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f i f t e e n Anti-Docetism in Aquinas’s Super Ioannem St. Thomas as Defender of the Full Humanity of Christ Paul Gondreau Biblical scholars have long noted the anti-docetic overtones of John’s Gospel. These overtones targeted the latent tendencies in the primitive Christian community to deny, in varying degrees, the reality of Christ’s humanity. (From the Greek dokevw, “to seem,” docetism, which was the first great challenge to Christological faith, alleges that Christ only appeared to have come in the flesh.)1 What is less known, and what remains one of the most unappreciated elements of his thought, is St. Thomas’s own rather pronounced anti-docetism.2 254 1. For the anti-docetism of the Johannine writings (cf., e.g., 2 Jn : “many deceivers .l.l. will not acknowledge the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh”), cf. R. E. Brown, The Community of the Beloved Disciple (New York: Paulist Press, 1), 10–1, and 1–; idem, The Gospel According to John, I–XII, Anchor Bible, vol. 2 (Garden City: Doubleday, 1), lxxvi–lxxvii; U. Schnelle, Antidocetic Christology in the Gospel of John (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 12); and G. J. Riley, I Was Thought to Be What I Am Not: Docetic Jesus and the Johannine Tradition (Claremont: Institute for Antiquity and Christianity, 1). Providing evidence of docetic currents in ancient Christianity, Riley (pp. –) cites the third-century Apocalypse of Peter from the Nag Hammadi library, which asserts (Apoc. Peter 1.–2): “The Savior said to [Peter], ‘He whom you saw on the tree glad and laughing, this is the living Jesus. But this one into whose hands they drive the nails is his fleshly part, which is the substitute being put to shame, the one who came into being in his likeness.’” As Riley observes, such a passage “illustrate[s] one of the common strategies of relieving Jesus of the humiliation of the crucifixion: providing a substitute who is merely human and undergoes what the spiritual Jesus, given the theological presuppositions of the .l.l. writer, cannot be allowed to undergo.” 2. Some have the opposite, and quite erroneous, impression of Aquinas. An example is J. A. T. Robinson (The Human Face of God [Philadelphia: Westminster, 1], 0, n. 1), who, when it comes to Thomas’s Christology, equates Aquinas with a “glorified Hilary [of Poitiers].” As for those few Thomist scholars who have underscored = Aquinas’s anti-docetism is borne out of his reading of the New Testament, and in particular of the Gospel of John. In his prologue to the Commentary on the Gospel of St. John, Aquinas observes that John composed his Gospel to refute certain Christological heresies. Though most of these heresies, Thomas admits, concern Christ’s divinity, some are directed against his humanity. As a result, Aquinas shows a penchant for emphasizing the fourth Gospel’s condemnation , usually implicit, of any heresy that cheapens in any docetic manner the full human consubstantiality of Christ, such as Apollinarianism, Arianism , Monophysitism, Monothelitism, Manichaeism, and the like.3 This penchant adheres strictly to Aquinas’s biblical exegesis. Consistent with his medieval day, Thomas’s reading of Scripture aims above all at drawing out the ultimate theological truth imparted through the Bible. Reading the Gospel of John—the “anti-docetic” Gospel of John—with St. Thomas provides, then, the occasion for retrieving Aquinas’s appreciation of the theological truth regarding Christ’s full humanity as disclosed through the Sacred Page. The Commentary on John stands as a telling testament to Aquinas’s efforts to show, to quote J.-P. Torrell, “wherever possible that Christ is a man fully subject to the laws of humanity.”4 Examining the Christology of Aquinas’s commentary on John’s Gospel offers insight as well into the theological method of Aquinas. Ever the consummate theologian, St. Thomas at all times begins his theological reflection with the revealed word of the Sacred Page, the wellspring of all theology: “the entire theology of St. Thomas,” Etienne Gilson explains, “is a commentary on the Bible; he advances no conclusion without basing it somehow on the Anti-Docetism in Aquinas’s Super Ioannem  Aquinas’s anti-docetism, J.-P. Torrell merits singular acclaim; cf. his Le Christ en ses mystères. La vie et l’oeuvre de Jésus selon saint Thomas d’Aquin, 2 vols. (Paris: Desclée, 1). Cf. as well G. Lafont , Structures et méthode dans la “Somme théologique...

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