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

Wawrykow, I suggest in chapter 2 that Thomas presents all of sacred doctrine as
“Corinthian” in character, in terms of the volume of citations from I and II Corinthians
(already in ST I 1), and in terms of Thomas’s concern to press with and after St Paul
upon the making of disciples who have learned what it means to follow the crucified
Word of wisdom, a word that by definition seems foolish to the watching world, “but to
us who are being saved it is the power of God” (I Cor 1.18). Here especially, I mark
Thomas’s debts to Augustine and Pseudo-Dionysius, both of whom order their thought
(across a number of works) after a similarly Pauline pattern. Thomas’s system is in large
part a reading and rendering of these forbears to the end of developing with them a
science of crucified wisdom after the mold of the incarnate Christ, spoken by the Father
in the love of the Spirit.
This is no more true in any single locus of theology than the sacraments, and on
this account my argument is from the beginning aimed especially at understanding their
place and purpose in the Summa. That Thomas takes the sacraments to be the subject
matter of I Corinthians—since Paul begins the letter with reference to Baptism, comes to
questions of matrimony several chapters later, and finally, at chapter 10 and following,
reflects at length on the Eucharist—provides a useful opening that I argue should shape
any evaluation of the aims of the Summa. The significance of Thomas’s appropriation of
Dionysius in question 1, for instance—who, after Paul, commends wisdom as both “study
and suffering of divine things” 64 —should be interpreted in the light of the sacramental
curriculum of I Corinthians. And Thomas’s shaping of the entirety of ST I 1 after the
64 ST I 1, 6 ad 3.
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