Reading John
with St. Thomas Aquinas
Reading John with
St.Thomas Aquinas
Theological Exegesis and
Speculative Theology
edited by
Michael Dauphinais and
Matthew Levering
The Catholic University of America Press • Washington, D.C.
Copyright © 2005
The Catholic University of America Press
All rights reserved
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standards for Information Science—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library materials,  ..
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                      -   -            
Reading John with St. Thomas Aquinas : theological exegesis and speculative theology / edited by
Michael Dauphinais and Matthew Levering.
p. cm.
Rev. and expanded versions of papers delivered at a conference sponsored by Ave Maria College
and the Aquinas Center for Theological Research.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
-: ---- (cloth : alk. paper)
-: --- (cloth : alk. paper)
. Bible. N.T. John—Criticism, interpretation, etc. . Thomas, Aquinas, Saint, ?–.
Super Evangelium S. Joannis lectura.
Webb, –
I. Dauphinais, Michael, –
II. Levering, Matthew
III. Title.
.. 
.´—dc

To Stephen F. Brown and David B. Burrell, C.S.C.
Contents
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction xiii
PART 1 . REV E L AT I O N
John F. Boyle
. Authorial Intention and the Divisio textus

Stephen F. Brown
. The Theological Role of the Fathers in Aquinas’s
Super Evangelium S. Ioannis Lectura 
PART 2 . T HE T RI U N E G O D
Gilles Emery, O.P.
. Biblical Exegesis and the Speculative Doctrine of the
Trinity in St. Thomas Aquinas’s Commentary on St. John
Bruce D. Marshall
. What Does the Spirit Have to Do?

Matthew Levering
. Does the Paschal Mystery Reveal the Trinity?

Michael Waldstein
. The Analogy of Mission and Obedience
A Central Point in the Relation between Theologia and
Oikonomia in St. Thomas Aquinas’s Commentary on John
PART 3. GOD AND THE WORLD
David B. Burrell, C.S.C.
. Creation in St. Thomas Aquinas’s Super Evangelium
S. Joannis Lectura 


viii Contents
Matthew L. Lamb
8. Eternity and Time in St. Thomas Aquinas’s Lectures
on St. John’s Gospel 
Steven A. Long
. Divine Providence and John 1:

PART 4 . T HE MO RA L L I F E
Carlo Leget
. The Concept of “Life” in the Commentary on St. John
Michael Sherwin, O.P.
. Christ the Teacher in St. Thomas’s Commentary on
the Gospel of John 
Janet E. Smith
. “Come and See” 
Richard Schenk, O.P
. And Jesus Wept
Notes towards a Theology of Mourning

PART 5 . T HE PE RS O N A N D WOR K
OF JESUS CHRIST
Benedict M. Ashley, O.P.
. The Extent of Jesus’ Human Knowledge according
to the Fourth Gospel 
Paul Gondreau
. Anti-Docetism in Aquinas’s Super Ioannem
St. Thomas as Defender of the Full Humanity of Christ
Pim Valkenberg
. Aquinas and Christ’s Resurrection
The Influence of the Lectura super Ioannem 20–21 on
the Summa theologiae



Contents ix
PART 6 . CHU RCH A N D S AC RA ME NTS
Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt
. “That the Faithful Become the Temple of God”
The Church Militant in Aquinas’s Commentary on John

Michael Dauphinais
. “And They Shall All Be Taught by God”
Wisdom and the Eucharist in John 

Serge-Thomas Bonino, O.P.
. The Role of the Apostles in the Communication of
Revelation according to the Lectura super Ioannem
of St. Thomas Aquinas 
About the Contributors 
Selected Bibliography 
Index 
Acknowledgments
=
First and foremost, we should thank the contributors to this volume,
whose dedicated scholarship made possible this book. The essays included in the volume are revised and expanded versions of papers delivered at a conference sponsored by Ave Maria College and the
Aquinas Center for Theological Renewal. To all who assisted in the
success of the conference, and to the numerous participants who made
it a memorable event, we extend our warm appreciation. Without the
support of Nicholas Healy Jr., now president of Ave Maria University,
and Dominic Aquila, then provost of Ave Maria College, the event
would never have come to pass. Betsy Dalton, Carole Carpenter, and
Diane Eriksen, among others, played an important role in orchestrating the conference, and merit recognition. Nancy Dauphinais and Joy
Levering were more than wonderful, as always; we owe a unique debt
to them. At The Catholic University of America Press, we owe profound thanks to David McGonagle and Gregory LaNave, who quickly recognized the importance of the volume, and to Susan Needham,
who assisted us in preparing it. We also offer our gratitude to the
broader community of scholars who care about the intersection of
biblical exegesis and systematic theology, and who value the insights of
our forebears in the faith. In this vein we wish to draw particular attention to the distinguished careers of our teachers and mentors,
Stephen F. Brown and David B. Burrell, C.S.C. Would that all students were privileged to have such caring and learned instructors in
the task of entering into the Church’s theological conversation. May
God continue to bless their lives and labors.
