Materials and rheology

After completing his three-year regency as a master of theology at the University of Paris, in either late 1260 or early 1261, Aquinas was assigned as a Lector to the

Dominican priory of San Domenico in Orvieto, north of Rome, and charged with the task of preparing his fellow bothers in the Order of Friars Preachers for their principal pastoral tasks of preaching and hearing confessions.¹⁶⁷ Thomas’ tenure here coincided with the merit of a person is disposed to something, when that is accomplished to himself his due; This is called condign.

165 De veritate, q. 29, a. 7, ad.1: Christus, secundum quod homo, est aliis hominibus dignior.

166 William D. Lynn, Christ’s Redemptive Merit: The Nature of Its Causality According to St.

Thomas, Analecta Gregoriana, Vol. 115 (Rome: Gregorian University Press, 1962), p. 143.

167 There is continuing uncertainty about the precise chronology of Thomas’ academic appointments in this period of his teaching career. See Torrell, Saint Thomas, pp. 117-120.

time period when Orvieto became one of the main centers of the papal court, and Pope Urban IV resided there along with the administrative Roman curia, a large contingent of the Holy See’s diplomatic corps, and a studium generale or papal school with faculties of theology, law, and grammar, from October 1262 until shortly before his death in late 1264.¹⁶⁸ While there is no documentation that Aquinas was officially attached to the papal palace in Orvieto in any capacity as either a teacher or preacher (i.e., a “Master of the Sacred Palace”) during these years, nevertheless a close working relationship

apparently arose between the Dominican friar and the Supreme Pontiff.¹⁶⁹ Reportedly at the pope’s personal urging, Thomas composed the liturgy for the newly instituted feast of Corpus Christi, wrote the oposculum known as Contra errores Graecorum, ad Urbanum IV Pontificem Maximum in 1263-64 as a contribution to Urban IV’s efforts at reunion with the Eastern Church, and undertook the massive task of assembling the Glossa continua super Evangelia or Catenae aurea (Golden Chain), a running commentary on the four Gospels composed of extensive excerpts from the Church Fathers.

The library attached to the papal studium gave Thomas unprecedented access to patristic material long lost to Western theology. At this time, Aquinas came into contact with the acta and gesta (proceedings) of the first five Ecumenical Councils contained in the Synodicon, a lengthy compendium of originally Greek documents, including conciliar acta and episcopal correspondence, which were arranged and translated into Latin by Rusticus, a Roman deacon and nephew of Pope Vigilius, during his sojourn in

Constantinople in the later 560s. The sole Latin manuscript copy of this work is found in the twelfth-century codex Casinensis, in which the Synodicon forms the second half of

168 Cf. Weisheipl, pp. 147-162.

169 Torrell, Saint Thomas, pp. 136-138.

the so-called Collectio Casinensis. On of Rusticus’ primary objectives was to provide the Latin west with a record of the aftermath of the First Council of Ephesus in 431,

particularly the then recent Christological debates that had precipitated the so-called Three Chapters controversy (543-553), an ultimately unsuccessfully attempt to reconcile non-Chalcedonian Christians and advocates of the emerging Christological consensus.¹⁷⁰ In putting together his own account, entitled the Synodicon, Rusticus drew extensively on an already existing documentary compilations which are now lost, some of which had been compiled and annotated more than a century earlier (ca. 435-436).¹⁷¹ It seems that from this and other rare manuscripts in the papal library, Aquinas gained first-hand knowledge of important citations and paraphrases of Christological works of by Athanasius, Cyril of Alexandria, John Chrysostom, in addition to the seminal

Christological texts contained in the conciliar documents of Ephesus and Chalcedon.

Indeed, it is fair to say that Thomas had the most extensive familiarity with the two great Christological councils and the Greek Fathers of any Medieval Latin scholastic.¹⁷²

170 See Richard M. Price, “The Three Chapters Controversy and the Council of Chalcedon,” in The Crisis of the Oikoumene: The Three Chapters and the Failed Quest for Unity in the Sixth-century

Mediterranean, Studies in the Early Middle Ages 14, ed. C.M. Chazelle and C. Cubitt (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), pp. 17-38.

171 Cf. U.M. Lang, “Christological Themes in Rusticus Diaconus’ Contra Acephalos disputatio,”

in Studia Patristica 38, pp., 429-434.

