Every university in the Middle Ages had a limited number of chairs, or professorships, for the masters to occupy. At the time of St. Thomas, there were twelve chairs of theology at the University of Paris, the Dominicans having two of them. Before occupying one of these chairs, the student had to have devoted many long years to study and actual discussions, or “disputations,” in the university, He had to be at least thirty-five years old before meriting the title of “Master of the Sacred Page” and the right to expound the Bible in an authoritative manner as a true theologian, professionally qualified.
St. Thomas was twice professor of theology at Paris—a fact most unusual in itself. There were very few such cases where a fully fledged master would return to his old chair, thus preventing a new master from occupying it. But the intellectual, social, and religious climate in Paris at that time demanded the return of Thomas to the center of all theological learning in Europe. The new mendicant Orders (mainly Dominicans and Franciscans) were again being attacked by secular (i.e., diocesan) masters of theology, and their right to teach, preach, and beg was challenged by some of the most powerful voices in Europe. The center of this controversy Was the University of Paris, where the very existence of Dominicans and Franciscans was under fire. At the climax of this renewed attack, the second in the history of the Dominican Order, St. Thomas was recalled to Paris by the Master General of the Dominican Order, Blessed John of Vercelli. Thomas arrived in Paris with his companion Reginald in the cold winter of 1269 after the academic term had begun. Immediately Thomas took upon himself the duties of a master in theology, namely, lecturing on a carefully chosen book of the Bible, presiding at academic “disputations” and resolving the question under discussion, and preaching to the university crowd. At the same time, he was composing the Second Part of his Summa theologiae, which he had begun in Rome two years earlier, and dictating a number of literal commentaries on various works of Aristotle for young masters in arts, that is, teachers in the Faculty of Arts, whose duty it was to expound the text of Aristotle. During the two and a half years Thomas spent at Paris the second time, he successfully defended the rights of mendicants to teach, preach, and flourish. During this same Parisian regency he lectured on the Gospel of St. John.
These lectures on John would have been lost to posterity had not the faithful Reginald taken notes, which were later “corrected” by Thomas himself. The reason Thomas “corrected” Reginald’s transcription was that a wealthy secular (i.e., diocesan) student wanted a copy for himself. This student was Adenulf of Anagni, an Italian cleric, provost of Saint-Omer (since 1264), later master in theology (1282-85), and canon of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. Adenulf, a student of Thomas during the years 1269-72, offered a considerable amount of money to have a professional scribe make a copy of this remarkable commentary for himself. Without Adenulf’s enthusiasm and money, the “lectures” ( lecturae ) on John would have remained a simple report, or reportatio. If it had not been for Reginald, apparently, these lectures would have gone completely from history. But the fact is that we do have at hand the acute mind of Thomas Aquinas, a master theologian and saint, on the Gospel of St. John. This commentary reflects the mind of Thomas at its peak, but before he composed the Third Part of the Summa dealing with Christ, the Sacraments, and the Church. It is a scholastic analysis of St. John’s remarkable testimony of the Good News of Salvation, namely, that the Word became flesh, died for our salvation, and is now risen from the dead to come again as our merciful judge.
Earlier, at the request of his intimate friend Pope Urban IV, Thomas had compiled a continuous gloss on all four Gospels, which he had collated from the Latin and Greek Fathers of the Church. Frequently he even instigated new translations of Greek sources, as he himself confessed in the prologue. This continuous gloss, popularly called the Catena Aurea, or “Golden Chain,” was not finished when Urban died in 1264. But Thomas continued his labors on the gloss, which he completed in 1267 and dedicated to Cardinal Annibaldo d’Annibaldi, Thomas’ close friend and former pupil at Paris. The intense labor on the Gospel of John for the Catena molded the mind of Thomas in his personal understanding of the Sacred Text of John. St. John’s Gospel is very difficult to understand. Unlike the Synoptic writers, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, St. John’s Gospel is a carefully devised presentation of his personal understanding of the sacred doctrine taught by Jesus, on whose breast he reclined at the Last Supper. John was always known as “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” For St. Thomas, John, the Son of Zebedee, the author of this Gospel, was a virgin, whose appropriate symbol is the eagle soaring in the heights of contemplation. Thomas’ detailed study of the Latin and Greek Fathers, needed to complete his Gloss on John, prepared him to shed his own light on the text when the opportune moment arrived. That moment arrived when Thomas returned to Paris for the second time (1269-72) at the age of about forty-four, full of strength and vigor.