xi
Introduction
=
Like all medieval biblical commentaries, Aquinas’s Commentary on
John consists to a significant degree in speculative theological questioning inspired by the biblical text. Proceeding on the assumption
that it would not have been possible for St. John to have written what
he wrote without the ecclesial light of faith and without engaging
speculative questions, Aquinas’s commentary recommends a similar
movement in the thought of the biblical interpreter: speculative thinking about divine realities emerges from within biblical exegesis itself.
The circular movement from biblical exegesis to speculative theology
and back again must be a continual one for the health of both exegesis
and theology. The present volume, as a speculative theological commentary upon Aquinas’s biblical commentary, further displays the
fruits of this circular movement. By way of contributing to the reintegration of biblical studies and speculative theology, Reading John with
St. Thomas Aquinas seeks to illumine and recover the convergences between the scriptural words, exegetical commentary, and theological
analysis.
Insofar as biblical exegesis and speculative theology are distinct,
the essays in Reading John with St. Thomas Aquinas are the latter, as
speculative theological reflection upon St. Thomas’s biblical exegesis.
Yet the two tasks indwell one another. St. Thomas’s biblical exegesis is
constituted by his procedure of continually moving, within the exegetical task, from exegesis proper to speculative theological questioning and back again. In this dynamic process of exegesis, he brings to
bear not only parallel interpretive texts from throughout the Bible,
but also the accumulated insights of the Fathers. Biblical exegesis depends upon the exegete’s gifts as a speculative theologian, which in
turn depend upon the exegete’s acquaintance with not merely the particular text at hand but indeed the whole Scriptures as illumined in
faith by the Fathers and interpreted doctrinally by the Church. This
exapansive view of exegesis and of the exegete is justified by Aquinas’s
understanding of sacra scriptura as sacra doctrina, sacred teaching, in
which the Church’s teachers participate.
xiii
xiv Introduction
The present volume, therefore, should contribute to developing the rationale for contemporary exegetical approaches that interpret Scripture primarily through the historical lens of tradition and with a speculative intention. As a theological commentary, furthermore, Reading John with St.
Thomas Aquinas emphasizes the congruence of biblical exegesis and systematic theology in Aquinas’s thought by adopting the basic structure of Aquinas’s
Summa theologiae. A brief sketch of the contents of the volume will draw out
this pattern.
In the volume’s first section—on Revelation, taking up issues found in I,
q.1, of the Summa theologiae—John F. Boyle proposes, pace Beryl Smalley’s
view that Aquinas’s interest in the literal sense anticipates modern historicalcritical exegetical approaches, that Aquinas is actually not concerned to determine precisely what the author meant. Drawing upon the De potentia, Boyle
finds that Aquinas, influenced by Augustine, instead poses two negative principles for interpreting the literal sense: one cannot hold something contradictory to the truth, especially the truth of faith, to be the meaning of Scripture,
and one cannot insist upon one’s own interpretation if other interpretations
may be valid. These principles enable Thomas to admit that the literal sense
of a particular passage may admit of many meanings. Unlike modern biblical
exegetes, then, rather than pursue arduously the exact meaning of the literal
sense of a passage, St. Thomas uses the method of “divisio textus” to focus
upon the intention or goal with which the author wrote, namely the salvation
of human beings.
