As Stefan Mangnus points out at the beginning of his study, ‘there are no studies that take the divisio textus as their starting point for studying one of Thomas’s biblical commentaries’ (p. 2). To help fill this gap, the author has given us this work exploring what is widely considered to be St. Thomas’s grandest work of biblical interpretation, the Commentary on John. Mangnus’s monograph on St. Thomas Aquinas’s commentary sets out to explain two things: the ingenious employment of the medieval exegetical/hermeneutical tool known as the divisio textus and Thomas’s strong commitment to what he understands to be John’s main intention in writing his gospel, making known the divinity of Christ (pp. 1–2). In this reviewer’s opinion, both of these goals are achieved with wonderful clarity.
Chapter 1 covers the essence of the divisio textus, both in itself and as it is employed in the field of medieval biblical commentaries. Pointing out that the divisio is both a hermenutical method as well as a didactical method is one of the more helpful distinctions present here. In dividing the text according to a particular theme, the various parts of the text at hand can be read with greater attention to its literary and theological unity, and the various parts can be weighed against each other and linked in a way that is innate to the text itself. In addition, as Mangnus points out, ‘the text’s coherence is clarified’ (p. 10) for the sake of the reader, the student, or the person in the pew when employed by a skilled preacher. When the subject of the divisio is brought up alongside discussion of literary structure in other works of St. Thomas, the author makes an astute comment that ‘the absence of discussions about the structure of the biblical commentaries is remarkable’ (p. 19). As a final note on this first chapter, the comparison that is made between St. Thomas’s division of the text with those made by St. Albert and St. Bonaventure is a highly illuminating one, allowing the reader to truly see the difference in interpretation when the same biblical texts are approached with different intentions and different structures in mind.
Chapter 2 explores Thomas’s commentary on the first five verses of the Johannine prologue. This particular section of Thomas’s commentary ‘is a profound theology of the Word that is unique within Thomas’s writings’, displaying characteristics of ‘a complete treatise on “the Word of God”’, and yet at the same time, ‘it never stops being what it is in the first place: biblical commentary, biblical theology’ (pp. 103–4). Chapter 3 looks at Thomas’s reading of John 1:6–14 as a textual unity speaking of, and leading up to, the mystery of the Incarnation, especially as presented in verse 14. Mangnus again shows how St. Thomas allows the biblical text to lead him in and out of questions and topics, never failing to center the biblical text first and refusing to bend the text to predetermined systematic questions, drawing ‘as much understanding as possible from the biblical text’ (p. 134) as he can to serve this goal. While certain topics may feel underserved in the mind of the contemporary reader, close attention to the divisio textus will prove this not to be the case as it ‘relates the [different] topics to each other and gives a framework for understanding the commentary’ (p. 135).
Chapter 4 considers Thomas’s claim that the remainder of the first chapter of John (in verses 14b–51) acts as a bridge between the first portion of the prologue and the rest of the Gospel. In ‘showing the ways in which the incarnate Word is made known’ (p. 137), verses 14b–51 form a bridge between the discussion of the Word’s divinity in the preceding material and the manifestation of the incarnate Word to the rest of the world found in the 20 remaining chapters. The vocabulary of seeing and hearing that is prevalent in these verses of the prologue is significant in that they provide an interpretive key for the rest of the Gospel as the specific ‘modus’ through which ‘the divinity of Christ is made known’ and ‘what will be seen throughout the rest of the Gospel’ (p. 138).
Finally, chapter 5 takes what has been explored in the first four chapters and applies their conclusions to the remainder of the Gospel, both in the relation of the Son to the Father in chapters 3–11 and in the concept of glorification in chapters 12–21. One of the principal virtues of this chapter – and indeed the monograph as a whole – is the attention it gives to the main themes of the Gospel, and the explanation of how Aquinas’s treatment of the text allows the reader to avoid being lost in the minutiae of individual pericopes, instead allowing the reader to marvel at the biblical author’s work as a unified and theologically edifying whole. The goal of the author here (as elsewhere) is achieved in demonstrating that ‘for Thomas the abundance of small expositions, quotations from patristic sources and discussion of details of the text of the Gospel that together are his commentary, form a unity that speaks of the divinity of Christ’ (p. 193).
At a pleasantly concise 227 pages (inclusive of footnotes, bibliography, and all), this book is a prime example of an emerging body of work in the genre of Biblical Thomism, renewing the academy’s focus and appreciation for the work of St. Thomas as a scholar and preacher of Sacred Scripture. If there is one criticism to be made – as the author himself touches on (cf. p. 203) – it is that a more illuminating portrait could have been drawn if the author had also made a comparison of St. Thomas’s divisio to the structures that contemporary biblical exegetes have seen emerging within the Gospel. For instance, how does the structure of John as seen by Aquinas compare to the structure as seen by Bultmann, Schnackenburg, or other Johannine scholars? While not germane to the exploration of Thomas’s hermeneutics per se, it would be an illuminating exercise akin to what the author does in his comparison with Albert and Bonaventure. Regardless of this (very) minor criticism, this is an excellent work of theology and criticism and is a welcome addition to the field of Thomistic studies and biblical theology.