But his is a typical medieval commentary because, unlike Patristic, monastic, and modern commentaries on John, it utilizes certain techniques familiar to all in the Middle Ages, but strange to us today. First of all, it is a theological commentary concerned with penetrating the literal sense of the words recorded, and seeing through the literal sense to the spiritual. The medieval university theologian was primarily concerned with the literal sense of scripture, that is, with the sacred message intended by the human and divine author. It is therefore primarily concerned with “the theological teaching” of the Bible. St. Thomas did not have at his disposal the infinitely varied techniques of modern biblical scholarship. He knew almost nothing about biblical and near-eastern languages, archeology, philology, comparative religion, and the historical method. If he had, he would most certainly have used them. In the Encyclical Divino afflante Spiritu (30 Sept. 1943), Pope Pius XII urged the importance of textual criticism, biblical and oriental languages, archeology, profane and sacred history, as well as form criticism and the demands of a sound historical method. He noted with the Angelic Doctor that “in Scripture divine things are presented to us in the manner which is in common use amongst men.” The Bible is the Word of God in the words of men, and this manner of speaking in various ages to various people must be carefully studied with all the auxiliary sciences. But even after all this has been tended to, there is still “the theological doctrine” contained in the Sacred Books. The modem exegete should use every means available to discover and explain “the literal sense and especially the theological. “ It is this “theological sense” (sensus theologicus), expounded by St. Thomas in his commentary, that is most fruitful for our meditation, prayer, and preaching the Word of God today.
The literal sense, as St. Thomas teaches, is the objective, formal, and direct meaning intended by the words in the sacred and inspired text. The author of these words is both God and man, since the Bible is “the inspired Word of God.” Modem biblical techniques, of course, were unknown to Thomas. All he had was his personal copy of the Latin Vulgate (which was not a critical edition), the familiar teaching of all the Latin and Greek Fathers known to him, his own prayerful reflection on the text, and his native genius attentive to the Spirit of God and to the text. Among the human means Thomas had at his disposal were grammar, logic, and Aristotelian philosophy. The literal (or historical) sense was in principle the only basis of theological thought and discussion. The spiritual sense only enlarged, or extended, the basic literal sense. By “spiritual sense” we do not mean the pious, personal, private, and subjective sense a reader might derive from a prayerful reading of the text. Rather, the “spiritual sense” is the enlarged reality “intended” by person, place, or thing signified in the literal, as when the brazen serpent raised by Moses in the desert is taken to signify Christ’s crucifixion as the divine means of healing mankind, or when the paschal lamb is taken to signify Christ who was sacrificed for our sins. The “spiritual sense” is the enlarged sense “intended” by a given symbol in the plan of divine providence.
Since only God as the author of all things can make one symbol significative of another reality, the Bible is the only book that can contain a “spiritual sense” as it was understood by medieval theologians. Consequently only the sacred author himself can inform us of the existence of such a sense. We could never know that one reality is to be taken as a symbol of another reality unless the Sacred Author so informs us in the literal sense. For example, the author of the Book of Numbers (21:19) explains how Moses was directed to make a brazen “serpent” and set it up as a sign; whoever was bitten by one of the fiery serpents and “looked at the sign” that Moses had set up was saved from death. But it is John (3:14 15) who explains that “as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of man be lifted up that whoever believes in him may not perish, but may have life everlasting.” The significance of Old Testament texts is declared by the sacred writer when he explains Christ’s actions as being “in fulfillment of the Scriptures.” Similarly St. Paul frequently reveals the “spiritual sense” of the Law and Prophets by declaring the Christian fulfillment in Jesus.
There were three kinds of spiritual sense recognized by medieval theologians: the allegorical, the moral, and the anagogical. When anything in the Old Testament was taken to signify something in the New Testament, this sense was called allegorical. Under this sense would be included all those figures, persons, and events as symbolic of Jesus and his life and death on earth. When anything in the life of Jesus is taken as a model for our life, we call this the moral sense. Under this sense would be included all those virtues presented to us for our imitation of Christ. When anything in the Scriptures is taken to signify something in the eternal kingdom hereafter, for example, “the new Jerusalem,” we call this the anagogical sense. Thus the “spiritual sense” of a passage was taken to be an objective meaning intended by the sacred author, the Holy Spirit. This, of course, presupposes that the authors of the New Testament were inspired by the Holy Spirit.
