Teaching Bodies

D. Jordan Mark

Description

In Teaching Bodies, leading scholar of Christian thought Mark D. Jordan offers an original reading of the Summa of Theology of Thomas Aquinas. Reading backward, Jordan interprets the main parts of the Summa, starting from the conclusion, to reveal how Thomas teaches morals by directing attention to the way God teaches morals, namely through embodied scenes: the incarnation, the gospels, and the sacraments. It is Thomas's confidence in bodily scenes of instruction that explains the often overlooked structure of the middle part of the Summa, which begins and ends with Christian revisions of classical exhortations of the human body as a pathway to the best human life. Among other things, Jordan argues, this explains Thomas's interest in the stages of law and the limits of virtue as the engine of human life.Rather than offer a synthesis of Thomistic ethics, Jordan insists that we read Thomas as theology to discover the unification of Christian wisdom in a pattern of ongoing moral formation. Jordan supplements his close readings of the Summa with reflections on Thomas's place in the history of Christian moral teaching-and thushis relevance for teaching and writing in the present. What remains a puzzle is why Thomas chose to stage this incarnational moral teaching within the then-new genres of university disputation-the genres we think of as "Scholastic." Yet here again the structure of the Summa provides an answer. In Jordan's deft analysis, Thomas's minimalist refusal to tell a new story except by juxtaposing selections from inherited philosophical and theological traditions is his way of opening room for God's continuing narration in the development of the human soul.The task of writing theology, as Thomas understands it, is to open a path through the inherited languages of classical thought so that divine pedagogy can have its effect on the reader. As such, the task of the Summa, in Mark Jordan's hands, is a crucial and powerful way to articulate Christian morals today.

Sujets

• Theology
• Semantics
• Philosophy of religion

Informations

• Publié par: Fordham University Press
• Date de parution: 01 décembre 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780823273812
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Te a c h i n g B o d i e s

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Teaching Bodies Moral Formation in the Summa of Thomas Aquinas

Mark D. Jordan

f o r d h a m u n i v e r s i t y p r e s s New York 2017

Copyright © 2017 Mark D. Jordan

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Jordan, Mark D., author. Title: Teaching bodies : moral formation in the Summa of Thomas Aquinas / Mark D. Jordan. Description: First edition. | New York, NY : Fordham University Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016015037 | ISBN 9780823273782 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780823273799 (pbk. : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Thomas, Aquinas, Saint, 1225?–1274. Summa theologica. | Ethics, Medieval. Classification: LCC B765.T53 S8165 2017 | DDC 230/.2—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016015037

Printed in the United States of America 19 18 17 5 4 3 2 1 First edition

Preface

c o n t e n t s

Introduction. TheSumma’s Origins: Three Fables and a Candid Counterproposal

Part Isacraments, gospel, incarnation 1. Incarnation as Instruction 2. Seeing Gospel Stories 3.SacramentBaoldies

Part IIwriting scenes of moral instruction 4. Scenes of Instruction 5. From Scenes to Authorities 6. TheSummain (Our) Libraries

Part IIImoral theology on the way to its end 7. The Good That Draws the Will 8. Stages on Law’s Way 9. The Gifts of the Spirit 10. VocationasndViae152

Conclusion: The Good of Reading

Acknowledgments Notes Works Cited Index

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17 21 32 49

63 67 80 89

99 105 121 137

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169 171 197 209

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p r e f a c e

I may have read a few words from theSumma of Theologyfor the first time in middle school. They were a quotation, in English, from the “five ways,” the rational ascents to God that help to begin Thomas’s book— and that become for some its only memorable passage. I was writing a wistful term paper on medieval religious orders and found the quotation (or was it only a paraphrase?) in a popular panorama of medieval history. A few years later, when I was fifteen or sixteen and deliberating conversion, I began to study Jacques Maritain and Etienne Gilson, champions of paired Thomisms from the last century. Only in college was I encouraged to read as much Thomas as I could. I even took my first steps into his Latin, guided by the Blackfriars edition that put the comfort of the English on facing pages. Two years later, I went off to graduate school in philosophy to become a li- censed teacher of Thomas because it seemed the only practical way to buy more time for reading him. Perhaps I also wanted for a while to become a Dominican — or at least a Jesuit. Clearly, I had already absorbed some of the old rivalries among Thomas’s interpreters. All of this took place decades ago. I tell it now on the way to asking what it means to read and reread theSumma— the time offor a long time a moral formation, a mortal life, or an interpretive tradition. These ques- tions can be put to any book read over decades, but they apply especially to theSummasince they are also its central concerns. From the book’s prologue forward, Thomas urges readers to consider moral reading as moral shaping. His insistence raises many questions. Which dispositions does theSummasuppose in those who would read it seriously? How does it understand its own role in eliciting or fostering those dispositions? What changes does it hope to encourage over a properly long reading? These questions are topics for theSummaitself. They animate its plan and deter- mine its topics. They reveal the unity in theSummaof form and content, purpose and procedure. Pursuing these questions, I will sometimes contend with what I judge to be misreadings. The word “misreading” may itself mislead. My concern

