Reading John with St. Thomas Aquinas: Theological Exegesis and Speculative Theology

11. Christ the Teacher in St. Thomas’s Commentary on the Gospel of John

e l e v e n Christ the Teacher in St. Thomas’s Commentary on the Gospel of John Michael Sherwin, O.P. “Do not let yourselves be called teacher (magister), because one alone is your teacher, the Christ.” (Mt 2:10) The first chapter of the Gospel of John describes an encounter between Jesus and two disciples of John the Baptist. These two disciples are following Jesus when suddenly Jesus turns to them and asks, “What do you seek?” The disciples respond, “Rabbi [which is translated as ‘teacher’ in English, or magister in Latin], where do you dwell?” (Jn 1:). In his Commentary on the Gospel of St. John, Thomas Aquinas portrays this encounter as a model of all encounters with Christ that lead to discipleship. Aquinas regards it as initiating a unique relationship , the relationship between Christ, the master, and his followers, the disciples (see Ioan. 1, lect. 1, nn. 20–). In the pages that follow we shall investigate Aquinas’s description of this relationship and the theory of moral education it implies.1 THE MEANING OF THE TERM MAGISTER The first difficulty we must surmount is how to translate the term magister. In common English parlance, “master” is regularly paired with servant or slave. A master is one whom we must obey. Although in the Latin of Aquinas a magister is also one whom we obey, this is  1. For an extended treatment of this theme that complements the present essay, see the doctoral dissertation of Michael Dauphinais, The Pedagogy of the Incarnation: Christ the Teacher according to St. Thomas Aquinas (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 2000). = not its primary connotation. Magister connotes not so much dominion over another as expertise in a domain of knowledge. A magister is one who has mastered a discipline.2 Aquinas himself, for example, was deemed a magister in sacra pagina, a title signifying that he was proficient in the study of sacred Scripture and had acquired an expert understanding of the unique disciplina it contains, the disciplina spiritualis known as sacra doctrina.3 It is in this context that we can also grasp the meaning of the term “discipulus.” Disciplina and discipulus both derive from “discere,” a Latin verb meaning “to learn.” A person’s identity as a disciple comes from his status as a learner of a specific discipline. It is this desire to learn that is the hallmark of the true disciple. Indeed , in Aquinas’s view, the honest desire to learn from the Lord distinguishes a true disciple of Christ from those who follow him out of curiosity or only in order to test him (see Ioan. , lect. 2, n. 110). Perhaps a helpful way to convey in English the nuance of these terms and the relationship they express is by appealing to apprenticeship.4 Aquinas’s description of discipleship with Christ is akin to apprenticeship with a master: Christ is the master craftsman of the moral life, and his followers are apprentices in the trade of right living. With these terms better in focus, we can turn our attention to St. Thomas’s conception of how Christ, the master, guides his people in this divine apprenticeship . 174 M S, O.P. 2. The contrast between the English word “master” and the Latin term magister emerges vividly when we compare the Latin of the Vulgate Bible with the English of the Revised Standard Version. Although in English we sometimes translate the Greek word kyrios as Lord and sometimes as Master, the Latin of the Vulgate never translates kyrios as magister. The Vulgate exclusively employs dominus to translate kyrios, reserving magister to translate didascalos. For example , although the RSV makes “master” the correlative of “slave,” for the Vulgate, as for Aquinas, the correlative of servus is not magister but dominus, such as in the biblical phrases, non est servus maior domino suo (Jn 1.1) and servus nescit quid facit dominus euis (Jn 1.1). . T. C. O’Brien, “‘Sacra Doctrina’ Revisited: The Context of Medieval Education,” Thomist 1 (1): –0; James Weisheipl, “The Meaning of Sacra Doctrina in Summa theologiae I q. 1,” Thomist  (1): –0; Marie-Dominique Chenu, Toward Understanding Saint Thomas, trans. A. M. Landry and D. Hughes (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1), 2, 2–; J. de Ghellinck, “‘Pagina’ et ‘Sacra pagina.’ Histoire d’un mot et transformation de l’objet primitivement désigné,” in Mélanges Auguste Pelze études d’histoire littéraire et doctrinale de la scholatique m...