The most important sentence in this collection of essays is in the conclusion written by one of the editors, Fr Andrew Hofer: ‘In renewing Thomistic study with an emphasis on the Greek Fathers, we should not have as the object of our contemplation Thomas Aquinas, but God’. There speaks a true disciple of St Thomas. He and his colleagues are only instrumentally concerned with the facts of St Thomas's reading of the Greek Fathers; his remarkable knowledge of the teaching of the post-Chalcedonian Councils (Constantinople II and Constantinople III); his evident admiration for Athanasius, Chrysostom, Cyril of Alexandria, Damascene, Denys, and Gregory Nazianzen; the ways in which he follows their opinions, or differs from them. The formal object of most of the contributors to Thomas Aquinas and the Greek Fathers is what St Thomas tells us is the object of sacra doctrina: God, and other things in relation to God.
The article of Dominic Legge OP is a good example of a properly speculative theology emerging out of a comparative study of authors. By contrasting in one respect the understandings of the Transfiguration to be found in St Thomas and the Greek Fathers, Fr Legge shows that, whereas the latter speak of only one visible mission of the Holy Spirit to the incarnate Word, namely at His Baptism in the Jordan, the former adds that there is a second, on Tabor. ‘[T]his view is, as best as I can discover, first articulated by St Thomas and is an original contribution of his thought’ (p. 13) – that is, to the understanding of the mystery by all the faithful. Legge concludes, turning from what he has found through a comparison of St Thomas's works with those of the Fathers, to the truth of the matter: ‘As we receive [the] Spirit, we are configured to Christ the natural Son, and thus made adopted sons and daughters of the Father – and so we will shine, we firmly hope, with a glory like what Christ revealed at His Transfiguration’ (p. 29).
John Baptist Ku OP likewise sheds light on the Divine Paternity itself through the careful reading of what St Gregory Nazianzen and St Thomas said about it. He demonstrates that there is ‘a profound agreement’ in the thought of the two Doctors: ‘Namely, (1) the Son, though perfectly equal to the Father and in no way a creature, (2) receives everything that He has from the Father, who produces Him according to a mode of efficient causality, and (3) the Son is in no way less than the Father, but the assertion that the Father is greater than the Son can be correctly said to mean that the Father is the principle of the Son’ (p. 129). Notice, here, how focused Fr Ku is on the consubstantiality and coequality of the Divine Persons, and on the order of the Divine Processions: the analysis of texts and the consideration of differences in historical context are but a means towards attaining the great goal of intellectus fidei.
In comparing ‘The Christocentric Mystical Theologies of Maximos the Confessor and Thomas Aquinas’, Bernhard Blankenhorn OP displays not only his intimate knowledge of the corpus thomisticum, but also his familiarity with the large contemporary literature relating to Maximos. He states his speculative intention in the first paragraph: ‘My aim is not to argue that Maximos and Aquinas consciously developed theologies of union with God in light of their Christologies. Rather, I seek to exploit the doctrinal potential and implications of their texts’ (p. 182). The question before him is whether the soul's movement towards intimate union with the Triune God is a Dionysian ascent requiring the transcending of all sensible objects and intelligible forms. Fr Blankenhorn proves to my satisfaction that ‘such a reading of Aquinas is no longer tenable … [and that] Maximos can also be read differently' (p. 204). Fr Blankenhorn's summary of St Thomas's doctrine of the Gifts of the Holy Spirit, more exactly of the three Gifts that directly apply to contemplation (Understanding, Knowledge, and Wisdom), argues that at the summit of mystical union with God, through the Gifts, there is, so to speak, no ‘disincarnation’, in either the bridal soul or the Divine Bridegroom: ‘[T]he intellect's act still reaches completion by a return to phantasms … Aquinas never denies this principle of Aristotelian epistemology when he studies mystical cognition. Thomas thus quietly brings history into the cloud’ (p. 187). The mystic in the state of union remains a man of flesh and blood, of sense and spirit, someone who has faith in, and who loves, the eternal Word made flesh, crucified and risen. Blankenhorn reaches a lyrical expression of the issues at stake: ‘When the Blessed Virgin Mary sensed the baby Jesus kicking in her womb, or when she gazed upon her newborn's body in Bethlehem, was she still one or two steps below the summit of noetic union with her divine Son? Should we not rather posit her perfect union as occurring simultaneously with the contemplation of her Son's humanity?’ (p. 204).
I have given special attention in this short review to the contributions of three Dominicans, but in justice I should say that each of their distinguished colleagues should be commended for both the thoroughness of their historical theology and their constant speculative return to the rei veritas. For example, Brian Dunkle SJ's examination of St Thomas's use of Chrysostom in the Catena aurea and the Tertia pars seems at first to be simply a study of St Thomas's sources, but in fact, in so doing, Fr Dunkle draws the attention of his readers to that much neglected part of the Christology of the Tertia: the mysteries of the life of Jesus, His acta et passa. What Chrysostom helps Aquinas to see is that the entire life of Jesus, as presented to in the Gospels, is pedagogical, ‘a teaching’ (cf. p. 160f).
Perhaps I am showing my age by regretting the fashion of distinguishing between ‘Thomasian’, the quality of essays and books in which the exegesis of St Thomas's works is the primary and sometimes seemingly exclusive goal, and ‘Thomistic’, the attribute of writings in which the scholar above all seeks understanding of God and other things in relation to God according to the mind of St Thomas and his commentators. The authors of Thomas Aquinas and the Greek Fathers are neither narrowly ‘Thomasian’ nor simply ‘Thomistic’; their Greek Patristics, too, are properly theological without neglect of the investigation of sources and influences. Deploying the best resources in texts and historical scholarship, they try chiefly to understand the mysteries of Divine Revelation according to the minds of St Thomas Aquinas and the Greek Fathers, and in so doing, they demonstrate that these many minds are in a certain way one mind. In this admirable book, which opens new windows for the refreshment of dogmatic theology and the revitalizing of the dialogue between Catholics and Orthodox, Michael Dauphinais and his friends confirm the truth of the bold claim of Cajetan and Pope Leo XIII: ‘Thomas Aquinas venerated the sacred Doctors so much that he inherited the intellect of them all’.