Stephen F. Brown seeks to uncover the role of Aquinas’s citations of the
Fathers in the Commentary on John. Drawing upon the work of the fourteenth-century theologians Durandus and the Franciscan Peter Aureoli, who
establish a distinction between deductive theology and declarative theology,
Brown surveys how Aquinas in the Commentary on John uses the work of the
Fathers to expose central articles of the faith. In contrast to Durandus and
other late thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century theologians, who considered Aquinas’s theology to be primarily an effort to deduce further truths
from the articles of faith, Brown argues (in agreement with Aureoli) that
Aquinas practices declarative theology, that is, theology whose purpose is to
defend, clarify, and explain the articles of faith. Examining both the Commentary and Aquinas’s numerous discussions elsewhere about the nature of
theology, Brown shows that Aquinas’s practice of declarative theology relies
heavily upon his use of the Fathers.
The second section of the volume concerns the triune God. Gilles Emery,
O.P. analyzes the relationship of biblical exegesis and speculative theology
Introduction xv
within the Commentary on John. Emery compares the trinitarian content
of the Commentary on John with that of the Summa theologiae. Treating
Aquinas’s trinitarian theology as a whole, Emery shows that with the exception of questions 2 and , Aquinas discusses in rich detail the themes of
every question from Summa theologiae I, qq.2–, in his Commentary on
John. Aquinas’s exegesis addresses speculative considerations about the Son
and his generation, the Spirit and his procession, the Father, the equality of
the divine persons, and the mission of the persons. Indeed, Emery finds that
the speculative teaching of the Commentary is at certain points, especially
the doctrine of the Word and the soteriological dimension of trinitarian theology, significantly more developed than in the Summa theologiae; yet the
Commentary confirms and deepens, rather than alters, what we learn from
the speculative synthesis in the Summa. Above all, Emery’s thorough comparison makes clear that biblical theology and speculative theology are not
separated by St. Thomas. For Aquinas, to comment adequately upon the
meaning of Scripture requires engaging speculative questions, that is to say,
requires the habitus of the theologian.
Bruce D. Marshall investigates Aquinas’s account of the action of the Holy
Spirit in light of the unity of the triune God’s acts ad extra. In response to the
common argument that Latin trinitarian theology is marred by a “pneumatological deficit,” Marshall first demonstrates that Aquinas’s Commentary on
John reserves an important role for the Spirit’s action. Marshall identifies the
numerous places in the Commentary where the Spirit’s action, irreducible to
Christ’s, is emphasized by Aquinas. Aquinas, Marshall shows, focuses on two
actions of the Spirit in particular: making us adopted children of the Father
and manifesting to us the truth. Having established the uniqueness and
spontaneity of the Spirit’s action according to the Commentary, Marshall
then inquires into the effect of the axiom that the works of the Trinity ad extra are undivided and common to the three Persons. Drawing in particular
upon Peter Geach’s notion of relative identity, he inquires into how one
might conceive of Aquinas’s doctrine of appropriations in the most convincing way. If each of the divine Persons takes part distinctly in the one divine
action ad extra, is the divine action still one? Marshall concludes that here we
have reached a limitation of the human modus significandi in our efforts to articulate the action of the triune God. While we can correctly assert that the
divine Persons are identical with the divine essence yet not with each other,
we cannot clearly understand how this can be the case.
Matthew Levering and Michael Waldstein both seek to place Aquinas’s
theological insights in his Commentary on John within the context of con-
xvi Introduction
cerns brought to the fore by the thought of Hans Urs von Balthasar. In light
of the concern of contemporary biblical exegetes and theologians that discourse about the Trinity be grounded in the concrete revelation of God
through the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, Levering argues
that Aquinas’s Commentary on John makes clear that for Aquinas the Paschal
mystery reveals the Son as perfect self-gift and therefore as the perfect image
of the Father in the Holy Spirit. Levering begins by analyzing the view of the
biblical exegete N. T. Wright, who argues that Greek metaphysics prevented
classical Christian thinkers from recognizing the radical redescription of
“god” made necessary by revelation. In Wright’s view, Western theology has
suffered from a “kyriarchal” understanding of God that conceived of God as
aloof and uninvolved, despite the Cross. Levering suggests that Aquinas’s
Commentary on John, far from instantiating such an aloof god, presents the
Paschal mystery as the highest revelation of the self-giving constitutive of the
Trinity. Levering argues that Aquinas’s understanding of the Paschal mystery
fits the biblical data better than does the idea, increasingly popular today, that
the Cross signals an intra-divine rupture bridged by the Holy Spirit.
