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Summa contra Gentiles

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Summa contra Gentiles
Author Saint Thomas Aquinas, O.P.
Date c. 1259–1265
Structure Four books: God; creation; providence and the last end; revealed mysteries
Occasion Instruction of missionaries and disputants among Jews, Muslims, and philosophers
Doctrinal status Work of a Doctor of the Church; not a conciliar definition

Summa contra Gentiles is Saint Thomas Aquinas's large apologetic and theological work, ordered to the manifestation of Catholic truth to those who do not receive the authority of Scripture as the Church receives it, proceeding as far as possible by natural reason before treating mysteries known only by revelation.[1]

Theological status: Theological synthesis

Overview

The Summa contra Gentiles[2] is one of the best-known treatises by Thomas Aquinas, written as four books between 1259 and 1265.

Whereas the Summa Theologiæ was written to explain the Christian faith to theology students, the Summa contra Gentiles is more apologetic in tone. While the last of the four books (parts) of the S.C.G. deals with topics of revealed theology such as trinity, incarnation, and the sacraments, the first three books limit themselves to natural theology: arguments on the basis of reason, Thomas believes, will be understood also by those who do not believe in Christian revelation.

A different summa for a different task

Thomas composed the Summa contra Gentiles before the Summa theologiae and for another purpose. Tradition associates it with the Dominican mission of arguing the faith among those who do not start from the Catholic canon, including the learned world of Islam and the philosophers. Whether or not every anecdote of its commissioning is secure, the book's method is clear: establish what reason can know of God, creation, and the human end, then present the mysteries that exceed reason—Trinity, Incarnation, sacraments, resurrection—as fitting and non-contradictory.

It is therefore not a first draft of the later Summa. The order, the audience, and the proportion of philosophical argument differ. Students who know only the theological Summa miss Thomas's most sustained public argument for the preambles of faith. Students who know only the contra Gentiles miss the pedagogical architecture of sacred doctrine for those already in the Church.

Four books

Book I treats God's existence and attributes. Book II treats creation, including the spiritual creature. Book III treats providence, law, and the last end, with a large moral horizon. Book IV treats the Trinity, the Incarnation, the sacraments, and the last things as revealed. The division itself teaches a Catholic distinction: reason is competent and honored; revelation is necessary and free.

The arguments against particular errors of ancient and medieval philosophers are historically situated. Some opponents are Aristotle as received through Arabic commentary, some are positions Thomas associates with the gentiles in a broad sense. The permanent service is the demonstration that Catholic faith is not a refusal of reason and that mysteries are not contradictions advertised as depth.

Mission, argument, and limits

The work belongs to the Dominican vocation to preach to those who do not yet believe. It assumes that truth is one, that the God of Abraham is the Creator known in part from the world, and that Christian revelation completes rather than humiliates the intellect. It does not assume that every hearer already grants the authority of a council or a pope. That missionary courtesy is a form of charity, not a reduction of dogma to the lowest common philosophy.[3][4]

Later readers should not treat the contra Gentiles as a modern interreligious handbook. Thomas argues to convert and to defend. He also argues fairly enough that the book remains a school of how to take an opponent's position seriously. Where his information about another religion is second-hand or dated, the method of reason and the revealed fourth book still instruct.

Catholic reception

The Church receives the contra Gentiles as a major work of the Common Doctor, alongside the theological Summa, the disputed questions, and the biblical commentaries. Popes who commend Thomas's harmony of faith and reason are commending, among other books, this one. The Leonine edition again supplies the text.[5][6]

Thomistic schools have used it as a natural theology, as a missionary outline, and as a control on readings of the later Summa. It remains a book to be read, not a slogan. Its four-book ordo is itself a Catholic lesson: grace perfects nature, and the mysteries stand when reason has done its honest work.

Title

The conventional title Summa contra Gentiles, found in some of the earliest manuscripts, is sometimes given in the variant Summa contra Gentes.[7] The title is taken from chapter I.2, where Thomas states his intention as the work's author:

I have set myself the task of making known, as far as my limited powers will allow, the truth that the Catholic faith professes, and of setting aside the errors that are opposed to it. To use the words of Hilary: 'I am aware that I owe this to God as the chief duty of my life, that my every word and sense may speak of Him' (De Trinitate I, 37).[8]

A longer title is also given as Tractatus de fide catholica, contra errores infidelium, meaning "Tractate on the universal faith, against the errors of the pagans".[9]

Date and composition

The work was written over a period of several years, between 1259 and 1265.