172 Thomas gained access to the Collectio Casinensis probably no later than the year 1264, when the papal court departed Orvieto. See Collectionis Casinensis sive Synodici a Rustico Diacono compositi, Acta conciliorum oecumenicorum vols.3 and 4, ed., Eduard Schwartz (Berlin and Leipzig: Walter de Gruyter, 1922-1929). Aquinas’ familiarity with later Ecumenical Councils, such as Constantinople II (553) can also be dated to the period circa 1264/65, while his encounter with the acta of Constantinople III cannot be dated earlier than 1271, the first approximate date when he quotes from the documents of the Sixth Ecumenical Council (in ST III q.18, a.5 and q.20, aa.1-2). Aquinas’ debt to the rediscovered Chalcedonian material was initially explored by Gottfried Geenen, “En marge du concile de Chalcédoine.

Les texts du quatrième Concile dans les œuvres de saint Thomas,” Angelicum 29 (1952): 43-59; and “The Council of Chalcedon in the Theology of St. Thomas,” in From an Abundant Spring: The Walter Farrell Memorial Volume of the Thomist (New York: P. J. Kennedy, 1952), pp. 172-217. More recently, Louis-Jacques Bataillon, “Saint Thomas et les Pères: de la Catena à la Tertia Pars,” in Ordo sapientiae et amoris:

image et message de saint Thomas d'Aquin à travers les récentes études historiques, herméneutiques et doctrinales: hommage au professeur Jean-Pierre Torrell, Studia Friburgensia78, ed. C.-J. Pinto de Oliveira (Fribourg: Éditions Universitaires Fribourg Suisse, 1993), pp. 15-36; Leo J. Elders, “Thomas Aquinas and

In addition to the material that he fortuitously encountered with the arrival of the papal collection to Orvieto, Thomas was also assiduous in commissioning new Latin translations of Greek works heretofore unavailable in the West, such as the biblical commentaries of Theophylact of Ohrid, an important Byzantine scholar who lived about a century before Thomas’ birth, who was completely unknown to Latin Scholasticism before his extensive use by Aquinas in the later part of the Catena aurea.¹⁷³ The profound effect of these newly found and translated patristic texts on Thomas’ Christology is already evident in the first volume of the Glossa continua on the Gospel of Matthew, finished in 1264 and dedicated to his patron Pope Urban IV. In the opening passage of the Matthean catena, commenting on the first sentence of Matthew’s Messianic genealogy (“The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham” MT 1:1), Thomas employs heretofore inaccessible material from several key works by Cyril of Alexandria and other Greek patristic fathers to counter the sort of misreading of the incarnation of the Word associated with Nestorianism: “The error of Nestorius was that he taught that a man only was born of the Blessed Virgin Mary, whom the Word of God received not into Unity of person and inseparable fellowship,”¹⁷⁴ With the Fathers of the Church,” in The Reception of the Church Fathers in the West: From the Carolingians to the Maurists, ed. I. Backus (New York: E.J. Brill, 1997), pp. 337-366; and Martin Morard, “Thomas d’Aquin lecteur des conciles,” Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 98 (2005), pp. 211-365, have greatly expanded our understanding of Thomas’ indebtedness to the Councils.

173 See Joseph Reuss, “Der Mt-, Mk- und Jo-Kommentar des Theophylakt” in Matthäus-, Markus und

Johannes-Katenen nach handschriftlichen Quellen untersucht (Münster: Aschendorff, 1941 [=

Neutestamentliche Abhandlungen, vol. 18/4-5]), pp. 221-237; Ernest W. Saunders, “Theophylact of Bulgaria as Writer and Biblical Interpreter,” Biblical Research 2 (1957), pp. 31-44; Andrew J. Brown,

“The Gospel Commentary of Theophylact, and a Neglected Manuscript in Oxford,” Novum Testamentum 49 (2007), pp. 185-196; Roberto Andrés Soto Ayala “Teofilacto de Ocrida y la educaciόn real: lόgoj ὲij tÕn porfurogέnnhton kῦρ Kwnstantῖnon (Paideίa Basilikή) c. 1081-1094 d.C.,” Byzantion Nea Hellás 31 (2012), pp. 71-89.

174 Thomas Aquinas, Catena aurea in quatuor Evangelia, Vol. 1, ed. A. Guarienti (Taurini:

Marietti, 1953), Expositio in Matthaeum, cap. 1, lec. 1: “Nestorii autem perversitas fuit ut hominem tantummodo ex beata Maria virgine genitum praedicaret, quem verbum Dei non in unitatem personae, et in

the very nest quote, Thomas offers a powerful rebuttal by offering extended extracts from two sections of Cyril’s Epistle to the Monks of Egypt, an encyclical written in Easter 429, at the commencement of the Nestorian Christological controversy.¹⁷⁵ In this letter, Cyril is at pains to inform his monks on the grave dangers inherent in Nestorius’ rejection of the title of Theotokos (Mother of God) for Mary, tracing this serious misinterpretation of the Virgin’s true role in salvation to a profound confusion as to who Mary gave birth to in Bethlehem. For Nestorius, such a title seemed to threaten the full reality of Christ’s humanity—in his mind, the term ‘Christotokos,’ the bearer/mother of Christ—seemed more fitting, a term denoting the distinctively human nature of the one the Virgin had borne.¹⁷⁶

societatem inseparabilem recepisset.” This quotation is taken from the appended portion of Augustine’s very late work (c. 429) De haeresibus ad Quodvultdeum liber unus.