Michael Waldstein examines the concepts of mission and obedience in the
Commentary on John, and argues that “obedience” may be analogically applied to the Son in his eternal relation (of love) to the Father. Waldstein explores how the divine economy (Oikonomia) reveals the immanent Trinity
(Theologia) by focusing our attention upon passages in the Gospel of John
that unite the two. The mission and obedience of the Son in the Oikonomia,
Waldstein finds, provides an analogy for the immanent personhood of the
Son in the Theologia, because mission cannot be separated from the note of
obedience. Although Waldstein recognizes that Aquinas regularly distinguishes Christ’s obedience as belonging to his human will, rather than to his
divine will (since will is one in God), nonetheless Waldstein identifies passages that appear to indicate that obedience may also be applied analogously
to Christ in his divinity. In the Commentary on John, Waldstein notes,
Aquinas describes the Father’s generation of the Word as a communication
that, in a sense, commands what the Word speaks. The Word himself is thus
“obedient,” both within the Trinity and in his temporal mission, to this generative command. As adopted sons in the Son, human beings come to share,
by the Holy Spirit, in this obedient Sonship.
The third section of the volume, following the order of the Summa theologiae, addresses God and creation. David B. Burrell, C.S.C. treats the theology
of creation from the perspective of Aquinas’s Commentary on John. Burrell argues that Aquinas in the Summa theologiae uses philosophical and theological
Introduction xvii
arguments in an inextricably intertwined manner, rather than doing philosophy at one point and theology at another. Surveying the (highly philosophical) discussions in the Commentary on John of “Verbum” and the act of creation, Burrell identifies a similarly rich interplay of philosophical and
theological argumentation. He focuses his attention upon Aquinas’s investigation of the meaning of the Johannine “Logos” or “Verbum.” If the act of
knowing always involves the generation of a “word,” Burrell asks, does John’s
use of this name for the Son make God’s triunity accessible to reason?
Aquinas shows that the answer is no: The divine knowing, as a supreme
knowing-by-identity, does not necessarily require the expression of a word.
Thus the philosophical analogy serves divine revelation by illumining its cogency and the fittingness of John’s inspired language. As Burrell shows,
Aquinas then undertakes a similar analysis of John’s testimony that all things
are created “through” the Word, in which Aquinas uses philosophical argumentation to preserve the radical distinction between God’s creative activity
and the efficient causality of creatures, thereby underscoring the non-duality
of God and creatures. Without being able to grasp it fully in a concept, we
can affirm with Aquinas the supreme causality of God that enables him to
cause free creatures who depend entirely upon his causality.
Matthew L. Lamb engages the theme of eternity and time as understood
by Aquinas in the Commentary. The metaphysical and the historical, Lamb
notes, are often contrasted as if the former were merely “conceptual” while
the latter was “concrete.” In contrast, Aquinas recognizes that metaphysics
describes realities that are the basis for the reality possessed by finite history.
Concerned especially to illumine the mystery of the eternal Word incarnate
in time, Lamb reviews the history of philosophical speculation on eternity
and time, focusing upon the breakthroughs achieved by Augustine, Boethius,
and Aquinas, who move beyond the Platonic and Plotinian antithesis of the
eternal and the temporal. Lamb argues that realist metaphysics, as exemplified by Aquinas in his analysis of the mind and its knowing, alone enables us
to grasp the meaning of the passages in the Gospel of John about the divine
Word and about the relation of the spatio-temporal universe to the Word incarnate. Only such a metaphysics can move beyond our tendency to envision
reality solely in terms of extension and duration. Thus Lamb notes how, for
Aquinas, Arius’s and Sabellius’s errors stemmed from their failure to grasp the
processions in God in immaterial terms. Similarly, since eternity, properly
understood, is not “before” time, Aquinas is able to expose the intimate presence of the incarnate Word, according to St. John, in all time.
Steven A. Long examines God’s Providence and human freedom in light
xviii Introduction
of John 1:, “Without me you can do nothing.” Long points out that these
words of Jesus refer not only to Jesus in his humanity, but also to Jesus in his
divinity. We can do nothing without the divine Word. It follows, as Aquinas
teaches in many places, that God’s causality is absolute. In arguing that there
is only Pure Act and created act, with literally nothing in between, Long addresses some of the thorny questions that arise from a strong doctrine of divine Providence. If God causes everything, are human beings free? Long
notes that divine causality must not be conceived as coercive or violent.
Rather, God, unlike any created efficient cause, moves contingent things contingently. Distinguishing between self-determination and absolute independence, Long shows that creatures are never free of God’s causality in the sense
of absolute independence, and yet our free acts are truly self-determination.
