Metaphor and Ontology in Sacra Doctrina

THE THOMIST A SPECULATIVE QUARTERLY REVIEW OF THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY EDITORs: THE DoMINICAN FATHERS OF THE PROVINCE OF ST. JosEPH Publishers: The Thomist Press, Washington, D. C. ~0017 VoL. XXXVIII JULY, 1974 No.3 METAPHOR AND ONTOLOGY IN SACRA DOCTRINA T HIS ESSAY is intended as a contribution to hermeneutic theology, the theology of meaning.1 Hermeneutic theology can concern itself with any topic within the theological tradition; in this article we shall try to allow a certain conception of hermeneutic theology to arise out of the consideration of a particular conjunction in Christian theological tradition, the interpretation of Pseudo-Dionysius on the divine names by St. Thomas Aquinas. For both these writers the divine names were revealed in Scripture; so the conjunction will be viewed in a perspective which refers itself to our own concern today with Scriptures, with its ramifications into matters of exegesis on the one hand and modern awareness of language on the other. Thus four hermeneutical loci mark 1 Hermeneutik saw its original rise to common consciousness and eventually the commonplace in Germany, with Bultmann, Heidegger, Gadamer, and Ebeling. It is now going through a second phase in France, largely in dialogue with structuralism . As well as Ricoeur's more recent 'lvritings, see the collective work, Exegese et hermeneutique, ed. X. Leon-Dufour (Paris, 1971). 403 404 CORNELIUS ERNST out the general area of our concern: the Scriptures (making the large assumption here that the Scriptures can be taken as a single locus), Pseudo-Dionysius, St. Thomas, and our own times (this latter in the sense of an invisible point of vision) . Clearly no claim is made here to be the master, in a scholarly way, of all these fields; and while I have tried to make use of scholarship , this study is not itself offered as a piece of scholarship. Many of the footnotes, and even parts of the text, are best seen as triangulation points from which bearings might be taken; the points chosen are arbitrary but not random. By speaking of hermeneutic theology as theology of " meaning " the intention is to appeal to the English notion of " meaning," which has no adequate equivalents in French or German, and which has been the theme of all sorts of reflection in the English-speaking world. If St. Thomas interpreting PseudoDionysius on the divine names is at the centre of the discussion, then the primary concern of this article is the hermeneutic theology of meaning itself: the theology of meaning reflecting on itself as it comes to light in a particular historical conjunction . By sacra doctrina we understand that " science " which St. Thomas discusses in the first question of the Summa Theologiae. The unity of this science is guaranteed by the uniqueness of its formalis ratio obiecti, the divinitus revelabile (art. 3) the subiectum of this science is God (art. 7). If we ask how the God of sacra doctrina is related to the God of philosophy, the answer is always clear: the same God is known by different lights, different media (art. 1, ad 2); sacra doctrina is a kind of stamp, impressio, of divine science, and therefore has access to all that may be known (including God) in a higher or more universal way ( art. 3, ad 2) ; and indeed it has access by revelation to God's knowledge of himself (ad id quod notum est sibi soli de seipso), this same God who is otherwise known by philosophers only through the created world (art. 6). All this is familiar enough. But it may be that in spite of a great deal of scholarly work in this area we are still not quite ready enough to accept the implications of St. Thomas's iden- METAPHOR AND ONTOLOGY IN " SACRA DOCTRINA " 405 tification-verbally at least-of sacra doctrina and sacra Scriptura . Let us now resolutely make this identification, in the sense that" theology" (using the term neutrally) is indeed the rational exploration and declaration of the unified self-disclosure of God in himself and in the world, mediated by Scripture (cf. art.8). There are then three modes of determining the basis of theology: the infallible truth of God himself, Veritas Prima; the...