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is not so much with mistakes in construing terms, syntax, images, or argu- ments. The mistakes that matter most are distorted relations to Thomas’s whole effort of teaching. They often result from approaching the text with the wrong assumptions about how and what it teaches. For example, many contemporary readers twist their relation to theSummaby failing to nego- tiate the ways in which it is official, antiquated, and demanding. During centuries, theSummahas beenofficial. For some contemporary readers, Thomas Aquinas defines correct Christianity — nothing less but also nothing more. This conviction leads some readers to follow Thomas only so long as he agrees with their formulas for orthodoxy or their pro- grams for the Church. Yet, one imperative for establishing a pedagogical relation with theSummais to disentangle it from both its official uses and current doctrinal quarrels. Disentangling Thomas from his official exponents or advocates is not easy. Generations of authorized interpreters have promoted expectations about what his books must mean. Thomas has now got assigned roles to play in cultural histories inside and outside Christian churches. He is the great synthesizer who reconciled reason with faith — or at least Aristotle with Augustine. He is the grand architect of the culminating hierarchy of all arts and sciences — at least those known to the Latin-speaking Middle Ages. He is chief among the Scholastics but therefore also the leading In- quisitor. TheSummais, Lacordaire once said, a “masterpiece that every- one talks about, even those who do not read it, just as everyone talks about 1 the Egyptian pyramids, which almost no one has seen.” A book that many “know” and few read is hard to approach with fresh attention. The official appropriations of Thomas and the cultural narratives about him can conceal a second distortion of relation to the text: Thomas’s texts are nowantiquated. TheSummais separated from contemporary readers by a long series of cultural dislocations. Many pages are studded with un- familiar terms and outdated sciences. On other pages, there are now ob- noxious prejudices about social groups or political arrangements. More pervasively, if more subtly, Thomas practices forms of reasoning that con- temporary readers have been taught to distrust. During the last century and a half (to go no further back), the offi cial appropriation of Thomas was countered by an emphasis on his historical distance — on his antiquity. The emphasis sponsored programs of histori- cal recovery on every textual level. Uncertain lines of textual transmission were retraced in order to establish a better sense of the words that Thomas might actually have written. His sources were recovered and reconstituted. His interlocutors and successors were brought forward to speak again. In-

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stead of presenting Thomas in a false present, every effort was made to underline his historical otherness. His texts were scoured of encrustations to produce the shock of the old. Like many readers of Thomas now alive, I depend on these efforts at his- torical recovery. I also notice how quickly they can generate another sort of distortion. They can make it seem that theSummawas written in order to yield historical knowledge. Wanting to fit the book back into “its time” (as if there had been only one), historically minded readers often assume that it was at home there. They presume, for example, that theSumma would have been immediately recognizable to Thomas’s contemporaries. This understates the book’s novelty. It also misses the demands that the book places on readers in any age. In many ways, theSummastands against whatever might be called “its time,” not least because it wants to indict and 2 then reform its readers’ moral education. The book’s first audiences were certainly better placed than contemporary readers are to handle its techni- cal terminologies, to recognize its sources, and to move within its genres. For that very reason early audiences found it hard to accept Thomas’s boldest innovations. There is abundant evidence that theSummawas mis- read and rejected from the beginning by expert readers — indeed, by its 3 main addressees. They, too, faltered before the third cause of distorted relation: TheSummais ademandingtext. Its main hope is to make moral demands on its readers. TheSummais official, antiquated, and demanding. Reading it responsi- bly requires ongoing negotiations between its pedagogical hopes and our diverse dispositions. Because our dispositionsarediverse, the negotiations will issue in different results. To complain of distorted relations to the text is not to imply that there is only one correct relation leading to one result. To speak of moral education is not to predict a single progress in it. I as- sume that engaged readers may well disagree about what theSummasays just as they disagree about the application to an actual case of natural law or scriptural precedent or prudential judgment. I further admit that a long and fully attentive reading of theSummamay issue in a negative judgment. A reader may refuse the moral teaching that Thomas offers. She may even 4 be repulsed by it. Engaged readings that end with rejection seem to me greatly preferable to readings that treat theSummaonly as a source of “in- formation.” Thomas’s book most wants to lead its reader to a way of life more articulate about its movement toward God. That relation of reading will thus be as personal as any vocation. I can illustrate the point exegetically in a final recollection. When, as a college sophomore, I was trying so eagerly to make myself all at once