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come skilled in rules for reading that defend, build upon and remain faithful to that explicit scriptural grounding. The reader who has gradually become proficient in Advaita approaches the Summa Theologiae with an acquired habit of reading which adheres closely to the literary texture, the composed surface, of theological texts, and seeks to discover the significance of what is said and cited on that literary surface. |
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b. Retrieving the Reading of Commentaries: Cardinal Cajetan on ST I.13.4 |
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As we achieve a sense of the Summa Theologiae as Text and become sensitive to its inscription of prior texts such as the Bible, our interest is raised regarding the nature and role of commentaries on the Summa, its extension and flourishing in acts of commentary. As readers of Advaita who are educated to take seriously texts, and texts within textsto see commentaries as the living extensions of earlier texts and not as extrinsic additions to themwe become prepared also to reread the commentators of the Thomistic tradition with a fresh eye, to understand their readings of the Summa Theologiae as intelligent readings which draw from the range of possibilities encompassed by the Summa Theologiae as an incipient Text. Like the retrieval of Aquinas' use of the Bible, this retrieval of the Thomistic commentarial tradition is a formidable historical and theological task, daunting in its dimensions.
26 In illustration of the direction this retrieval will take, I can merely introduce the method of commentary practiced by Cardinal Cajetan (1469-1534), the theologian who composed the first complete commentary on the Summa Theologiae.27I draw my example from his comment on an article of the Summa examined above, ST I.13.4, which debates the apparent synonymity of words about God. |
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In ST I.13.4 Aquinas distinguishes and relates "idea" (ratio), "name" (nomen), ''conception" (conceptio), and "thing" (res),in order to show how one can have an imperfect and complex knowledge of the simple God: |
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But even according to what was said above (I.13.2), that these names signify the divine substance, although in an imperfect manner, it is also clear from what has been said |
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