For Long, therefore, evil is the relinquishing by God of the creature to its
own defectibility for the sake of a higher good—contrary to contemporary
efforts to treat “nothingness,” negation, and deprivation in the creature as
though they were themselves beings. Long concludes by connecting this understanding of divine causality and human freedom to the relationship of divine Providence and natural law. Building upon the work of Russell Hittinger, Long points out that a metaphysics of moral action that supposes that
human agency is in some way outside divine causality breaks the link between divine Providence and natural law. The metaphysical error has as its
consequence the notion of an alien God who threatens, rather than authors
and perfects, human freedom and virtue.
Section four concerns the moral life. Seeking a theologically rich avenue
for investigating the multiple facets of Aquinas’s understanding of “life,” Carlo Leget shows that Aquinas’s Prologue to the Commentary provides, as
might be expected given its place as a hermeneutical framework for the Commentary, an evocative lens through which to explore the concept. By employing Aquinas’s Prologue as a lens, Leget exposes how Aquinas sets forth the relationship of temporal life to the eternal life that the divine Word, as St. John
repeatedly emphasizes, shares with us. Leget finds that Aquinas, in marked
contrast to the modern world, orders corporeal (temporal) life to spiritual
(eternal) life. This way of understanding “life” in the Gospel has hermeneutical consequences for the entire reading of Scripture. For Aquinas, the Gospel
should be read as a continual call to conversion, to renewing one’s inner, spiritual life by means of the biblical and Eucharistic Word. Drawing upon Ricoeur and Stephen Fowl, Leget shows that this understanding of the spiritual
ordering of “life” also informs Aquinas’s understanding of the spiritual sense
as necessary for entering into the tradition of Catholic reading of Scripture.
Introduction xix
Leget thereby demonstrates the significance of Aquinas’s scriptural exegesis
for renewing contemporary biblical exegesis.
Michael Sherwin, O.P. and Janet E. Smith both take up the theme of how
moral education occurs. Sherwin does this by exploring the Commentary’s
presentation of the theme of Christ the teacher. Aquinas presents Christ, the
Holy Spirit, and the Father as teachers (masters) who instruct us through interior and exterior teaching. Discipleship, then, is a “divine apprenticeship”
by means of faith and the other virtues, which we learn from Christ and to
which the Father draws us. This understanding of the role of the “Magister,”
which centers upon wisdom, differs greatly from modern emphases on power. Sherwin discusses how Aquinas’s Commentary depicts the disciples’
growth in faith under the instruction of Christ’s pedagogy (his words, deeds,
and example). By means of the teaching of Christ, the Holy Spirit, and the
Father, we are drawn and attracted to wisdom, rather than impelled by extrinsic power. As Sherwin notes, for Aquinas therefore the Last Supper and
the Cross constitute the summit of this teaching, which is received by those
who are formed in charity by the Holy Spirit. Christ teaches ultimately by his
suffering and sacrifice, because his teaching is wisdom, not extrinsic or arbitrary power. Those whom Christ instructs become his friends, in the deepest
sense of friendship, and are thus enabled to teach others about wisdom and
charity. The teacher (Christ) becomes, as the perfect embodiment of divine
wisdom and charity, what is taught.
Janet E. Smith attends to a related question raised by the Commentary:
Why is it that some hear this teaching, and others do not? Her answer has to
do with moral connaturality. She reminds us that we should not expect
Aquinas’s use of Aristotle to be absent from his commentary on Scripture.
Identifying Aristotle’s understanding of habituation as a key to Aquinas’s depiction of the moral life, she argues that Aquinas in the Commentary on John
emphasizes that whether individuals follow Jesus depends significantly upon
whether they are formed by the moral virtues. As both Aristotle and Scripture
point out, “like knows like.” To put it in terms of the medieval axiom, “what
is received, is received according to the mode of the receiver.” It follows,
Smith holds, that moral goodness assists one in making right judgments
about all aspects of reality. On the basis of a close reading of passages in the
commentary, she concludes that without moral goodness, it may well be that
one cannot even recognize the truth that is Christ. The disciple John, as understood by Aquinas, is a prime example: because of his charity, he is able to
see further into the mysteries of Christ. Similarly, Aquinas repeatedly comments that wicked people, caught up in the love of the world, are unable to
xx Introduction
recognize Christ. Since the distortion of the will in vice clouds the intellect,
the encounter with Christ that leads to conversion proceeds differently in
people depending upon whether they have acquired the moral virtues. In
elaborating this point about the moral condition of Christ’s interlocutors,
Smith guides us through Aquinas’s interpretation of the central stories of conversion in the Gospel of John.
