The Protreptic Structure of the ‘Summa Contra Gentiles’

THE PROTREPTIC STRUCTURE OF THE 'SUMMA CONTRA GENTILES' IN A TYPICAL ACADEMIC preface or accessus, the medieval exegete asked a number of questions about the work to be studied. These included questions about its intention, utility, order, authenticity, title, and position in the hierarchy of studies.1 More succinctly, the exegete could give an account of the book's matter, intention, order, and mode.2 Aquinas himself used exactly such abbreviated patterns to begin his commentaries on Isaiah,3 Jeremiah,4 and Lamentations .5 A modified and expanded accessus opens each of the Aristotle commentaries. Because he was a.dept at teaching, Thomas did not find it necessary to provide such schematic introductions to his own major works, though echoes of an accessus may be heard in them.6 1 See Richard William Hunt, "The Introductions to the 'Artes ' in the Twelfth Century," in Studia mediaevalia in honorem ... R. J. Martin (Bruges: "De Tempel" [1948]), 85-112; compare especially Hunt's "Type C," pp. 94-97. Greek antecedents to the medieval philosophic prefaces are considered in Edwin A. Quain, "The Medieval accessus ad auctores,'' Traditio , 3 (1945), 215-264, especially pp. 243-256, with a summary chart on p. 250. 2 See Robert of Melun's pattern as in Hunt, "Introductions," p. 96. 3 Postilla super Isaiam, prol., EL 28, p. 3, line 6; EB 5, 51, col. l: auctor, modus, material. Except as noted, references to Thomas's works will be to the Leonine edition (EL), published by various houses in Rome since 1882 under the direction of the Leonine Commission, and to the edition compiled by Robert Busa (EB) as a supplement to the Index Thomisticus, that is, Sanoti Thomae Aquinatis Opera Omnia (Stuttgart-Bad Canstatt: FrommanHolzboog , 1980). Busa's edition contains the best texts available as of about 1972, including the texts prepared for the Leonine Commission to that date. 4 Postilla super J eremiam, prol., EB 5, p. 96, col. l : auctor, materia, modus, utilitas. 5 Postilla super Threnos, prol., EB 5, p. 122, col. 2: auctor, modus, utilit-is, materia. 6 See the discussion of prologue to the Contra Gentiles in section 2, below. 173 174 MARK D. JORDAN The absence of an explicit accessus has hampered the reading of more than one book by Thomas, but especially of the so-called Summa contra Gentiles. In what follows, I would like to put exegete's questions about that work's intention, order, mode, and disciplinary position; I will also touch on its utility and title. What makes it difficult to address these headings can be stated as a single question: How is the reader meant to be engaged by this avowedly persuasive work? By taking up this question about the Contra Gentiles, I hope both to prepare for further readings in it and to disclose something of Thomas's larger pedagogical project.7 1. The Circumstances The circumstantial evidence concerning the Contra Gentiles seems to invite a fallacy of authorial intention. On the basis of this evidence, the work has come to be classified as a missionary manual and to be included in histories of missionary activity.8 I would like to suggest that the evidence in no way 1 The arguments that follow assume the usually accepted chronology for Thomas's writings, such as it is found in James Weisheipl, Friar Thomas d'Aquino (augmented ed., Washington: Catholic University, 1983). I thus reject the elaborate reasonings presented in Pierre Marc's richly annotated edition of the Contra Gentiles, I (Turin: Marietti, 1967), by which he would advance the time of composition to the second Parisian regency. For a specific but abbreviated rejoinder to Marc, see the review by Clemens Vansteenkiste in Angelicum, 45 (1968), 353-355, and fuller criticism in the unsigned review for Rassegna di letteratura tomistica, 2 (1970), #67, pp. 51-56. The proposal to re-date the Contra Gentiles to the second Parisian regency was not new; see the rejection of it in Pietro Castagnoli, "La data di compozisione della Summa c. Gentiles di S. Tommaso," Divus Thomas [Piacenza], 31 (1928), 489-492, especially pp. 491-492. Marc's re-dating has not won general consent; consider the summary chart for...