175 PG 77, 9-40; the critical text can be found in Acta conciliorum oecumenicorum, Concilium universale Ephesenum, Tome 1, Vol. 1, ed. E. Schwartz (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1927), pp.10-23, and an English translation in John A. McGuckin, St. Cyril of Alexandria: The Christological Controversy : Its History, Theology, and Texts (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2004), pp. 245-261.

176 Nestorius, III Epistula ad Celestinem: “I have learned that Cyril, the most distinguished bishop of the city of Alexandria, has become worried about reports against him that we received, and is now hunting for subterfuges to avoid a Holy Synod taking place due to these reports. In the meantime he is devising some other disturbances over terms and has chosen [as a point of controversy] the term Theotokos and Christotokos: the first he allows, but as for Christotokos, sometimes he removes it from the gospels, and sometimes he allows it, on the basis of what I believe is a kind of excessive prudence. In the case of the term Theotokos, I am not opposed to those who want to say it, unless it should advance to the confusion of natures in the manner of the madness of Apollinaris or Arius. Nonetheless, I have no doubt that the term Theotokos is inferior to the term Christotokos, as the latter is mentioned by the angels and the gospels. And if I were not speaking to Your Worship who is already so knowledgeable, I would need to give a very long discourse on this topic. But even without a discourse, it is known in every way to Your Beatitude, that if we should think that there are two groups opposed to each other, the one using only the term Theotokos, the other only Anthropotokos, and each group draws [others] to what it confesses or, if they have not accomplished this, puts [others] in danger of falling from the church, it would be necessary to assign someone to such an affair if it arises who exercises concern for both groups and heals the danger of both parties by means of the term taken from the gospels that signifies both natures. For as I said, the term Christotokos keeps the assertion of both parties to the proper limits, because it both removes the blasphemy of Paul of Samosata, who claimed that Christ the Lord of all was simply a human being, and also flees the wickedness of Arius and Apollinaris. Now I have written these very things to the most distinguished bishop of Alexandria, as Your Beatitude can tell from the copies I have attached to this letter of mine, as well as from the copies of what he wrote to us. Moreover, with God’s help it has also been agreed to announce a world-wide synod in order to inquire into the other ecclesiastical matters. For I do not think it will be difficult to investigate a uncertainty over words, and it is not a hindrance for a discussion of the divinity of Christ the Lord.” The original Greek text has been lost, the letter only survives in a fifth-century Latin

However, for Cyril, the rejection of the term Theotokos can only be the result of a dangerous misapprehension of how the preexistent Word came to be enfleshed: “The Apostle says of the Only-begotten, ‘Who being in the form of God, thought it no robbery to be equal with God’ [Phil 2:6]. Who then is this who is in the form of God? Moreover, how did He empty Himself, and humbled Himself to the likeness of man?”¹⁷⁷ As Cyril argues, if Nestorians wish to divide Christ into two parts, that is, a man alongside the Word, and claim that it was the one born of the Virgin who was emptied of this divine glory at the incarnation, then they must first demonstrate “what form and equality with the Father are understood to be, and did exist, which might suffer any manner of

emptying;” however, since there is “no creature, in its own proper nature, equal with the Father;” how then can it be said that this creature was emptied if he was a man by nature and born of a woman?¹⁷⁸ Conversely, if they claim that the term kenosis only denotes the dwelling of the divine Word within the man the Virgin brought into the world, Cyril questions whether this in fact connotes a true self-emptying? If this is the case, then a biblical passage like John 14:23, where Christ says that “If any man loves Me, he will keep My saying, and My Father will love him, and We will come unto him, and make Our abode with him,” means that the Father comes to dwell in those that love Him. But does that also indicate that in such instances the Father undergoes a kenotic self-empting of His glory as well, and also takes on the form of a servant when He makes His abode in

version by Marius Mercator published in Nestoriana: die Fragmente des Nestorius gesammelt, ed. F. Loofs and S.A. Cook (Halle: M. Niemeyer, 1905), pp. 181-182.

