Aquinas's Summa: background, structure, & reception

Foreword

Foreword T      is such that it can overshadow their authors and the rest of their writings as well.The Summa theologiae is probably the most striking example of this. It is well known that Saint Thomas Aquinas wrote the Summa theologiae and that he lived in the Middle Ages. But few readers know what kind of man he was, the kind of life he led,or his other writings.The renown of the title of his major work is such that we may be surprised to learn that he wrote a second Summa, the Summa contra Gentiles, and that several other authors,Thomas’s nearest contemporaries, also wrote their own “Summas.” In order to understand the Summa theologiae better, one should certainly become familiar with its content. But it is of equal importance to situate it in its historical, literary, and doctrinal settings. Only in doing this can we come to appreciate its originality. Thomas Aquinas was not like Melchisedek of the Bible—without ancestry. He had a history that was both personal and intellectual. He drew from a number of other authors: writers inspired by the Bible or by the ancient world;pagans and Christians; Greek, Jewish, and Arab philosophers; theologians of the Latin tradition that either preceded him or were contemporaneous with him; as well as eminent theologians of the Greek and Eastern churches.Aquinas’s strong personality brought unity to all of these sources, as a great river unites its numerous tribuAeterni Patris and its Consequences  Y ix taries. Traces of these currents remain throughout his work, however, and it is important to know what they are. The enduring quality of an author’s thought is measured in part by its permanence over time and by its capacity not, as is sometimes said, to answer questions it never even asked, but to inspire solutions to problems for future generations because of the breadth of the great intuitions that govern it.Therein lies, no doubt, the major reason for the Summa’s lastingness and its enduring fruitfulness.The Summa is, of course, a work of its time, that is, of the Scholastic period, with its own tools and techniques . It is important to know how to handle and make use of them, which is not so easy at first. But once we gain a certain mastery, we come to discover the validity of the method and the richness of the content. Sylvester of Ferrara, an enthusiastic disciple of Aquinas’s, wrote of him that he was a man “for all hours.” Only the future will be able to tell us whether the Summa, now more than seven hundred years old, is a book “for all ages.”With, it must be admitted , varying degrees of success, Aquinas’s disciples have strived to penetrate his thought and to bring it into dialogue with the problems of their own time.We can even marvel that his thought has been able to withstand generations of imitators. There are signs in our own day and age that show thatThomas’s thought is still alive. x Foreword ’ Summa Background, Structure, & Reception Aeterni Patris and its Consequences  Y  Summa: Structures and Content I ...