Whatever personal message one may derive from reading the Bible prayerfully and thoughtfully is purely personal and beyond the science of theology as the study of God’s message to mankind. The personal message is most significant for the reader, but this personal significance must be carefully controlled by objective theological norms such as the Christian faith, sacred doctrine, the constant teaching of the Church, and a prayerful listening to the Holy Spirit.
The most difficult technique of medieval commentators for us to comprehend is the use of logic and the “scholastic method.” Aristotelian logic is the most significant technique contained in the scholastic method. The purpose of the scholastic method was to instill “scientific” knowledge through (1) definition, (2) division, and (3) demonstration, or demonstrative proof. These techniques (or modi sciendi) were taken for granted by every medieval theologian as the best means of learning the truth about anything. It was a method of teaching, the via docendi, which was an imitation of the “way of discovery” (via inveniendi or inventionis). The goal of all education is truth. The goal of theological education is an understanding of the doctrines of revelation, the sacra doctrina . It is faith seeking understanding ( fides quaerens intellectum ), as St. Anselm puts it, The scholastic method, in a sense, is artificial and humanly contrived by ineans of logic. In the Middle Ages the scholastic method was thought to be the best way of learning everything from A to Z. An example of this method of learning is embedded in Thomas’ commentary on John’s Gospel. It cannot be eliminated. Therefore it depends on us moderns to bend a little by trying to see through it, and not be put off by it. Always one will find definitions, divisions, and proofs in all medieval commentaries, whether they be on Aristotle, Boethius, or the Bible.
The Scholastics had a penchant for order; where none existed, one was imposed. Heeding the words of Aristotle that “it belongs to the wise man to order,” they thought the prerogative of a good teacher was to order all things well, setting out the message, or truth to be conveyed, in an orderly and fitting way. This is why the first thing one notices when reading a medieval commentary is the division, or the ordering of the whole into parts. The least one can perceive is a beginning, a middle, and an end. But more than not, one can usually perceive some orderly procedure in the middle.
Modern biblical scholars usually see in, St. John’s Gospel a prologue (1:1-14), a middle (cc. 1-20), and an epilogue (c. 21). They then proceed to divide the middle into the Book of Signs (cc. 1-12) and the Book of Glory (cc. 13-20). St. Thomas also divides the Gospel into roughly these two parts, but he considers chapter 12 as belonging to the Book of Glory, because the chapter opens “six days before Passover” with the anointing of the feet of Jesus for his burial (12:1 -11), continues on to the triumphal entry into Jerusalem (12:12-19), builds to the coming of the Greeks (12:20-22), and the long discourse of Jesus in which he cries out, “Father, glorify your name” (12:28). In any case, it is particularly in this second part that Thomas had to use his ingenuity to resolve the discrepancies between John and the Synoptics. The Synoptics compress the public life of Jesus into one year with the one tragic journey of Jesus up to Jerusalem, where he is crucified and dies, to be raised up on the third day. John extends the public life of Jesus into three years with the final year ending in his passion, death, and resurrection. St. Thomas is very much concerned with the literal, or historical, sense of the narrative, especially as concerns the passion, death, and resurrection of the Lord. Throughout the whole exposition of the narrative, Thomas relied heavily on the interpretation of the Fathers of the Church, both Latin and Greek. He quotes the authority of St. Augustine 373 times, St. John Chrysostom 217 times, and Origen 95 times. It is an exposition that relies heavily on the tradition of the Church and on his own prayerful theological reflections.