177 Cyril of Alexandria, Letter to the Monks of Egypt, c. 13.

178 Ibid.

the hearts of them that love Him? Or, Cyril concludes, what about the Holy Spirit, “does He fulfil an assumption of human flesh when He dwells in our hearts?” ¹⁷⁹

It is important to note that in these extracts Cyril presents his critique of

Nestorianism specifically as a critique of Nestorius’ reading of the Kenotic hymn, and he will go on to offer in its place a rectified interpretation of Philippians 2:6. Indeed, the first eleven verses of Philippians 2 feature so prominently in many of Cyril’s anti-Nestorian polemics that one scholar has characterized the Alexandrian’s Christological writings as an extended exegesis of the Kenotic hymn, a reading of that hymn which focusses to an unprecedented degree on the profound soteriological significance of the Word taking on the form of a slave—that is, on assuming a human nature—in order to perform the saving work of the Cross.¹⁸⁰ Christ’s center of personal unity remains the pre-existent Word, but attention is shifted to the servant-form assumed by the Son, which does not entail a diminution of the divine essence, but rather the assumption of a new human mode of being undertaken for the sake of his salvific mission. As we saw in the first chapter, this focus on the Christ Hymn is not unique to Cyril, but is rather a thematic concern he shares with many other writers of the patristic era. In fact, Philippians 2:5-11

179 Ibid, c. 14.

180 Sarah Coakley, “Does Kenosis Rest on a Mistake? Three Kenotic Models in Patristic

Exegesis,” in Exploring Kenotic Christology: The Self-Emptying of God, ed. C. Stephen Evans (Vancouver, BC: Regent College Publishing, 2010), pp. 246-264. Cf. Frances M. Young, From Nicaea to Chalcedon: A Guide to the Literature and its Background,(London: SCM Press,1983), pp. 255-68. The Acts of

Chalcedon, Session II, contains the highly important Letter39 of Cyril to John of Antioch which uses the Kenotic hymn as the basis for an orthodox interpretation of the incarnational union and the condemnation of Nestorius: “Although he was born according to his flesh, as just said, of the holy Virgin, yet God the Word came down from above and from heaven. He “made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant,” and was called the Son of Man, yet remaining what he was, that is to say God. For he is unchanging and unchangeable according to nature; considered already as one with his own Flesh, he is said to have come down from heaven. He is also called the Man from heaven, being perfect in his Divinity and perfect in his Humanity, and considered as in one Person. For one is the Lord Jesus Christ, although the difference of his natures is not unknown, from which we say the ineffable union was made.” See also Paul L. Gavrilyuk, “Nestorianism Countered: Cyril's Theology of the Divine Kenosis,” Chapter 6 of The Suffering of the Impassible God: The Dialectics of Patristic Thought (Oxford University Press, 2004), pp.

135-71.

was a scriptural passage of particular importance in his Christological formulations. For Nestorius, on the other hand, the Kenotic hymn is a paradigmatic scriptural proof that the pre-existent Word did not assume a human nature, but rather conjoined to himself another prosopon, or human person, in a union of love—a union so strong that even though the two natures, divine and human, remained completely separate, nonetheless they were worshipped as one because of their shared dignity and the singular agreement of their will and purpose in carrying out the Father’s salvific plan. According to Nestorius,

prosopon/person designates only that observable form that the Son took on in order to make himself known to the world. Hence, when Scripture relates that when the “Word took on the form of a slave (Philippians 2:7) for his person, but not for his nature.”¹⁸¹ But for Cyril, this duality of persons cannot be overcome merely by stipulating that Christ, as our object of worship, is worshipped as a single entity due only to the unbroken unity of purpose of the divine person and human person. Only a divine nature and a human nature united indissolubly—hypostatically—in the one person of the incarnate Christ, and carrying out the distinctive yet joint work of the Cross, can be worshiped as the one true salvific God-man.

Thus, in a text like Cyril’s Commentary on the Gospel of Luke posits a vigorous notion of causal efficacy to Christ’s human nature working in unison with the divine nature in the economy of salvation, a notion of that unambiguously indicates the efficient causal efficacy of such distinctively human activities as the incarnate Word’s human touch in the miraculous work of healing. And it is precisely this text that Aquinas goes on to quote in his subsequent Catena of the Gospel of Luke:

181 Nestorius, The Bazaar of Heracleides, trans. G.R. Driver and L. Hodgson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925), 230.

But although as God He was able to drive away diseases by His word, He nevertheless touches them, showing that His flesh was powerful to apply remedies, since it was the flesh of God; for as fire, when applied to a brazen vessel, imprints on it the effect of its own heat, so the omnipotent

But although as God He was able to drive away diseases by His word, He nevertheless touches them, showing that His flesh was powerful to apply remedies, since it was the flesh of God; for as fire, when applied to a brazen vessel, imprints on it the effect of its own heat, so the omnipotent