SACRAMENTS OF THE INCARNATE WORD - ETD - University of ...

finally, the words of commentary or elaboration upon Scripture, by the Church or in the
discipline of theology, represent a fourth stage in the cascade of language, the words
“which are said of that Word” that are “in a certain manner accommodated to other
words, according to their own mode.” 7
It is the principal contention of the present study that the whole of the Summa
theologiae may be read as an organization of and contribution to the foregoing fountain
of living language in its several stages, to the end of encouraging beginning students in
theology to learn about and experience God. 8
ST I 1 frames the argument of the whole: that Christian doctrine comprehends
intellectual and affective aspects because both are necessary for human salvation (ch. 2).
For this reason, the anthropology of the prima pars—human beings as bearers of the
image of God—is founded in a trinitarian theology of the Word spoken by the Father in
perpetuum vigorem. Ps 118.89: in aeternum, domine, verbum tuum permanet in caelo. Jn 5.26: sicut enim
pater habet vitam in semetipso, sic dedit et filio vitam habere in semetipso. Vel potest referri ad humanam
naturam. Est enim vivus, licet ab aliis reputetur mortuus, quia cum resurrexit, iam non moritur. Rev 1.18:
fui mortuus, et ecce sum vivens in saecula saeculorum. Similiter etiam sermo Scripturae est vivus et
indeficiens. Rom 9.6: non autem quod exciderit verbum Dei.”
7 Ibid., in a sentence immediately preceding the text quoted in the previous note: “Et illa, quae
dicuntur de illo verbo, quodammodo aptantur ad alia verba, secundum suum modum.”
8 On the intended audience of the Summa, I follow Leonard E. Boyle, “The Setting of the Summa
Theologiae of Saint Thomas” (1982), repub. in idem., Facing History: A Different Thomas Aquinas, with
an Introduction by J.-P. Torrell (Textes et études du moyen âge 13; Louvain-La-Neuve, 2000), and
appropriations of Boyle by Mark D. Jordan and Joseph Wawrykow. See Jordan, “The Summa of Theology
as Moral Formation,” Rewritten Theology: Aquinas after His Readers (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), pp. 118
and 120, and Wawrykow, “Wisdom in the Christology of Thomas Aquinas,” Christ among the Medieval
Dominicans: Representations of Christ in the Texts and Images of the Order of Preachers, ed. Kent Emery,
Jr. and Joseph Wawrykow (Notre Dame: UNDP, 1998), pp. 177, 180, and 192 note 7. For a different view
of the intended audiences of the Summa, namely, “a student pursuing a degree in theology, ...one aspiring
to be a Magister in sacra pagina, or... someone at a comparable level,” see John I. Jenkins, Knowledge and
Faith in Thomas Aquinas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 79-97; quoting from p. 87.
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