The section on the moral life begins with “life” and ends, appropriately,
with death and the theology of mourning. Contrasting the Christian ambivalence about death with Stoic and neo-Platonic certainties, Richard Schenk,
O.P. discusses Aquinas’s anthropology in light of his treatment, in the Commentary on John, of the sadness of Christ, especially Christ’s mourning for
Lazarus in John 11. Schenk first discusses Augustine’s ambivalent attitude toward mourning in his Confessions, and then turns to Aquinas’s theological anthropology, whose holistic scope provides Aquinas with the resources to take
seriously mourning for the loss of a fully human life. Building upon the systematic and historical contributions of Norbert Luyten, Anton Charles Pegis,
and Mary F. Rousseau, Schenk develops by means of an analysis of the Commentary on John a theology of mourning not only for death but also for sin
and injustice as losses of properly human goods. Schenk focuses upon
Aquinas’s treatment of passages in the Gospel that include the verb tarásso, to
shake or disturb, especially regarding Jesus’ distress at the death of his friends,
disciples, and himself, beginning with John 11. Schenk compares Aquinas’s
interpretation to those of modern exegetes such as Bultmann and Schnackenburg. Whereas Bultmann denies that St. John intends to imply that Christ
experienced sadness, Schnackenburg and Aquinas affirm it. Attending to the
five reasons that Aquinas gives at different times for the fittingness of Jesus’
sadness, Schenk explores the resources that Aquinas’s account provides for
contemporary understandings of the Church’s relationship to the goods of
this life.
The fifth section treats the Person of Christ. Benedict M. Ashley, O.P. discusses the Christological contribution of Aquinas’s Commentary on John as an
alternative to the view of Gerald O’Collins, S.J. and Daniel Kendall, S.J.
(among many others) that Jesus possessed faith, not the vision of God. After
reviewing the difficulties with Aquinas’s position, as well as relevant magisterial texts, Ashley notes that Aquinas, despite being well aware of the difficulties, consistently held that Christ possessed the vision. The Commentary on
John, in Ashley’s view, assists us in understanding why Aquinas continued to
affirm this position. Ashley pays particular attention to Aquinas’s comments
on John’s affirmation that Christ was, in his earthly life, full of grace and
Introduction xxi
truth. Aquinas approaches the Incarnation as a mystery that must be described in light of Christ’s salvific mission, including the role that he possesses in his humanity as Head (that is, fount of grace) of his mystical Body. Given the mystery of the Incarnation, Christology must avoid the temptation to
conform Christ to our expectations of what constitutes human nature in such
a way as to deprive him of the fullness of his status as Head. Examining texts
from both the Commentary and the Summa theologiae, Ashley argues that
Christ’s headship requires a fullness of grace and truth compatible only with
vision: Christ’s humanity is the source, during his earthly life as well as after
the resurrection, of beatitude in us. Ashley responds to a wide range of views
that argue that possession of vision would be incompatible with Christ’s
earthly humanity. Suggesting that Christ’s vision is analogous to the highest
level of mystical experience, Ashley concludes that the vision would have enhanced, not destroyed, Christ’s freedom, and would have enabled Christ to
possess the self-awareness of his divinity that he exhibits in the Gospels.
