A Multidimensional Disclosure: Aspects of Aquinas’s Theological Intentionality

The Thomist 67 (2003): 335-74 A MULTIDIMENSIONAL DISCLOSURE: ASPECTS OF AQUINAS'S THEOLOGICAL INTENTIONALITY ANTHONY J. KELLY, C.Ss.R. Australian Catholic University Brisbane, Queensland, Australia TO GIVE SERIOUS ATTENTION to Aquinas's Summa Theologiae is to be continually amazed at the extent of the harmonies and deep resonances that echo through its different parts.1 It works like a hologram, manifesting now this, now that, now some other dimension. In this essay, I wish to pay attention to the theological intentionality of St. Thomas's approach , in a way that might enrich our reading, and to continue the discussion that has been taking place more recently in the pages of this journal. It will involve asking what kind of consciousness Aquinas brings to his theological investigation, attending less to the metaphysical objectification offaculties, their objects, and the realities affirmed, and more to the experience in which all this occurs. It will mean a general kind of theological "intentionality analysis" of Thomas's approach-while, at the same time, deferring to specialists in the area of theological phenomenology for a fuller context.2 1 An indication of the many distinctive readings is W. J. Hankey, God in Himself: Aquinas's Doctrine of God as Expounded in the Summa Theologiae (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987). 2 The following are resources for developing (and criticizing) the position I have taken here: Bernard Lonergan, Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas, vol. 2 of Collected Works (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997); idem, Method in Theology (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1972); Robert Doran, Theology and the Dialectics ofHistory (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989); Robert Sokolowski, Eucharistic Presence: A Study in the Theology ofDisclosure (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University ofAmerica Press, 1994); idem, Introduction to Phenomenology (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000); and 335 336 ANTHONY J. KELLY, C.Ss.R. For practical purposes, I propose to concentrate on that "new presentational whole" that Brian Shanley3 has persuasively described in Aquinas's treatment of the mystery of God, with particular, but not exdusive, reference to the Summa Theologiae. The complex unfolding of its theology admittedly reduces most of us today, however provecti in some respects, to the status of incipientes, "beginners" the sense that the postmodern context is always one of beginning again. No matter how generally misunderstood or unnaturally schematized it often is, Thomas's approach to God remains a classic resource to be continually retrieved in the history of theological reflection.4 To suggest something of the holographic, multidimensional disdosure of the divine mystery, I will present this reflection four interrelated parts. The first deals more generally with the kind of intentionality that pervades the theological enterprise. The second treats of the horizon in which it unfolds. The third deals with the field of communicative intentionality which theology explores the God-world relationship. The fourth returns to the Trinitarian narrative that underpins the whole. I. THEOLOGICAL INTENTIONALITY In this section, I will attempt to sketch key aspects of Aquinas's theological intentionality. While this is entirely focused on the divine salvific subject, it unfolds with a high sense of the unique sapiential character of theological knowing. Yet there is a mood of discretion and a of "'deconstructive" attitude, which rejects any absolutist claims in regard to what it seeks to know, and with regard to the theological standpoint itself. the still valuable study, Edward Farley, &clesial Man: A Social Phenomenology ofFaith and Reality (Philadelphia: fortress Press, 1975). 3 Brian Shanley, 0.P., "Sacra Doctrina and the Theology of Disclosure," The Thomist 61 (1997): 178. 4 For a recent and thorough refutation of prevalent misconceptions on this point, see Gilles Emery, O.P., "Essentialism or Personalism in the Treatise on God in Saint Thomas Aquinas," The Thomist 64 (2000): 521-63. AQIBNAS'S THEOLOGICAL INTENTIONALITY 337 A) Aquinas's Intention In the prologue to the Prima Pars, Thomas accepts his role as "a teacher of catholic truth" (catholicae veritatis doctor). The catholic span of the that truth will include, at different junctures oftheological exposition, philosophical, psychological, doctrinal, moral, spiritual, legal, political, sacramental, and eschatological dimensions of the whole. The scope of his concern is evidently intent on disclosing the "holic...