In the spring of 1256 Thomas was appointed regent master in theology at Paris and one of his first works upon assuming this office was Contra impugnantes Dei cultum et religionem, defending the mendicant orders, which had come under attack by William of Saint-Amour.[10] During his tenure from 1256 to 1259, Thomas wrote numerous works, and he was working on Summa contra Gentiles by the time he left Paris.[11] From Aquinas's autograph, Torrell (1996) identified the first 53 chapters of Book I as having been written in Paris based on studies of the parchment and the ink used.[12]

According to a tradition that can be traced to shortly after Thomas's death, the Summa contra Gentiles was written in response to a request, made in 1259, for a book that would help the Dominican missionaries in Spain to convert the Muslims and Jews there. The request was made by Raymond of Peñafort, a Dominican friar and advisor to James I of Aragon.[13] Raymond had been active in the Christian defense against the Moors (Muslims) and Jews in the kingdom of Aragon since the 1240s. To this end, Raymond instituted the teaching of Arabic and Hebrew in several houses of the friars, and he also founded priories in Murcia (then still under Muslim rule) and in Tunis. Additionally he went to help establish the Church in the recently conquered island of Mallorca. Raymond's request to Thomas was transmitted by fellow Dominican Ramón Martí, one of eight friars appointed to make a study of oriental languages with the purpose of carrying on a mission to Jews and Moors.[14]

The historicity of this account has been questioned in modern scholarship.[15] Arguments adduced include the lack of an explicit dedication to Raymond, the evidence that substantial portions of book 1 were complete by mid-1259 (suggesting that Thomas started work on the book as early as 1257), and the suggestion that the work makes no effort to address tenets of Islam specifically.[16]

Later in 1259, Thomas left Paris and returned to Naples, where he was appointed as general preacher by the provincial chapter of 29 September 1260. In September 1261 he was called to Orvieto as conventual lector responsible for the pastoral formation of the friars unable to attend a studium generale. It was in Orvieto that Thomas completed Summa contra Gentiles, which was followed by the Catena aurea[17] and minor works produced for Pope Urban IV such as the liturgy for the newly created feast of Corpus Christi and the Contra errores graecorum.[11]

Parts of the text have survived in Aquinas's autograph, kept in the Vatican Library as Lat. 9850. The manuscript includes fragments of books one and two, and large portions of book three.

Contents

The Summa contra Gentiles consists of four books. The structure of St. Thomas's work is designed to proceed from general philosophical arguments for monotheism, to which Muslims and Jews are likely to consent even within their own respective religious traditions, before progressing to the discussion of specifically Christian doctrine.

  • Book I begins with general questions of truth and natural reason, and from chapter 10 investigates the concept of a monotheistic God. Chapters 10 to 13 are concerned with the existence of God, followed by a detailed investigation of God's properties (chapters 14 to 102). When demonstrating a Truth about God which can be known through reason, St. Thomas gives multiple arguments, each proving the same Truth in a different way.
  • Book II is dedicated to the Creation (viz. the physical universe, everything which exists).
  • Book III discusses providence and the human condition, i.e. good and evil acts, human fate and intellect and the relation of created beings to the creator.
  • Book IV is dedicated to discussing points of Christian doctrine which separate Nicaean Christianity from the other monotheistic religions, i.e. the doctrines of the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Sacraments and the Resurrection.

Books I–III cover truths that naturally are accessible to the human intellect while Book IV covers revealed truths for which natural reason is inadequate.

Editions and translations

Giuseppe Ciantes (d. 1670),[18] a leading Hebrew expert of his day and professor of theology and philosophy at the College of Saint Thomas in Rome, was appointed in 1640 by Pope Urban VIII to the mission of preaching to the Jews of Rome (Predicatore degli Ebrei) in order to promote their conversion. In the mid-1650s Ciantes wrote a "monumental bilingual edition of the first three Parts of Thomas Aquinas’ Summa contra Gentiles, which includes the original Latin text and a Hebrew translation prepared by Ciantes, assisted by Jewish converts, the Summa divi Thomae Aquinatis ordinis praedicatorum Contra Gentiles quam Hebraicè eloquitur…. Until the present this remains the only significant translation of a major Latin scholastic work in modern Hebrew."[19]

The first modern edition of the work is the one by Ucceli (1878) re-published in 1918 as part of the Editio Leonina.[20] Appendices to the first three books, based on the authograph, were edited as vols. 13 (1918, 3–61) and 14 (1926, 3–49) of the Leonine edition. The Leonine text was re-edited, with corrections, by P. Marc, C. Pera and P. Carmello and published with Marietti, Torino-Rome, in 1961.