Also treating Christ’s human nature, Paul Gondreau identifies the centrality, in the Commentary, of Aquinas’s anti-docetic Christology, his critique of
those tendencies in Christian thought that seek to deny the full humanity of
Christ. As Gondreau points out, Aquinas’s realist account of the Incarnation
enables him to defend Christ’s full human consubstantiality, to offer a credible depiction of Jesus in his humanity, and to defend the real presence of
Christ in the Eucharist (John ). Proposing that Aquinas’s exegesis provides a
model for contemporary efforts to unite biblical exegesis and speculative theology, Gondreau demonstrates that Aquinas’s attention to Christ’s humanity
flows from his theological exegesis of Scripture and is aided by his Aristotelian metaphysics of human nature. As is well known, the docetist heresies
turn upon the question of whether the divinity could enter truly into substantial union with a material reality. Elucidating John 1:1, “And the Word
was made flesh,” Aquinas affirms that such an event indeed has happened. In
the Commentary on John, as in the Summa theologiae, Aquinas emphasizes the
soteriological significance of Christ’s flesh, in particular his bodily suffering
(passion) and resurrection: Christ’s humanity is the “instrument” of his divinity, and so it is through his real humanity that we receive the grace of eternal life. In order for there to be a Mystical Body, Christ must first truly possess a fleshly body, as well as a full rational soul. He must therefore possess
real passions, without manifesting the moral effects of sin. After surveying the
manifold texts in the Commentary that reveal Aquinas’s concern to refute docetic heresies in order to display the salvific truth that Jesus’ human actions
are real rather than illusory, Gondreau concludes by extending this insight to
xxii Introduction
Aquinas’s exegesis of John : the real presence of Christ’s body and blood in
the Eucharist depends upon the incarnate reality of Christ’s historical body.
Pim Valkenberg addresses the Commentary’s treatment of Christ’s resurrected body. Valkenberg, indebted to Michel Corbin, identifies links between
Aquinas’s Commentary and his Summa theologiae as regards the theology of
Christ’s resurrection. While praising Aquinas for recognizing that John is a
theologian whose aim is to speak about Christ not simply in his humanity
but also in his divinity, Valkenberg cautions that Aquinas’s Commentary on
John should be read in light of his other biblical commentaries in order to
avoid theological misconceptions that might arise from reading John’s Gospel
alone. Valkenberg focuses his study upon Aquinas’s interpretation of John 20
and 21 in comparison with Summa theologiae III, qq. –, where Aquinas
systematically explores Christ’s resurrection. He shows that Aquinas’s exegesis
combines two medieval genres, expositio and quaestio: In Aquinas’s exposition
of the biblical text, he frequently pauses to explore certain questions in a
speculative manner. Likewise, although the Summa theologiae is composed of
a series of quaestiones, Valkenberg finds a marked influence of the genre of expositio upon the Summa, due to Aquinas’s increasing familiarity with Scripture over the course of his career. Examining ways in which Aquinas’s Commentary on John may have influenced his theology of the resurrection in the
Summa theologiae, Valkenberg identifies the Summa as a prime exemplar of
biblical theology.
The sixth and final section of the volume treats the Church. Although
Aquinas did not write a treatise on the Church, Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt reminds us that we should expect to learn something about the
Church from the Commentary on John, since Aquinas in the Prologue to
the Commentary writes that the “end” or goal of the Gospel of John is “that
the faithful become the temple of God and be filled with the majesty of God”
by coming to understand the humanity and divinity of Christ. Bauerschmidt
explores the significance of contemplation in the Commentary, showing that
Aquinas ties contemplative life, modeled by John, intimately to sanctification
through the sacramental and ascetical practices of the Church, by participating in which we become the Church as the community of friends of God. In
the same vein, Bauerschmidt explores Christ’s “theandric” teaching, in which
his divine Person is communicated to his disciples. Christ and the Holy Spirit make the Church to be an “army” whose emblem is love and humility,
made visible by concrete practices. These practices include works of mercy as
well as the apostolic ordering of the community. Bauerschmidt further shows
how St. Thomas’s exegetical method (his pattern of integrating speculative
Introduction xxiii
theology into exegesis by means of careful divisio textus) conforms with John’s
own speculative structuring of the gospel narrative. Bauerschmidt concludes
by reflecting upon the Church’s holiness and unworthiness, in light of the
goal of the Church, salvation—a goal that no human community can bring
about, but that requires the return of the Lord. For Bauerschmidt, Aquinas
models the way in which theologians recognize the Church to be holy without Platonically instantiating a Church other than the concrete Church of
saints and sinners.
Michael Dauphinais explores the insights of St. Thomas’s interpretation of
John  as an alternative to the interpretation of Raymond Brown. In Brown’s
view, the Bread of Life discourse in John  is composed of two strands: John
:–0 forms the original discourse, to which John :1– is a later addition. The former is primarily sapiential, whereas the latter is Eucharistic.
