Thomas Aquinas and the Bible

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St. Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274) is honored today in the Roman Catholic Church, which makes this the perfect day to take a look at his approach to interpreting Scripture. I recommend reading this short section of the Summa Theologiae (Question 1, Article 10, Whether in Holy Scripture a word may have several senses?) in which he discusses his view about the several senses of Scripture and responds to objections. The four senses he lists are: historical (or literal), allegorical, tropological (or moral), and anagogical. Whether one's own theology of Scripture allows for such an approach or not, there is certainly a lot to consider here. Some theologians today see in Aquinas a way of getting past the pitfalls of modernity to a more faithful way of reading Scripture. Though I am not convinced that a return to a premodern worldview (albeit in modified form) is necessarily what is called for, there is a lot to be gained by at least considering this approach and what it offers. At the very least it provides a way of reading that challenges modern assumptions and that is open to God's speaking through Scripture in a multiplicity of ways. At the same time, this way of reading attends to the importance of grounding all interpretation first in the literal sense of the words themselves--or at least beginning there.

For a quick introduction to Thomas Aquinas as a biblical theologian (with references to some recent scholarship on the subject), see this blog post at The Sacred Page by Brant Pitre and John Bergsma. Drs. Pitre and Bergsma were both just a few years ahead of me in the Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity doctoral program at the University of Notre Dame.