The Dimensions of the Kingdom of Heaven in Saint Thomas Aquinas's Commentary on Matthew

Abstract

The Dimensions of the Kingdom of Heaven in Saint Thomas Aquinas's Commentary on Matthew Matthew L. Martin In his inaugural lecture as a Master of Theology at the University of Paris, Saint Thomas Aquinas states that the three Synoptic Gospels "are distinguished according to the three dignities which relate to Christ the man. Of these, Matthew defines what pertains to the royal dignity; hence, in the beginning of his Gospel he shows that he had descended from kings according to the flesh, and shows him adored by the royal Magi."1 Thus, Aquinas's commentary on Matthew makes a natural place to start investigating the Angelic Doctor's treatment of the theme of the Kingdom of God. Earlier scholarship dated the Lectura super Mattheum to Thomas's first period as a Magister in Sacra Pagina at the University of Paris from 1256 to 1259.2 However, more recent work has concluded that it belongs to the second Parisian period, most likely during the academic year of 1269–1270.3 This means that the Matthew commentary is an immediate predecessor to Aquinas's better-known commentary on John, and as Jeremy Holmes points out, it is the work of "Aquinas at the height of his powers, with the entire patristic [End Page 871] tradition at his fingertips and a complete command of scholastic theology."4 Unfortunately, the text available to us may not represent Aquinas at his full brilliance. As Holmes notes, "the lectura come down to us through reportationes, that is, notes taken down by person in the audience and later filled out from memory or other sources to look more like the actual transcript of a lecture."5 Unlike the commentary on John, Thomas does not appear to have reviewed these notes for publication.6 In addition, the manuscript tradition is limited—only four manuscripts, from two sources, survive. "Peter [d'Andria] seems to have written down the comments on chapters 1–12 of Matthew, while Leodegar [of Besançon] recorded the lectures from 6.9 through to the end of the Gospel."7 The tradition is further complicated by the fact that the manuscripts are "not only incomplete but erroneous."8 Key portions of the text of chapters 5 and 6—dealing with the Sermon on the Mount—were missing from all the manuscripts available until recently; the commentary's first editor, Bartholomew of Sina, filled in the gaps with a commentary by Peter de Scala, a late-thirteenth-century Dominican.9 Fortunately for scholars of Thomas, in 1955, a copy of Peter d'Andria's reportatio containing the missing material was discovered in a library at Basel.10 Until recently, only fragments of this text were available to the public.11 However, as of September 2013, the Aquinas Institute of Lander, Wyoming, has published a Latin–English edition of the commentary on Matthew which, though primarily based on the earlier Marietti text, uses the Basel manuscript to correct the lacunae and replace the interpolated portions. While a final critical edition awaits the work of the Leonine Commission, for the first time, the academic community has easy access to a complete and uncorrupted version of the commentary text. Whatever faults remain in what has come down to us, this remains a valuable [End Page 872] commentary and source of insight into Aquinas's biblical theology, and thus to his doctrine on the Kingdom, which is harder to derive from his more famous systematic works. We should briefly address this commentary's relationship to Thomas's other major work on the Evangelists, the Catena aurea. Thomas began this collection of patristic commentary on the Gospels "at the request of Urban IV toward the end of 1262 or the beginning of 1263"12 and had the volume on Matthew ready to offer to that Pope before his death in October 1264.13 The rest of the text took somewhat longer to complete, but it was finished "between 1265 and 1268, before Thomas returned to Paris."14 Thus, it predates the commentary on Matthew, and Holmes, having selected the passage on the Transfiguration as "typical" of the commentary, concludes that "those parts of Thomas' text which are directly dependent...