In the commentary on St. John’s Gospel, Thomas is concerned not only with the literal sense, which for him is of Prime importance and concern, but also with the spiritual sense, as explained above. More than the other Evangelists, John reveals the “fulfillment of the Scriptures,” that is, concern with the prophecies and symbols of the Old Law. Christ’s own prophetic words and actions are seen by John to be a foreshadowing of the passion, death, and resurrection of the Lord by which we are all saved. Above all, for St. Thomas, John is the Evangelist of the divinity of Jesus, “the Word made flesh.” He says, “While the other Evangelists treat principally of the mysteries of the humanity of Christ, John, especially and above all, makes known the divinity of Christ in his Gospel” (Prologue). Thomas, following the lead of St. Jerome, thought that John wrote his Gospel after the other three Gospels had been written, in order to refute new heresies that had arisen concerning the divinity of Christ. Following Jerome, Thomas singled out the Ebionites (whose founder Thomas erroneously thought to have been “Ebion”)—and Cerinthus, a Gnostic heretic who flourished around 100 A.D., as among those who denied the divinity of Christ. Even St. Irenaeus (Adv. haer. , III, 11) asserts that St. John wrote his Gospel to refute Cerinthus. Thus, St. Thomas observes in his Prologue, while John did not pass over the mysteries of Christ’s humanity, he especially conveys the divinity of Christ in his Gospel. In this commentary, therefore, Thomas repeatedly refutes the heresies of Apollinaris, Arius, the Arians, Ebionites, Eutyches, the Manichees, Nestorius, Pelagius, the Pelagians, and Sabellius - all of which plagued the Church in the first five centuries of its existence. For Thomas these heresies were not merely false doctrines irrelevant to the modem Christian, but vital guidelines to the purity of the Christian faith, the orthodox teaching of the living Church.
Earlier in his career, Thomas had been asked by the archbishop of Palermo to write a short work that could be memorized, dealing with the articles of faith “from the Creed of the Fathers” (i.e., the Apostles’ Creed) and also the basic errors concerning them; the archbishop apparently asked also for the same presentation for all the sacraments of the Church. Thomas complied with this request in a most remarkable treatise in two parts: De articulis fidei and De ecclesiae sacramentis . The wide popularity of this treatise is attested to by the 277 extant manuscripts of this work. The six articles pertaining to the divinity of Christ and the six pertaining to his humanity are set forth, and all the errors concerning the twelve articles of the Creed are briefly named and refuted. Although the sacraments of the Church are implicit in the fourth article of the Creed, they are discussed separately in the second part of the treatise, because the archbishop explicitly asked for a special discussion of the sacraments and the heresies concerning them. Thomas’ knowledge of the various heresies in the history of the Church is most remarkable. All of these same heresies are again discussed in his commentary on John’s Gospel. That is why St. Thomas says in the Prologue, “[This Gospel] refutes all heresies.” The numerous heresies of the past ought to be of great concern to the modern Christian so that he may avoid all taint of them in his own, personal belief. A conscious affirmation of belief in the truth of revealed teaching that developed in the living Church guided by the Spirit of Christ can bring us into a deeper and more meaningful awareness of being united with the Eternal Truth. In this commentary, Thomas is concerned above all with bolstering the faith of the hearer or reader, or, as he put it, “to confirm the Catholic Truth.”
In other words, there are four goals Thomas aimed to achieve in his commentary on St. John:
determination of the literal, or historical, sense of the narrative;
explanation of the spiritual sense as found in the Old Testament (allegorical sense), the goals of our own life in imitating Jesus (moral sense), and life of the “kingdom” here and hereafter (anagogical sense);
refutation of all error through the testimony of the inspired Word of God;
confirmation of the true Catholic Faith given to us by God through his Church, the Body of Christ.
These are the same goals Thomas had set for himself in composing the Catena Aurea, particularly in the Catena on John’s Gospel, which was composed only four or five years earlier.
There are four outstanding features that will be noticed as one studies the commentary of Thomas on the Gospel of John. First, Thomas had an extraordinary knowledge of the whole Bible. It has been said, not without likelihood, that Thomas memorized the entire Bible during the year he was confined to his family castle at Roccasecca, 1244-45. This is not at all difficult to believe. His memory was far superior to any man-made concordance of the Bible. Thomas always saw the unity of divine revelation. It was the unity of sacra doctrina as a single “science.” The “orthodox” teaching of Christ, Son of the Living God, cannot be anything but one. Because of this unity, Thomas could use any one part of Sacred Scripture to explain and illumine any other part. Thus Thomas could use the teaching of St. Paul and the Psalms to explain the text of John. This use of one part of revelation to illumine another has been aptly called “the analogy of faith” ( secundum rationern fidei, as St. Paul says in Romans 12:6).
