In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

183 Mary Healy 10 Aquinas’sUseoftheOldTestamentin HisCommentaryonRomans Recent decades have witnessed a rediscovery of St. Thomas as biblical exegete. His biblical commentaries are attracting greater attention than ever before, and his theories of biblical interpretation, particularly his view of the literal and spiritual senses of Scripture, have been assiduously analyzed. Yet Aquinas ’s actual practice of exegesis, and particularly his use of Scripture to comment on Scripture, remains largely unexplored.1 This state of affairs is partly due to the enormous gap between Thomas’s pre-critical interpretive style and the methods and assumptions of modern historical-critical exegesis. In the face of the undeniable progress in determining the original meaning of biblical texts, what does medieval exegesis have to offer? How does one evaluate insights derived from interpretive approaches that are obscure, naïve, or illegitimate by today’s standards? Ongoing efforts to bridge this gap are an essential part of reappropriating the Church’s treasury of patristic and medieval reflection on Scripture, one of the most important tasks of theology today. This chapter considers Thomas’s use of the Old Testament in his commentary on Romans. But a caution is in order regarding this description of the task: although “use” is the standard expression for the various ways in which an author quotes, refers to, or alludes to an earlier text, it is a potentially misleading term. It could seem to suggest a certain instrumentalization of Scripture , as if one has a prior agenda toward the accomplishment of which one puts biblical texts to work. As Michael Waldstein and others have shown, this way of conceiving the commentator’s task would be foreign to St. Thomas.2 1. This point is made and supported in detail by Christopher Baglow, “Modus et Forma”: A New Approach to the Exegesis of Saint Thomas Aquinas with an Application to the Lectura super Epistolam ad Ephesios, Analecta Biblica 149 (Rome: Editrice Pontifio Istituto Biblico, 2002), 1–23. 2. Michael Waldstein, “On Scripture in the Summa Theologiae,” Aquinas Review 1, no. 1 (1994): 73–94; Wilhelmus Valkenberg, Words of the Living God: Place and Function of Holy 184  Mary Healy Rather, in his view, Scripture itself sets the agenda, which it is the theologian’s task to serve—just as a musician does not “use” the notes on the score but plays them and makes their melody sound forth. Such a utilitarian misconception illustrates the kinds of missteps that need to be avoided to arrive at a fair and balanced appraisal of Thomas’s exegesis. To this end, and seeking to understand Thomas’s exegesis on its own terms, I will first offer some general observations on his Old Testament citations in the Romans commentary. I will then compare his reading of biblical texts with his own theoretical account of the distinctively Christian manner of interpreting the Old Testament as described in the Summa. Finally, I will seek to uncover some of the hermeneutical assumptions that are implicit in his method, and inquire as to what relevance or even fruitfulness they might have for biblical exegesis in the Church today. Observations on Aquinas’s Use of the Old Testament Perhaps the most salient characteristic of Thomas’s Old Testament citations is their sheer abundance. Thomas’s writing rivals that of Paul himself in its profusion of biblical references woven into the text. The Romans commentary is a virtual tapestry of phrases drawn from nearly every part of the Bible, including some 1,200 explicit Old Testament citations. Of the forty-six books of the Old Testament canon, only five fail to appear (Judges, Ruth, Tobit, Jonah, and Haggai ). Thomas’s mind is evidently saturated with Scripture, and his mastery of the text is almost mind-boggling to twenty-first-century scholars more accustomed to finding our biblical citations via computerized search engines. Aquinas shows a marked preference for the Psalms and wisdom literature , quoting from the Psalms far more frequently than from any other Old Testament book (280 times). The next most frequent is Isaiah (161 times), followed by four of the wisdom books: Sirach (85 times), Job (79 times), Proverbs (78 times), and Wisdom (67 times). The historical books, in contrast, appear relatively infrequently; the Deuteronomistic history (Joshua through 2 Kings), for instance, is cited only 28 times in all. Thomas’s predilection for the wisdom writings is undoubtedly related to his well-known conviction that the literal sense alone provides a legitimate basis for theological argumentaScripture in the Theology of St...

Share