A Multidimensional Disclosure: Aspects of Aquinas’s Theological Intentionality

Abstract

[Extract] To give serious attention to Aquinas's Summa Theologiae is to be continually amazed at the extent of the harmonies and deep resonances that echo through its different parts.1 It works like a hologram, manifesting now this, now that, now some other dimension. In this essay, I wish to pay attention to the theological of St. Thomas's approach , in a way that might enrich our reading, and to continue the discussion that has been taking place more recently in the pages of this journal. It will involve asking what kind of consciousness Aquinas brings to his theological investigation, attending less to the metaphysical objectification offaculties, their objects, and the realities affirmed, and more to the experience in which all this occurs. It will mean a general kind of theological intentionality analysis of Thomas's approach-while, at the same time, deferring to specialists in the area of theological phenomenology for a fuller context.