Modern translations have been published in: English (1924,[21] 1957[22]), German (1937,[23] 2001[24]), Spanish (1968)[25] and French (1993,[26] 1999[27]).

References

  1. Back to citation Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles — Thomas's large apologetic and theological synthesis arguing from reason toward revealed mysteries for the instruction of the nations.
  2. Back to citation lit. 'Summary against the unbelievers'; also known as Liber de veritate catholicae fidei contra errores infidelium (lit. Book on the truth of the Catholic faith against the errors of the unbelievers)
  3. Back to citation Benedict XVI, general audience on Saint Thomas Aquinas, 2 June 2010 — Papal catechesis on Thomas's Dominican vocation, studies, teaching, use of Aristotle, and holiness of intellect.
  4. Back to citation John Paul II, Fides et Ratio — Encyclical on faith and reason, Aquinas as a model of Christian philosophy, and legitimate philosophical plurality under the Magisterium.
  5. Back to citation Leonine Commission, Opera omnia Sancti Thomae Aquinatis — The Holy See's commission, founded after Aeterni Patris, for the critical edition of Aquinas's authentic works.
  6. Back to citation Pius XI, Studiorum Ducem — Encyclical on Aquinas as Common Doctor, the harmony of faith and reason, and the Church's continuing commendation of his doctrine and method.
  7. Back to citation Davies, Brian, ed. (2012). "Chronological List of Aquinas's Writings". The Oxford Handbook of Aquinas. Oxford University Press, USA. p. 533. ISBN 9780195326093.
  8. Back to citation trans. Pegis (1955)
  9. Back to citation Laurent, Hyacinthe (1931). "AUTOUR DE LA « SUMMA CONTRA GENTILES » SIMPLE MISE AU POINT". Angelicum. 8 (2): 237–245. ISSN 1123-5772. JSTOR 44626388.
  10. Back to citation Aquinas, Thomas; Richard J. Regan; Brian Davies (2003). On Evil. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 5. ISBN 0-19-509183-3.
  11. Back to citation occurrence 11.0 Back to citation occurrence 11.1 Davies, Aquinas: An Introduction, p. 4.
  12. Back to citation Torrell, Jean-Pierre (1996). St. Thomas Aquinas: The Person and His Work, vol. 1. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press. p. 407502. ISBN 978-0-268-00801-7.
  13. Back to citation John Y.B. Hood, Aquinas and the Jews (1995), p. 37.
  14. Back to citation Anthony Bonner, Doctor illuminatus, Princeton University Press (1993), p. 78
  15. Back to citation Brian Davies, Thomas Aquinas's Summa Contra Gentiles: A Guide and Commentary, Oxford University Press, (2016), pages 8-10.
  16. Back to citation "Aquinas only mentions Islam nine times in the entire work, and only a brief paragraph (1.6) says anything remotely substantive about the religion." T. E. Burman in: Nicholas of Cusa and Islam: Polemic and Dialogue in the Late Middle Ages, Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions (Ian Christopher Levy, Rita George-Tvrtković, Donald Duclow eds.), BRILL (2014), p. xv.
  17. Back to citation Healy, Theologian, p. 4.
  18. Back to citation Galletti in Vat. Lat. 7900 f. 106; Hierarchia Catholica Medii Aevi, Vol 4, 233, https://www.scribd.com/doc/63478112/Hierarchia-Catholica-Medii-Aevi-V4 Accessed 21 February 2013
  19. Back to citation "Kabbalah and Conversion: Caramuel and Ciantes on Kabbalah as a Means for the Conversion of the Jews", by Yossef Schwartz, in Un’altra modernità. Juan Caramuel Lobkowitz (1606–1682): enciclopedia e probabilismo, eds. Daniele Sabaino and Paolo C. Pissavino (Pisa: Edizioni EPS 2012): 175–187, 176–7, https://www.academia.edu/2353870/Kabbalah_and_Conversion_Caramuel_and_Ciantes_on_Kabbalah_as_a_Means_for_the_Conversion_of_the_Jews Accessed 16 March 2012. See Summa divi Thomae Aquinatis ordinis praedicatorum Contra Gentiles quam Hebraicè eloquitur Iosephus Ciantes Romanus Episcopus Marsicensis ex eodem Ordine assumptus, ex typographia Iacobi Phaei Andreae filii, Romae 1657.
  20. Back to citation Pietro Antonia Ucelli (ed.), S. Thomae Aquinatis... Summae de veritate catholicae fidei contra gentiles quae supersunt ex codice autographo... cetera vero ex probatissimis codd. et editionibus, Roma 1878. Summa contra gentiles (Sancti Thomae Aquinatis doctoris Angelici Opera omnia, iussu edita Leonis XIII. P. M. 13), Roma 1918, 3–602; (P. M. 14), Roma 1926, 3–475; (P. M. 15), Roma 1930, 3–299.
  21. Back to citation The Summa Contra Gentiles, literally translated by the English Dominican Fathers from the latest Leonine Edition Archived 2011-08-22 at the Wayback Machine Burns Oates & Washbourne Ltd. (1924).
  22. Back to citation Summa contra Gentiles, 5 vols., New York: Hanover House, (1955-57; reprint University of Notre Dame Press, 1975): Book One, God, trans. Anton C. Pegis; Book Two, Creation, trans. James Anderson; Book Three, Providence, (Part 1 and Part 2) trans. Vernon Bourke; Book Four, Salvation, trans. Charles J. O'Neil.
  23. Back to citation Hans Nachod, Paul Stern, Thomas von Aquin, Die Summe wider die Heiden in vier Büchern, Leipzig 1935–1937.
  24. Back to citation Karl Albert, Thomas von Aquin, Summa contra gentiles 1.–4. Buch. Lateinisch und deutsch, Darmstadt 2001.
  25. Back to citation Laureano Robles Carcedo, Adolfo Robles Sierra, Santo Tomas de Aquino, Suma contra los gentiles 1–2 (Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos. Sección 6: Filosofia 94 und 102), Madrid 1967–1968
  26. Back to citation René-Antoine Gauthier, Thomas de Aquino, Summa contra gentiles. Saint Thomas d’Aquin, Somme contre les gentils (Philosopie européenne), Paris 1993. Réginald Bernier, Thomas d’Aquin, Somme contre les gentils, Latout-Maubourg 1993.
  27. Back to citation Vincent Aubin, Cyrille Michon, Denis Moreau, Thomas d’Aquin, Somme contre les gentils 1–4 (GF Flammarion 1045–1048), Paris 1999.

