Reading Romans with St. Thomas Aquinas ed. by Matthew Levering, Michael Dauphinais

Abstract

650 BOOK REVIEWS Reading Romans with St. Thomas Aquinas. Edited by MATTHEW LEVERING and MICHAEL DAUPHINAIS. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2012. Pp. 336. $55.00 (cloth). ISBN: 978-0-81321962 -2. This volume comprises a collection of sixteen essays on diverse topics concerning Aquinas’s commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Romans. With ten Catholic and seven Protestant scholars contributing to the book (one article is co-authored), it can be counted an ecumenical effort. In chapter 1, “Aquinas on Paul’s Flesh/Spirit Anthropology in Romans,” Bernhard Blankenhorn first dismisses the notion that Paul’s anthropology offers a simplistic dualism, explaining how according to Paul’s usage, pneuma “does not refer to the individual soul or a spiritual substance” and sarx often refers “to something other than an individual body” (2). Next, Blankenhorn reviews the major lines of Augustine’s interpretation of Paul’s flesh/spirit anthropology, noting the evolution of his exegesis, from which investigation he will be able to determine that Aquinas is strongly influenced for better and for worse by Augustine’s reading (37). Finally, focusing on Aquinas’s commentary on Romans and the Summa Theologiae but also briefly comparing the commentary on Galatians, Blankenhorn concludes that Aquinas’s treatment of Paul’s flesh/spirit anthropology accords with more general characteristics of his exegesis of Paul: that is, although Aquinas does not take note of the literary genre Paul employs, he grasps the essence of Paul’s intended teaching. Blankenhorn faults the Angelic Doctor for not interpreting Paul in his own historical context, concluding that at certain points in his works he misreads (15), misinterprets (16, 25, 37), and is not able to understand Paul (23), but is led astray (24), makes exegetical mistakes (32), takes false turns (38), and in one lectio offers a terribly unsatisfying exegesis (26); yet Blankenhorn recognizes as well that “the theologian’s aim is never simply a faithful historical analysis of the biblical text according to the human author’s original intention” (10 n. 31). Thus it seems that one could understand Aquinas to be engaging in a reverential reading, in which, whether fully aware of it or simply unconcerned, he might assist Paul to reach a true conclusion that Paul himself might not recognize. For readers not already devoted to Aquinas, it could be even more helpful to show his contribution than simply to establish that he was not wrong about the essence of Paul’s intended teaching despite not reading Paul in his own historical context. In the second essay, Markus Bockmuehl, considers “Aquinas on Abraham’s Faith in Romans 4.” He encourages biblical scholars, noting that once they look past the unfamiliar Aristotelian form of highly structured presentation, they will find a careful exegete at work who repeatedly allows his critical questions to be both generated and addressed by a close reading of the biblical text. Bockmuehl asks whether only the uncircumcised Abraham is the forefather of faith in Christ or whether the circumcised Abraham might also be BOOK REVIEWS 651 (39). He notes that in Genesis we can see that Abraham is the chief example of faith-based righteousness, because before he was ever circumcised, he believed in God, and God credited this to him as righteousness (40). Thus Abraham is the father of the covenant for both Jews and Gentiles (42). Bockmuehl suggests that Calvin might even have been able to approve of Aquinas’s explanation of faith and works where it is recognized that a man’s works are not proportioned to cause the habit of righteousness but rather a man must be justified inwardly by God first so that he can perform works proportioned to divine glory (42). Chapter 3 presents Hans Boersma’s contribution of “Ressourcement of Mystery: The Ecclesiology of Thomas Aquinas and the Letter to the Romans.” Boersma follows Yves Congar’s argument that Aquinas’s ecclesiology can serve as a trustworthy source to which we can return in order to find a bridge between Catholic and Protestant theology. Boersma quotes Congar’s assessment that Aquinas holds a happy medium between the Reformation and Jesuitical Romanism—the former neglecting the structure of the Church...