Second, Thomas had an unusual knowledge of the Latin and Greek Fathers of the Church. This knowledge, no doubt aided by his work on the Catena Aurea, is brought to bear on every difficult question or obscure passage in John, even when it is a question of chronology, geography, Jewish customs, or language. The medieval mind associated words, quotations and parallels with uncanny facility, always trying to find the best pertinent quotation from the proper authorities ( auctoritates ) . Great weight, sometimes of probative value, was always given to the recognized auctoritates, which, in theology were always the Bible and the sancti, meaning recognized or canonized Doctors of the Church, who were the regula fidei (“the rule of faith”), the “norms” of Christian belief. Thomas’ knowledge of these Doctors was prodigious. The contemporaries of Thomas relied heavily on all available works of the Latin Fathers, especially those of St. Augustine. But, as has been pointed out earlier, Thomas not only accepted the eminent authority of St. Augustine, but also had a wealth of Greek sources from which to draw, including the early Ecumenical Councils of the Church, whose Acts were largely neglected or forgotten in the Latin Middle Ages.
Third, Thomas was, after all, an outstanding theologian for any season. His theology was not only biblical and patristic, but also logical and philosophical. While he absorbed and refined the philosophy of Aristotle, newly translated from the Greek, he never put this philosophy ahead of his Catholic faith. Rather he used that philosophy in obsequium fidei (Phil 2:17), as a “handmaid of theology.” His comprehension of Aristotle and his use of the scholastic method are among the glories of the Middle Ages. In St. Thomas we find an exceptionally gifted mind carefully honed to human perfection by self-discipline, long study, and clear thinking. This was natural talent, ranked by many as a true genius, brought to the highest human perfection by the grace of God.
Finally, Friar Thomas d’Aquino was a saint, one of the great saints in the Latin Church. A basic principle of Thomas’ theology is that “grace perfects nature”; that is, the grace of God never destroys or replaces nature, but builds upon it. For St. Thomas, there is in divine providence a certain kind of proportion between God’s gifts of nature and his gifts of grace. Even when we accept this principle with all the necessary qualifications needed, we can readily see that in the mind and heart of St. Thomas, God’s grace abundantly perfected an already great man. Not only did Thomas meditate prayerfully on the Sacred Scriptures, but lie drew from them substantial nourishment for his soul. This process of enrichment can be seen conspicuously in the commentary on John, particularly the section dealing with the “Last Discourse” of Jesus to his disciples at the Last Supper, collected in “the sayings of Jesus” in chapters 14 to 17. Here Thomas’ discussion of the Son’s procession from the Father while being consubstantially one with the Father, is precise, illuminating, and brilliant; the mission of the Holy Spirit from the Father and from the Son ( Filioque ) is clearly demonstrated against the Greek Orthodox who used this question as one of the many issues that separated them from Rome, initially in the ninth, and decisively in the eleventh century. But above all, the indwelling of the Holy Trinity in the hearts of the faithful is alive and vital; the extraordinary love Jesus had for his faithful disciples is movingly real and dynamic. In this commentary on John we have all the elements of a real masterpiece of its kind in medieval literature.
St. Thomas was very much impressed by the force and absolute veracity of the Gospel proclaimed by John: “This disciple is the one who vouches for these things and has written them down, and we know that his testimony is true” (Jn 21:24). St. Thomas comments that the Evangelist makes this statement “in the person of the whole Church ( in persona totius Ecclesiae ) from whom this Gospel is received [by us].” The Evangelist himself knows the veracity of his narrative, and even St. Paul condemns those who would preach a gospel other than the one he had received (see Gal 1:9). The firmness and stability of our Christian faith is the authority of God speaking through Evangelists, Apostles and other authors of the canonical Books of Scripture. Their testimony leaves us without any doubt as to our faith, because “the Canonical Scriptures alone are the rule of faith.” This sola scriptura of which St. Thomas speaks is far different from the sola scriptura (“only the Bible”) of the Reformers. This battle cry was made famous by Luther, who insisted that what is not contained in the Bible is not “of faith.” But Luther and Thomas (or any other medieval theologian) meant two different things by the word Bible, or Sacred Scriptures. For Luther and the Reformers the Bible was thought of as a finished, edited, and (by then) printed collection, while Thomas and the medieval theologians meant the Sacred Word together with the gloss of the Fathers, liturgy, and the living Church. The Reformers thought of “The Bible” completely devoid of a history and a historical context, devoid of transmission and development; in short, they thought of “The Bible” distinct from the Church. Thus in the face of this misunderstanding, the Council of Trent spoke as though there were two sources of our faith: “the written books and the unwritten traditions.” But even this manner of speaking was a concession to a false dichotomy that was historically conditioned. The Second Vatican Council, however, described these two sources” more traditionally as a single mirror ( veluti speculum sunt ) reflecting both sacred tradition and Sacred Scripture.