La sapienza è amicizia nella Summa theologica di Tommaso d’Aquino by Wojiech Janusiewicz (review)

504 BOOK REVIEWS La sapienza è amicizia nella Summa theologica di Tommaso d'Aquino. By WOJIECH JANUSIEWICZ. Rome: Città Nuova, 2012. Pp. 346. 19€ (paper). ISBN: 978-88-311-4814-6. This rich and suggestive (though somewhat repetitive) study originated as a doctoral dissertation defended at the Pontifical Lateran University under the direction of noted Italian theologian Piero Coda. The presentation unfolds in three parts. The first treats “The Sources of Thomas’s Thought on Friendship.” The second traces Thomas’s discussion of love and, in particular, the love that is friendship. Here the author makes the cogent case that Thomas draws upon the approaches of Plato and especially Aristotle, while transforming their views in the light of biblical revelation. Thus Platonic eros is repositioned in light of God’s elective and prevenient grace while Aristotle’s philia is transformed by the audacious Good News of God’s call to friendship in Christ. As Janusiewicz affirms early in his study (and by way of anticipation of his conclusion): “Friendship, founded upon the communication of divine mysteries in Christ, not only represents one of the themes of the Summa Theologiae, it is the Summa’s methodological principle and architectonic” (30). In this quotation we find adumbrated what will be developed at length in the third part of the study: “Love as Friendship and the Architecture [L’Architettura] of the Summa Theologiae.” The author provides a careful analysis of various proposals regarding the Summa’s structure, from Chenu and Congar to Persson and Patfoort. He then offers his own synthetic proposal which takes as its hermeneutic key question 26, article 3 of the Prima secundae, which he goes so far as to call the “Summissima Summae” (272). He draws upon the distinctions Thomas presents there between dilectio, caritas, amor, and amicitia and correlates them, respectively, to the Prima pars, the Tertia pars, the Prima secundae, and the Secunda secundae. Whether the case the author makes is a cogent one I leave to the judgment of Thomistic specialists. What I myself find appealing and convincing is his distinctly Christological reading of the Summa. Not only does he insist that the Summa is a work of theology, whose teaching is presented in the light of revelation; he further stipulates that God’s revelation is Christomorphic. Jesus Christ is both the fulfillment and the recapitulation of all God’s dealings with humanity. Grace, which God abundantly bestows on his creation, is ever the grace of Christ, the grace of filiation. Thus the entire Summa must be read in the full light of the Tertia pars. An interesting intimation of this thesis is provided by the conclusions to the Prima pars and the Secunda secundae. Each concludes with “Amen.” But the “Amen” itself follows upon a Christological doxology: [Jesus Christus, Dominus noster] “qui est super omnia benedictus Deus in saecula.” Such an ending is not a pious decoration affixed to the structure, but stands as revelatory of the scope and thrust of Thomas’s entire work. BOOK REVIEWS 505 Janusiewicz casts a wide net in a laudable attempt to present Jesus Christ as the fulfillment of all God’s promises. He probes the biblical and patristic sources that Thomas drew upon, as well as the Greek philosophers with whom he was directly or indirectly in dialogue. He goes even further and examines extant Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and Indic literature, seeking traces of ancient man’s quest for salvation and immortality. In so doing he even seems to posit some direct acquaintance with these texts on the part of early patristic authors and, through them, on the part of Thomas. Though the suggestion is intriguing, I do not see that the author provides adequate support for his proposal. Nonetheless, his passionate search for seeds of Wisdom in ancient literature as propaedeutic to the gospel is welcome. Alongside this stress upon continuity and fulfillment, one finds equal insistence upon transformation and the Christian novum. Here, for example, is how Janusiewicz describes Thomas’s ecclesiology: “the Church coincides with the new humanity, inaugurated in the person of Jesus and present in history as the body of Christ vivified by the grace of its Head” (158). What he postulates is that, in...