Hostname: page-component-76d6cb85b7-dqfph Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-07-16T16:33:42.700Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

On the Many Senses of Scripture: Romans 1:19-20 in the Summa theologiae

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Aaron Ebert Open the ORCID record for Aaron Ebert [Opens in a new window]
Aaron Ebert*
Affiliation:
Duke University
*
aaron.ebert@duke.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Despite growing interest in Thomas Aquinas' biblical exegesis in general, and in his reading of Romans in particular, little attention has been given to the way Thomas actually uses scripture to do theology in his most enduring and influential work: the Summa theologiae. This article makes a preliminary attempt to remedy this neglect by exploring the role played by Romans 1:19-20 in the Summa. Given the deep connection of both Romans 1 and Aquinas to the perennial debates about natural theology, we might expect Thomas’ engagement with those verses to be concerned chiefly and resolutely with the questions animating these debates. But this is not at all the case. Far from being limited to arguments for philosophical knowledge of God, the Summa's more than twenty citations of Romans 1, I argue, re-present the whole drama of Christianity in microcosm. Even according to the letter, Paul's words have many senses for Thomas. The goal of this article is to draw out these many senses and demonstrate the creative interplay of scripture and theology in Thomas’ Summa.

Keywords

Romans 1AquinasSumma theologiaebiblical exegesissenses of scripturenatural theology

Information

Type
Original Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 102 , Issue 1100 , July 2021 , pp. 503 - 516
Copyright
Copyright © 2020 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

1 Henceforth simply Summa in the main text and ST in citations. All quotations from the Summa are my own translations of the Latin text as found in St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, trans. Fr. Lawrence F. Shapcote, ed. John Mortensen and Enrique Alarcón (Lander, Wyoming: The Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred Doctrine, 2012).

2 For an example of “growing interest in Thomas’ reading of Romans,” see the collection of essays in Reading Romans with St. Thomas Aquinas, ed. Levering, Matthew (Washington D.C.: CUA Press, 2012).CrossRefGoogle Scholar John Boyle's concise essay, “On the Relation of St. Thomas's Commentary on Romans to the Summa theologiae” (pp. 75-82), brings together Thomas as exegete and Thomas as theologian in insightful ways; and Adam Cooper's essay, “Degrading the Body, Suppressing the Truth” (pp. 113-126), is an excellent treatment of the question of the relation between moral and intellectual virtues in Aquinas’ reading of Romans 1:18-25. But while the focus of both is close to mine here, neither engages Thomas’ reading of Romans 1:19-20 in the Summa nor the significant issues raised by it. For careful and insightful attention to Thomas’ Romans commentary with an eye toward constructive, theological matters, see Rogers, Eugene F., Aquinas and the Supreme Court: Race, Gender, and the Failure of Natural Law in Thomas’ Biblical Commentaries (Chichester, West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 For a lovely example of someone attending to the use of scripture in the Summa, see Levering, Matthew, “A Note on Scripture in the Summa theologiae,” New Blackfriars 90, no. 1030 (2009): 652–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Levering attends to the way Thomas uses clusters of scriptural texts to elucidate the theological meaning of a few particular articles in the Summa. My approach here is precisely the converse: to show how Thomas employs a single biblical text across numerous, discrete articles. See also the detailed study of Wilhelmus G.B.M. Valkenberg which explores the role of scripture across all of Thomas’ writings, Words of the Living God: Place and Function of Holy Scripture in the Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas (Leuven: Peeters, 2000).Google Scholar

4 ST I.43.7

5 One of the citations (ST I.84.5, obj. 2) will not be treated in this essay because it occurs in an objection to which Thomas does not respond, and thus provides nothing in the way of Thomas’ constructive use of the passage.

6 ST I.65.1, ad 3.

7 ST I.79.9.

8 ST I.2.2, sed contra.

9 Which is itself quite interesting: Thomas wants a biblical warrant for thinking this.

10 We might add to this point of diminishment also Thomas’ words from Summa Theologiae I.1.1, namely that even what can be known of God in this life through rational investigation can be known only “by a few [a paucis], and through a long period of time [per longum tempus], and with the admixture of many errors [cum admixtione multorum errorum]…”

11 ST I.12.12, sed contra.

12 ST I.12.12.

13 For further elaboration on this point see Rogers, Eugene F. Jr., Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth: Sacred Doctrine and the Natural Knowledge of God (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), 183–188.Google Scholar

14 ST I-II.93.2, ad 2.

15 ST I.32.1.

16 ST I.32.1, obj. 3.

17 See Aquinas, Saint Thomas, Super Epistulam ad Romanos (Brepols: 2010), § 122.Google Scholar

18 ST I.32.1, ad 1.

19 See especially Aquinas, Super Epistulam ad Romanos, §§ 123–30.

20 ST I.56.3.

21 ST I.88.3, emphasis mine.

22 ST I.88.3.

23 ST II-II.2.3, obj. 3.

24 ST II-II.2.3.

25 ST II-II.2.3, ad 3.

26 ST II-II.34.1.

27 Ibid.

28 ST III.1.1, sed contra.

29 Ibid.

30 ST I.43.7.

31 ST II-II.171-178, Proemium.

32 ST II-II.175.1, sed contra.

33 ST II-II.175.1, ad 1.

34 ST II-II.81.7.

35 ST III.60.2, obj. 1, emphasis mine.

36 ST III.60.2, ad 1, emphasis mine.

37 ST II-II.27.3, obj. 2.

38 ST II-II.27.3.

39 ST II-II.2.9, ad 3.

40 ST I.1.6.

41 Ibid.

42 ST I.13.5.

43 Ibid.

44 ST I-II.111.4.

45 Ibid.

46 ST II-II.180.4.

47 ST I.1.10.