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pattern of citations thus composed, and allow their reading thereby to be redirected back to Aquinas' predecessors' use of the same citations, and thereafter back to the Bible itself as it was received and read in Aquinas' lifetime. |
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In ST III.46.3 his defense of the appropriateness of the Passion is tightly woven together with the four cited scriptural texts. In reading the argument carefully, one proceeds from an initial familiarization with each of the individual quotations to an examination of each as it is resignified by its place in the argument. Cited together, the texts contribute to a new narrative that is neither the mere sum of the texts, nor merely the argument which includes them, as if "merely embellished" by them. One inquires into their cooperative effect on the communication of the intended argument, the way in which they help fix it, but also the way in which they nevertheless remain "unruled," possessed of their own original and richer meanings, and therefore resistant to any fixed subordination to the intended theological point.
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While noting what Aquinas thinks St. Paul or the author of I Peter meant, the reader is able also to read those texts in their original contexts, to examine their connections there, and then to reread Aquinas with attention to the differences in the way he uses them. More than proof-texts, the passages mark the broader worldview within which the statements on the Passion are able to persuade; by a reappropriation of the quotations in and out of their original contexts, we are made ready to notice in a variety of ways the arguments posed by Aquinas. One then begins to gain in regard to this Christian Text a scripturally sensitive appreciation similar to that which we gained, in Chapter 2, by noting the uses Taittiriya Upanisad 2 was put to by Badarayana and Sankara. |
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A retrieval of interest in Aquinas' use of the Bible can, of course, occur entirely without reference to Advaita. Nevertheless, this retrieval is one of the primary tasks the study of Advaita imposes on the comparative theologian who returns to Aquinas after the study of Advaita. As we have seen, the Advaitin is obliged to an intense engagement in a Text carefully composed according to a careful reading of the upanisads, and must be- |
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