Bibliography

  • M. Asín y Palacios: “El averroísmo teológico de Santo Tomás de Aquino.” Homenaje á d. Francisco Codera en su jubilación del profesorado, estudios de erudición oriental. Zaragoza, 1904, pp. 271–331.
  • R. R. Burns: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in the Crusader Kingdom of Valencia, Cambridge, 1984.
  • J.-M. Casciaro: El diálogo teológico de Santo Tomás con musulmanes y judíos, Madrid, 1969.
  • C. Chang, Engaging Unbelief: A Captivating Strategy from Augustine & Aquinas. Downers Grove, IL, 2000.
  • L. Getino: La Summa contra gentiles y el Pugio fidei. Vergara, 1905.
  • H. Hoping: Weisheit als Wissen des Ursprungs: Philosophie und Theologie in der "Summa contra gentiles" des Thomas von Aquin. Freiburg, 1997.
  • Matthew Kostelecky: Thomas Aquinas’s Summa contra Gentiles: A Mirror of Human Nature. Leuven: Peeters, 2013. ISBN 978-90-429-2747-6
  • A. Huerga: “Hipótesis sobre la génesis de la Summa contra gentiles y del Pugio fidei.” Angelicum 51 (1947), 533–57.
  • T. Murphy: “The date and purpose of the contra Gentiles.” Heythrop Journal 10 (1969), 405–15.
  • R. Schönberger: Thomas von Aquins “Summa contra Gentiles”. Darmstadt, 2001.
  • John Tolan: "Thomas Aquinas: Summa contra gentiles", in D. Thomas et al., eds., Bibliographical History of Christian-Muslim Relations, vol. 4, Leiden: Brill, 2009–12.
  • Jean-Pierre Torrell, OP: St. Thomas Aquinas: The Person and His Work: vol. 1. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1996.
  • J. Waltz: "Muhammad and the Muslims in St. Thomas Aquinas." Muslim World 66 (1976): 81–95.
  • Summa contra gentiles (in Latin). Vol. 1. Naples. 1773 – via archive.org.
  • The English Dominican Fathers (1923). The Summa contra gentiles of Saint Thomas Aquinas. Vol. First Book (literally translated from the Latest Leonine ed.). London: Burns Oates & Washbourne Ltd. – via archive.org. (with imprimatur of Edmund Canon Surmont, Westminster general vicar)
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