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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2024
Thomas Aquinas begins the Summa Theologiae with the question de sacra doctrina, qualis sit et ad quae se extendat. Readers of this question often assume that he is here asking about the nature of Christian theology. This assumption is open to question and in what follows I shall briefly explain why that is so and what Aquinas actually does mean by sacra doctrina.
I
The most obvious reason for refusing to equate sacra doctrina in Aquinas with ‘theology’, as that word is commonly used, is that much that would now pass for theology would not be recognised by Aquinas as sacra doctrina. In most modern discsssions, ‘theology’ does not mean ‘teaching we agree with’. It means what people who earn their living as theologians say or write. On that basis, editors and librarians, whether Christian or not, will class as theology the views of people as different as Augustine and Troeltsch, Luther and Cajetan, Schillebeeckx and Ratzinger. These pairs of authors, and others one could mention, have wildly divergent things to say, but all of it counts as theology. For Aquinas, however, not all of it would constitute sacra doctrina. That, for him, is nothing but true teaching. For him, sacra doctrina is indeed ‘teaching we agree with’. Or, more precisely, it is teaching we ought to agree with. As we read in la, 1,1, it is something revealed by God.
In the second place, ‘theology’ does not translate sacra doctrina. The proper translation is ‘holy teaching’ or ‘sacred doctrine’.
1 Cf. White, Victor O.P., Holy Teaching: The Idea of Theology according to St Thomas Aquinas (The Aquinas Society of London Aquinas Paper No. 33, London, 1958), p.4Google Scholar: ‘Always and invariably the discussion turns, not on the nature and meaning of theology, but on those of sacra doctrina. A glance at the list of the ten articles or items which comprise this First Question shows that every single one poses queries, not about theology (which is not so much as named) but about what the author calls sacra doctrina’.
2 Aquinas allows that one can cite reasons which might be held to carry some weight with respect to truths of faith. But for him they are no more than pointers or ways of drawing attention to what coheres with truths of faith. ‘Arguments from human reason cannot avail to prove what must be received on faith’ (Ia, 1,8 ad 1). If sacra doctrina contains human reasoning, says Aquinas, that is ‘to make clear other things that are put forward in this teaching’ and to provide ‘extrinsic and probable arguments’ (ibid.)
3 In fact, Aquinas does not exclusively identify sacra doctrina with ‘teaching that philosophy cannot uncover’, for he says that it also contains ‘those truths about God which human reason could have discovered’ (Ia, 1,1), which is, presumably, a reference to natural theology. But throughout his discussion of sacra doctrina the emphasis falls on it being a matter of revelation qua teaching given to those unable to come to the truth without it. Even where sacra doctrina is a matter of what human reason can discover, says Aquinas, it consists of truth ‘which would only be known by a few, and that after a long time, and with the admixture of many errors’ (ibid.).
4 Victor White (op. cit., p. 12) neatly paraphrases Aquinas's thinking at this point thus: ‘Because we believe something and do not know it, it does not follow that what we believe is not in itself knowledge, although it does not come from our knowledge’.
5 Cf. Patfoort, Albert, Thomas d'Aquin: Les ciés d'une théologie (Paris, 1983), p.28Google Scholar: ‘sacra doctrina does not directly signify “theology”; it principally signifies Sacred Scripture, the biblical corpus, and, more generally, the totality of the teaching given in Christianity from the revelations made to the prophets’.
6 Aquinas calls God the author of scripture (auctor sacrae scripturae est Deus: Ia, 1,10). For Aquinas and scripture, see Ploeg, J. van der, 'The Place of Holy Scripture in the Theology of St. Thomas, The Thomist 10 (1947)Google Scholar; Smalley, B., The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1941)Google Scholar; Chenu, M.D., Toward Understanding Saint Thomas (Chicago, 1964)Google Scholar; Persson, Per Erik, Sacra Doctrina: Reason and Revelation in Aquinas (Oxford, 1970)Google Scholar.
7 There are other passages in Aquinas saying the same thing. Readers will find a number of texts collected in Ménard, Etienne O.P., La Tradition: Révélation, Ecriture, Eglise selon Saint Thomas d'Aquin (Bruges/Paris, 1964), pp. 16ffGoogle Scholar.
8 Cf. Menard, op.cit., pp. 22ff.
9 P. de Vooght, Les sources de la doctrine chrétienne d'après les théologiens du XIV siècle et du début du XV avec le texte intégral des XII premières questions de la Summa inédite de Gérald de Bologne (Paris, 1954), pp. 28 and 148f.
10 In his commentary on John's Gospel he asserts that canonical scripture alone is the rule of faith (sola canonica scriptura est regula fidei: In Joan. 21,6 [2]).
11 Cf. also Quodlibetum (VII.15, ad.3): ‘Nothing is taught mysteriously (occulte) in any place of Scripture which is not explained clearly elsewhere; therefore, the spiritual explanation must always be based on the literal’.
12 Cf. James A. Weisheipl, ‘The Meaning of Sacra Doctrina in Summa Theologiae I, q.l ‘(The Thomist XXXVIII 1974), pp. 79f.: ‘Sacra doctrina… can be called “theology” only in the etymological sense of the term as Sermo de Deo, which every believer has’.
