John F Boyle - Böcker

Professor John F. Boyle’s lecture, Master Thomas Aquinas and the Fullness of Life, is a piece that combines a profoundly personal element – the experience of someone who has chosen St. Thomas as his own teacher and master – with the learnedness of one of the most respected contemporary American scholars of the thought of Thomas Aquinas. What we are offered in Professor Boyle’s lecture is not the kind of arid and lifeless speculation that is sometimes – albeit mistakenly – associated with Aquinas’s own style. Boyle emphasizes that Aquinas was far from being a “brain on a stick,” a theologian and thinker so deeply immersed in speculation as to lose sight of the real world, and indeed of what matters in the real world. For what matters in the real world is life, and our ability to conduct this life is a way that is in accordance with the deepest longings of human nature. Boyle demonstrates, with both learning and wit, that it is precisely this life, in its fullness, to which St. Thomas endeavors to lead his students through his teaching. This life has its roots in the humble operations of living that we share with creatures such as plants and animals; it rises to the properly human level in the selfdirection of which we are capable through intellect and will, and which enables us to form ourselves morally in habits that become “second natures” for us; and it is perfectedin the supernatural life of faith in which Christ becomes our teacher and master, who leads us to eternal life with his Father. With Master Boyle through Master Thomas to the Master: that could be the motto of this Aquinas Lecture, which was delivered at the University of Dallas on January 28, 2013. Although the University of Dallas has hosted an annual Aquinas Lecture since 1982, Master Thomas Aquinas and the Fullness of Life is the first to be made available in this new series.

St. Thomas Aquinas is best known for his Summa Theologiae and is regarded as the great exemplar of systematic theology. Yet St. Thomas himself might be surprised at this legacy. He may well have saw himself principally as a commentator and teacher of Sacred Scripture.When it comes to engaging St. Thomas' scriptural work, readers are at a significant disadvantage. They are arguably more foreign and more dense than his Summa yet have been scarcely studied. This book by one of the foremost experts on St. Thomas' use of Scripture is a significant and much needed contribution.Here, John Boyle opens up the riches of St. Thomas as a master of the Sacred page. Readers will find explorations not just of the style of Aquinas' commentaries, which differs from that of the modern biblical commentary, but also the overarching theological and methodological perspective that shapes his approach to Scripture. Boyle gives insight into how Aquinas would have understood the task of biblical commentary as a university lecturer, how Scripture is ordered to divine revelation, how medieval masters divided up the text, and how Aquinas' biblical commentaries relate to his theological summaries. This book will be important for anyone seeking to better understand St. Thomas' theology and the often-overlooked role that Scripture plays in his work.

With precision and profundity born of thirty years of devoted study, John Boyle offers an essential introduction to St. Thomas Aquinas on Scripture, shedding helpful light on the goals, methods, and commitments that animate the Angelic Doctor's engagement with the sacred page. Because the genius of St. Thomas's approach to the Bible lies not so much in its novelty but rather in the fidelity and clarity with which he recapitulates the riches of the preceding interpretive Tradition, this initiation into St. Thomas's vision of Scripture is itself an orientation to the Church's vision of Scripture, from the Fathers through and beyond the Middle Ages.St. Thomas's embeddedness within the Church's Tradition and his own historical context is integral to his approach to Scripture, yet it sets him at some distance from modern readers, for whom his interpretive vision may seem perplexing or even impenetrable. In this primer, Boyle first provides an acclimation to this medieval context through a survey and explanation of pertinent technical terminology used by St. Thomas and characteristic of the scholastic theology of the time. With an eye to the medieval practice of considering Scripture according to the fourfold division of causes, Boyle builds on this initial foundation by exploring in turn St. Thomas's accounts of the end or use of Scripture (final cause), its divine and human authorship (efficient cause), its order and division (material cause), and its literary styles or genres (formal cause).Drawing on writings from across St. Thomas's corpus, but especially his work On the Commendation and Division of Sacred Scripture and the prologues to his biblical commentaries, Boyle masterfully elucidates both the hermeneutical principles and deep wisdom of the Angelic Doctor's approach to Scripture, imparting invaluable guidance not only for reading and understanding St. Thomas and other great masters of the Tradition, but also - and ultimately - for understanding Scripture in light of this Tradition and reading it with greater benefit and joy.