Dauphinais argues that Aquinas unites the sapiential and Eucharistic dimensions of the Bread of Life discourse, thereby displaying the literary and theological unity of John . Aquinas achieves this unity because of his theological
understanding of Christ’s Incarnation: as the incarnate Word, Christ is spiritual or sapiential food. If the Eucharist is not received as divine Wisdom,
then its grace unto eternal life is not received. Yet, this spiritual food comes to
us, because of our epistemological reliance upon sensibles, as the incarnate
One, in the Eucharistic body and blood. By integrating a speculative theological approach with a literary exegetical approach, Aquinas thus brings together what Brown sees as disparate.
Serge-Thomas Bonino, O.P. in the concluding essay of the volume, meditates upon perhaps the most striking aspect of the Church: God has chosen
human beings, with all their faults and imperfections, to communicate the
Revelation that comes from God in Jesus Christ. Revelation comes from
Christ the Teacher, but is mediated by human teachers. God’s teaching reaches its perfection when those to whom it is communicated can also teach it.
God communicates to creatures a share in his own perfection. In exploring
this mystery of faith as articulated in Aquinas’s Commentary on John, Bonino
begins with Christ’s human knowledge. For Christ, in his human nature, to
be the source of divine teaching, his human mind must be replete with the
knowledge of the truth about God. The apostles have a direct and preeminent participation in Jesus’ knowledge. For this reason, the Church is founded upon the faith of the apostles. Having established these basic points, Bonino proceeds to elaborate the Commentary’s profound theology of the
apostolic ministry, with special attention to how Aquinas’s interpretation is
shaped by his practice of interpreting Scripture through other texts of Scrip-
xxiv Introduction
ture as well as through the Fathers, by the role played in his conceptual analysis by the metaphysics of causality and participation, and by his view of the
apostles as archetypes of the Christian spiritual life to be imitated by the
young Dominicans to whom Aquinas was lecturing.
A final note: The text of the Commentary on John is a reportatio. During
Aquinas’s second period of teaching in Paris, between 120 and 122, his
faithful scribe and Dominican brother, Reginald of Piperno, copied it down
from Aquinas’s lectures. At the time Aquinas was in his mid forties, and as a
“Master of the Sacred Page,” he had the primary duty of teaching Scripture.
We have Aquinas’s Dominican brothers also to thank for the preservation of
the Commentary on John, as Reginald tells us by way of introducing his reportatio. Aquinas delivered these lectures just as he was beginning the tertia pars
of the Summa theologiae, that is, the section on Christ and the sacraments.1
The English text of the Commentary, translated by Fabian Larcher, O.P.
and James Weisheipl, O.P., that is used in Reading John with St. Thomas
Aquinas (along with the Marietti version of the Latin text), is not a critical
edition. The translators used the Parma, Vivès, and Marietti editions; the
French critical edition by M.-D. Philippe, in contrast, benefits from the corrections made to the first eight chapters by the Leonine commission (the
Leonine edition remains incomplete).2 Weisheipl points out that the Commentary was a popular one in the medieval period, with the result that
“[s]cattered throughout the world there still exist thirty-three complete and
thirteen incomplete manuscript copies of this work.”3
Although Bartholomew of Capua, Tolomeo of Lucca, and Bernard Gui,
all early biographers of Aquinas, state that Aquinas himself revised this reportatio for publication, the most recent intellectual biography of Aquinas, that
of Torrell, argues against this possibility. Nonetheless, Torrell notes that this
reportatio is particularly carefully done.4 As to its theological value, Torrell
classifies the Commentary on John, along with those on Job and Romans, as
Aquinas’s most significant. Quoting M.-D. Philippe, who translated and edited the Commentary (through Book VIII) in French, Torrell remarks that
some “do not hesitate to say that it holds among them [the biblical commen1. Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P., Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol. 1: The Person and His Work, trans.
Robert Royal (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1), 1.
2. See Torrell, 200 n. .
. James A. Weisheipl, Introduction, in Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Gospel of St.
John, Part 1, trans. James A. Weisheipl and Fabian R. Larcher (Albany: Magi Books, 10), .
. Ibid., 1. Weisheipl accepts the testimony of the early biographers that Aquinas corrected this Commentary and even wrote out himself the first five chapters. See ibid., , .
Introduction 
taries] a ‘unique place,’ and that we could even say that it is ‘the theological
work par excellence by Saint Thomas.’ This statement can be explained if we
recall that ‘John’s gospel contains the ultimate in revelation.’ .l.l. Thomas reveals himself here as one of the contemplatives of whom St. John is the model.”5
. Ibid., 200–201.