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2. The Theological Role of the Fathers in Aquinas’s Super Evangelium S. Ioannis Lectura
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t w o The Theological Role of the Fathers in Aquinas’s Super Evangelium S. Ioannis Lectura Stephen F. Brown Many modern studies on the nature of theology according to St. Thomas Aquinas have been centered on his claim for a scientific study of divine revelation. This stress perhaps to a great extent is due to our modern concentration on the opening question of the Summa theologiae , where the second article asks: “Whether sacred doctrine is a science ?” The immediate context is the preceding article: “Whether besides the philosophical disciplines any further doctrine is required?” By placing sacred doctrine in contrast to the teachings of the philosophical disciplines, Aquinas invites us to compare the kind of science that each provides: in short, which science, philosophy or theology, is more scientific. Theology is more certain, based as it is on divine revelation . Yet, philosophy has, in a sense, a certain advantage: it starts with sources that are evident, not on authority. Still, the focus on theology as a scientific discipline is due not only to our present-day perspective. Even in Aquinas’s own time, one can find that his answer to the question “Whether sacred doctrine is a science ?”—namely, that sacred doctrine is a subaltern science whose principles or premises are based most essentially on the authority of divine revelation—was challenged. The discussion, carried on in especially strong terms in the works of Henry of Ghent and Godfrey of Fontaines,1 shortly after Aquinas’s time, led to a certain division con- = 1. Henricus de Gandavo, Summa quaestionum ordinariarum, a. , qq. – (Paris: 120), f. 2rB–rH. Cf. S. F. Brown, “Henry of Ghent’s Critique of Aquinas’s Subalternation Theory and the Early Thomistic Response,” in Knowledge and the Sciences in Medieval Philosophy, Proceedings of the Eighth International Congress of Medieval Philosophy: Annals of the Finnish Society for Missiology and Ecumenics , vol. cerning the meaning of the word “theology.” Durandus, in the early fourteenth century, tells us that the word “theology” has three meanings.2 The first meaning contrasts the “theology” of Aristotle, that is, his first philosophy or metaphysics, with Christian theology, that is, God’s revelation in sacred Scripture. This first meaning of “theology,” God’s divine revelation in the Scriptures, is the fundamental meaning of theology for Durandus and all medieval Christian theologians: they accept what God has revealed because He has revealed it. God is the First Truth. He Himself is the ground of Christian faith. God’s authority is the ultimate guarantee of truth, not any experience we ourselves might have undergone. Given this most fundamental meaning, however, Durandus tells us that the more common meaning given to the word “theology” in his time presents theology as “a lasting quality of the soul by means of which it deduces further things from the articles of the faith and the sayings of sacred Scripture in a way that conclusions are deduced from principles.” In short, this form of theology is deductive. For many of the late-thirteenth- and early-fourteenthcentury theologians, Thomas Aquinas was the principal exponent for this second form of “theology.” The third meaning of “theology” for Durandus is what he calls at one time “defensive or persuasive theology,” and at another “a habit that clarifies and defends the articles of the faith.” Parallel to his description of deductive theology , he portrays declarative theology as “a lasting quality of the soul by means of which the faith and those things handed down in sacred Scripture are defended and clarified by using principles that we know better.” In the early fourteenth century the author most associated with this declarative theology is the Franciscan Peter Aureoli. AQUINAS AND DECLARATIVE THEOLOGY Peter Aureoli is the author who spoke most explicitly of declarative theology as that which ought to be the principal type of theology. It is the habit a theologian develops “from the kind of theological study by which those things we believe are supported by probable arguments taken from other sciences , doubts concerning them are removed, terms expressing them are clari- fied, and sacred Scripture is explained.”3 Aureoli saw the need for such a de10 S F. B (Helsinki: 10), –. Godefridus de Fontibus, Quodlibet IV, q. 10 (Louvain: 10), 22. Cf. P. Tihon, Foi et théologie selon Godefroid de Fontaines (Paris: 1), 120–1. 2. Durandus, Commentaria in Petri Lombardi Sententias Theologicas (Venetiis 11), prol. q. l, f. 2. . Petrus Aureoli, Scriptum...
