St Thomas's reputation as an exegete has probably never stood higher than it does today. He is of course a theological exegete, but so ‘close’ is his reading of the scriptural text that many of his more detailed enquiries, notably on the implications of syntax, can still serve modern historical-critical scholars — despite the fact that he is working from a Latin translation of the (Hebrew or) Greek originals. The Commentaries on the Letter to the Romans and Paul's two Letters to the Corinthians, recently presented by Editions du Cerf with ample notes, invaluable tables, and, for the commentaries on the Corinthian correspondence, magisterial introductions, are a case in point. (The apparatus is especially helpful on the complex issue of the Glosses.) Like Thomas's early education, this Francophone version exemplifies the service of Benedictinism to the Thomasian enterprise. Credit for the lion's share of the work belongs to Dom Jean-Eric Stroobant de Saint-Eloy, a monk of Notre-Dame des Prés, in the Avesnois, by the Belgian border. While the Romans commentary follows the semi-critical Marietti edition, the two volumes on the Letters to the Church at Corinth constitute what might be called a ‘critical (French) translation’ which, with the support of distinguished members of the Leonine Commission, anticipates a future fully critical Latin text. In all three books Dom Jean-Eric has been ably seconded by Professor Jean Borella, whose renewal of Christian cosmology is becoming more widely known in the English-speaking world. Borella contributes his philosophical and theological expertise wherever Thomas's commentary seems to call for some wider conceptual explanation or elaboration. He also provides useful cross-referencing to other writings by Aquinas himself.
Certainly the theological mind is thoroughly engaged. What we can always expect from St Thomas is a view of the whole that does justice to the parts. Such respectful systematising is a rare gift in post-Victorian exegesis, and we can benefit from it. For Thomas, St Paul is above all a doctor of grace: all the Letters (which for the thirteenth century interpreter include Hebrews) turn on the master-theme of the grace of Christ. The ‘general prologue’ found at the opening of the Romans commentary proposes that the Letter to the Church of the Hebrews considers that grace as manifested in the Head himself, Jesus Christ; the Letters to the Gentile communities the same grace as discovered in Christ's mystical Body, the Church; the ‘letters to dignitaries’ (the Pastorals and Philemon) that self-same grace yet again but now as found in some pre-eminent members of the Church-Body. More widely, the grace of Christ may be viewed in itself (and this is the task of the Letter to the Romans, and the ground of its primacy in Thomas's eyes), or again in the sacramental economy of grace — for which see First Corinthians on the sacraments (Baptism, Marriage, and the Eucharist); Second Corinthians on the ministers of those sacraments in the apostolic fellowship, and Galatians for Paul's insistence on the ‘abrogation of superfluous sacraments’— above all, circumcision — vis-à-vis those who ‘wished to add the former sacraments to the new’. Next, the grace of Christ may and should be treated in its most palpable effect, which is the unity it produces in the Church. For this see Ephesians on the foundations of the ecclesial unity; Philippians on that unity's affirmation and progress, Colossians for its defence against errors and the Letters to the Church at Thessalonica for its conservation in present or future persecutions (in the First and Second Letters to the Thessalonians respectively). As for those ‘dignitaries of the Church’, Paul — as Thomas understands him — instructs the spiritual pezzi grossi on the foundation, construction and governance of the grace-borne ecclesial unity in First Timothy, on the need for firmness where persecutors threaten it in Second Timothy, and on its safeguarding against heretics in the Letter to Titus. Lastly, Paul has a special message for the temporal counterparts of these ‘spiritual lords’ in writing to Philemon. This is surely an admirable way to treat the inter-relation of the distinctive contents of these ancient Christian texts, even if one were simply to consider them neighbouring documents in the Canon rather than, in their entirety, the work of a single mind and heart.
But Romans enjoys a special dignity because it goes to the heart of it all. For the ordo doctrinae it must fall first. In the first eight chapters, on Thomas's analysis, the apostle considers the necessity and power of the grace of Christ; in the chapters that follow, whether that grace is given by the ‘sole election of God’ or ‘the merits of antecedent works’. If we sense here a certain narrowing of theme which looks ahead to Reformation problematics and even the controversy de auxiliis, the spacious manner in which Thomas recreates the spiritual world of Romans gives us pause. In any case, the very Gospel of grace is at stake here, since, in words of Père Berceville in the preface, for Aquinas ‘human nature does not avoid evil and attain the perfect beatitude in which alone its deep desire finds rest except through letting itself by carried by sanctifying grace’. The conjunctio of God and man, revealed in the Gospel, is realised by means of the (hypostatic) union of the two in Christ, through our adoption as sons through the gift of the Holy Spirit in sanctifying grace, and the fruition of these (union plus adoption) in the beatifying vision of eternal life. Thus elegantly does Thomas calibrate a selection of the chief themes of his own mature theological doctrine with the concerns of the first century writer. Reading through the commentary, readers will find many places where, moved surely by the charism of Paul's own inspiration, Thomas speaks more eloquently on these themes than in his better known works.
The same is not less true of the commentary on the Letters to the Corinthians with its remarkable integration of ecclesiology and moral teaching for which the Summa theologiae, say, does little explicitly to prepare us. This is Thomas the author of an ‘ecclesial morals’ (to utilise a phrase of Père Pinckaers, cited in the notes) where the ‘same charity which builds up the moral life [also] constructs and animates the ecclesial Body, with the aid of the charisms’. Unfortunately, so far as First Corinthians is concerned, the full text of Thomas's Commentary did not survive. For 7:10b to 10:33 the editor adopts, therefore, the ingenious solution of inserting the relevant portions of the Postilla of Peter of Tarantaise, later Pope Innocent V, whose own theological work is the common offspring of Thomas and St Bonaventure.
Dom Jean-Eric tells me he has now completed work on the Commentary on Galatians, for which Père Torrell will provide the chief introduction, while establishing a working text for the Commentary on Ephesians proceeds apace. Once again English-speakers realise how indebted they are to the world of Francophone Thomasian scholarship, with its profound sense of the belonging of these mediaeval biblical aids — and Thomas's writing generally — to the cordial, prayerful, intellectual project of la vie théologale.
