gather and organize the data of Christian teaching (often called Books of Sentences, that is, compilations of statements of doctrine); the second was to establish principles and procedures that would allow teachers to identify solutions in cases where authorities disagreed. An early example of this was Peter Abelard’s Yes and No (Sic et non), composed about 1122, in which he says, “It is by doubting that we come to investigation, and by investigating that we attain truth” (Prologue). The quest for solutions to inherited problems centered on the nature of the quaestio. By the mid-twelfth century, one of the masters of this era, Gilbert of Poitiers, put the issue this way: “Not every contradiction makes a question … , but where both sides appear to have valid arguments, there you have a question” (Commentary on Boethius’s “De Trinitate”).

By this time scholastic masters were producing works of linked quaestiones on difficult biblical texts or knotty theological issues. The evolution of the quaestio was furthered by a variety of factors, especially greater accessibility to Aristotle’s logical works (the “Old Logic” had been known for centuries, but the “New Logic” of the Analytics, Topics, and Sophistics was translated ca. 1120–50). Aristotle was not only the master of logic, but also a philosopher who wrote on every aspect of philosophical learning. Scholastic hunger for access to the full Aristotle led to several waves of translations of his corpus between circa 1190 and 1260, a development that had a great impact on Thomas Aquinas.⁶ Late in the twelfth century the academic evolution of setting and solving questions evolved into formal “disputations” (disputationes), public events where a master and his pupils would debate various aspects of a problem and set forth their solution. In the thirteenth century such disputations became a regular part of every master’s job description.

New modes of investigating faith were only half the story. Rational differentiation of teaching operations and new methods of analysis called out for better models of organizing what had been found. How could the masters of the schools summarize this rapidly expanding knowledge for the students who were expected to convey it to the church in preaching? The drive for systematization led to the creation of textbooks and surveys of theology. The theological textbooks of the twelfth century, however much they used new methods of arguing, looked to the patristic past for their organizing principles, thus showing the continuity of Western theology. Augustine dominated early scholastic efforts at creating textbooks. The most successful textbook was produced about 1140 by Peter Lombard, a Paris master and later bishop of the city. Titled The Books of Sentences (Libri sententiarum), it consisted of four books of theological passages culled from the Fathers with discussions and explanations, arranged according to the Augustinian model (found in On Christian Teaching) of the difference between things and signs and between use and enjoyment. Some of the Lombard’s early followers toyed with his structure, occasionally anticipating aspects of the ordering procedures found in Thomas’s Summa theologiae, but these minor adjustments do not seem to have been a factor in Thomas’s break with the Lombard’s model. By the 1220s the Lombard’s Sentences had become the dominant theological textbook—a position it maintained for almost three hundred years.

One popular way of describing the scholastic enterprise, “distinguish in order to unite,” raises the question, “Unite for what purpose?” What was the ultimate aim of the new carefully articulated form of theology? Some monks, like Bernard of Clairvaux, criticized masters such as Abelard for seeking knowledge only for the sake of knowledge, but the majority of the scholastics insisted that deeper understanding of faith was intended to foster the spiritual life, both of individuals and of the church as a community. This meant that theology had to be not only taught, but also preached. The Paris master Peter Cantor (d. 1197) summarized the different aspects of scholastic teaching as follows: “Learning sacred scripture consists of three things: reading, disputing, and preaching. … Reading (lectio) is the foundation as it were and basis for what follows. … Disputation (disputatio) is like the wall in this work and edifice, because nothing is fully understood or faithfully proclaimed unless it has first been broken up with the tooth of disputation. Preaching (praedicatio), which these serve, is like the roof that covers the faithful from the heat and storm of vices. Thus, you should preach only after, not before, the reading of sacred scripture and the questioning of doubtful matters through disputation” (The Abbreviated Word, chap. 1). Calls for the renewal of preaching grew toward the end of the twelfth century, partly in response to the threat offered the medieval church by heresy, especially dualist heretics called Cathars or Manichaeans. The need for sound doctrinal preaching against heresy was an important factor in the foundation of the Dominican Order, the third context for Thomas Aquinas’s life and work.

The Dominicans were part of the religious groundswell of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries that sought to find more effective ways of living the vita apostolica, the “apostolic life” of Christ and the first disciples. Medieval monks had seen themselves as following the apostolic life, taking the image of the Jerusalem community described in Acts 4:32 as their model; but the spiritual strivings of nonmonastics that began in the early twelfth century viewed the apostolic life according to the picture of the apostles presented in Luke 10 and similar texts—those who went forth in poverty to preach the Gospel and convert the world. There were many apostolic poverty groups in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Some led to the formation of new religious orders that gained papal approval, such as the Franciscans and Dominicans; others, after promising beginnings, came to be condemned as heretical. The reasons for success and failure are not always easy to determine and often seem due to historical accidents or personality clashes.

Francis of Assisi (ca. 1181–1226), born into a mercantile family, experienced a conversion about 1205 and turned to a life of penance, poverty, and service to the poor, especially lepers. Francis’s model of apostolic service proved attractive. By 1208 he and a few companions began to form a “brotherhood” of those devoted to poverty, and about 1209 they went to Rome to gain papal approval and the “license to preach everywhere,” although their preaching was a matter of moral exhortation and preaching by example. Their new “mendicant,” or begging, life expanded rapidly. Francis’s contemporary, the Spaniard Dominic Guzman (ca. 1174–1221), took a different path in his founding of the Dominican Order of mendicants.⁷ After his ordination, Dominic joined a group around the bishop of Osma in Spain who were reviving the canonical life (i.e., priests living in a monastic way). He and his bishop traveled to France on embassies in 1203–5 and became involved in preaching against the dualist heretics. They became convinced that only itinerant preaching by priests practicing apostolic poverty could counter this danger to the church. Dominic dedicated himself to this work and by 1215 was put in charge of a group of priest-preachers in Toulouse. This “Order of Preachers” (ordo praedicatorum) received papal approval between 1216 and 1218. Dominic, a superb organizer, traveled widely to attract followers. From the beginning, the Dominicans were meant to receive the best theological education to foster their preaching mission, so it is no surprise that as early as 1217 Dominic established a house at Paris connected with the university. An insight into the preaching charism of the Dominicans can be found in the Treatise on the Formation of Preachers written by Humbert of Romans (d. 1277), the fifth Master General of the order. Reflecting on the relation of study and preaching, Humbert says, “Though the gift of preaching is surely had by God’s gift, a sensible preacher still ought to do what he can to ensure that his preaching is commendable by carefully studying what he has to preach.”⁸ Thomas Aquinas fully agreed.

Creating the Summa theologiae

CHAPTER 2

The Life of Thomas Aquinas

We know a fair amount about the life of Thomas, and several good biographies have appeared over the past half century.¹ While we have considerable information about the details of Thomas’s career, given the objective character of his writings, we have almost nothing from him that reveals his inner reflections and feelings. We also need to note that many of the stories about him come from the materials put together for his canonization process,² and since hagiography has a different purpose from biography, these need to be ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. The World That Made Thomas Aquinas
• Chapter 2. Creating the Summa theologiae
• Chapter 3. A Tour of the Summa theologiae
• Chapter 4. The Tides of Thomism, 1275–1850
• Chapter 5. The Rise and Fall of Neothomism
• Epilogue
• Abbreviations for Thomas’s Works
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Indexes