Aquinas’s Exemplar Ethics

The Thomist 72 (2008): 345-69 AQUINAS'S EXEMPLAR ETHICS BRIAN J. SHANLEY, 0.P. Providence College Providence, Rhode Island THE PROVOCATIVE THESIS of Leonard Boyle's seminal 1983 essay entitled "The Setting of the Summa theologae of Saint Thomas"1 is that the Summa Theologiae represents an attempt on Aquinas's part to set the pastoral or practical theology that was at the center of the Dominican curriculum into a larger theological context. According to Boyle, Aquinas used the freedom accorded to him at the studium personale in Rome to depart from the accepted tradition of using as principal texts (in addition, of course, to the Bible) Peter Lombard's Sentences for dogmatic theology and Raymond of Penyafort'sSumma de casibus with William Peraldus's Summa de vitiis et virtutibus for practical theology. Dissatisfied with this approach because it disconnected moral theology from its larger setting, Aquinas set out to compose a new textbook for theology that would combine all of sacra doctrina into a unified whole: But he [Aquinas] now gave that practical theology a setting which had not been very evident in Dominican circles before him. By prefacing the Secunda or moral part with a Prima pars on God, Trinity and Creation, and then rounding it off with a Tertia pars on the Son of God, Incarnation and the Sacraments, Thomas put practical theology, the study of Christian man, his virtues and vices, in a full theological context. Christian morality, once for all, was shown to be something more than a question of straight ethical teaching or of vices and virtues in isolation. Inasmuch as man was an intelligent being who was made master of himself and possessed of freedom of choice, he was in the image of God. To 1 Leonard Boyle, The Setting of the "Summa theologiae" of Saint Thomas, The Etienne Gilson Series 5 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1983). 345 346 BRIAN J. SHANLEY, O.P. study human action is therefore to study the image of God and to operate on a theological plane. To study human action on a theological plane is to study it in relation to its beginning and end, God, and to the bridge between, Christ and his sacraments.2 It is a testimony to Aquinas's conviction about the significance of this approach that he kept working on the Summa Theologiae long after the responsibility for educating incipientes ceased to be his primary charge. As Boyle's study of the subsequent manuscript tradition reveals , however, Aquinas's grand project of situating moral or practical theology within the larger whole of sacra doctrina seems to have gone for naught insofar as copies of the Secunda Secundae soon circulated independently from the rest of the Summa (as did the other parts, but not as many). Neither the Summa as a whole nor the Secunda Secundae as a part played a leading role in Dominican education in the period after Aquinas's death; rather, the Summa confessorum of John of Fribourg, which borrowed from Aquinas, became the main guide to practical theology. Business as usual had returned, despite all of Aquinas's efforts, and moral theology remained disconnected from speculative theology. In assessing the reasons for the failure of Aquinas's vision to take hold, Boyle ends his essay by saying: One could argue, finally, that in any case the relationship between the various parts of the Summa is not as clear as it might be in the various prefaces, and that Thomas profitably could have been more forthright about precisely what he was up to when, in the Summa theologiae, he wrote what I may now venture to call his one 'Dominican' work, and made what I have suggested was his own very personal contribution to a lopsided system of theological education in the Order to which he belonged.3 I esteem Leonard Boyle as one of the greatest Dominican scholars that I have known, and I think this article in particular is among his finest. Yet I would argue that the prologues of Aquinas do provide clear architectonic clues for the connections of moral 2 Ibid., 16. 3 Ibid., 30. AQUINAS'S EXEMPLAR ETHICS 347 theology to the...