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o n e Authorial Intention and the Divisio textus John F. Boyle Beryl Smalley in her landmark book, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, sought to show, among other things, that not all of those who commented on the Bible in the Middle Ages were, in her words, theologians. Some were also scholars.1 The mark of the scholar was an interest in the literal sense apart from and in contrast to the Middle Ages’ seeming fixation on the spiritual or mystical senses of Scripture. In particular, Smalley was interested in those scholars whose work was a kind of anticipation of modern biblical scholarship, especially of an historical critical flavor. She found, as we know, two such forwardlooking John the Baptists: a modest son of the abbey of St. Victor by the name of Andrew and, far more significantly, the intellectual luminary of the Order of Preachers, St. Thomas Aquinas. Smalley would come to have her doubts about St. Thomas. Although his instincts in interpreting the literal sense were sound, according to Smalley, St. Thomas was still too drawn to the dark side, or at least the silly side, of the medieval interpretive project.2 Smalley was correct. The medieval quirks and oddities in St. Thomas’s interpretation of Scripture, however, extend beyond his fascination with the mystical senses. They extend as well into his understanding and interpretation of the literal sense. Not even here is Thomas particularly modern. Thus a disappointment to Smalley, St. Thomas may nonetheless be of some value to the modern interpreter of Scripture, precisely because he is not one of us. Thomas’s conception of the literal sense of Scripture is not particu-  = 1. Beryl Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, 2nd ed. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1), xv–xvi. 2. Beryl Smalley, The Gospels in the Schools, c. –c.  (London: Hambledon Press, 1), 2–. larly novel; it is, however, articulated in a particularly clear way. Thomas says that the literal sense of Scripture pertains to those things that the words of Scripture signify.3 It is concerned with the sensus—let us translate sensus here as “meaning”—of the words. The task of the interpreter of the literal sense of Scripture is to articulate that meaning—the sensus—of the words. Getting at the meaning of the words is not always an easy task. As is clear throughout the tradition, and here in Thomas’s commentary on the Gospel according to St. John, the interpreter is confronted with different interpretations of the meaning of the words, of the literal sense of Scripture. What is one to do? Fortunately, Thomas does, once, address this question. It is tucked away in an article of his disputed questions De potentia, in which he asks whether the creation of unformed matter precedes in duration the creation of things. We need not worry here about unformed matter. As for how one is to read the literal sense of Scripture, Thomas poses two negative principles: first, one ought not assert something false to be found in Scripture, especially what would contradict the faith; and second, one ought not to insist upon one’s own interpretation to the exclusion of other interpretations which in their content are true and in which what Thomas calls “the circumstance of the letter ” is preserved.4 I take this latter to mean, minimally, that the interpretation more or less fits the words and their context. Thus for an interpretation to be true it cannot be contrary to the truth, and it must fit the circumstance of the letter. What is missing from Thomas’s criteria, and notably so to moderns, is any consideration of what the author meant. This is not a momentary lapse. Such consideration is not absent only in theoretical discussions, but also in practice . If we look for an expression such as the “meaning of the author” (sensus auctoris), we do not find it, with one notable exception to be discussed below. This begs the obvious question: why is it that when Thomas considers an ambiguous passage of Scripture, he shows no interest in determining what the author meant when he wrote it. Might not the question of what the author meant be of some help? I think that Thomas would simply answer no. One need only recall Book XII of Augustine’s Confessions, known to and cited by St. Thomas.5 In Book XII, Augustine struggles with the opening...

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