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Summa Theologiae
By St. Thomas Aquinas
Vol. 1, Edited by Thomas Gilby, O.P. 165 pp
Vol. II, Edited by Timothy McDermott, O.P. 239 pp
Vol. XIII, Edited by Edmund Hill, O.P. 227 pp
New York, McGraw-Hill, 1964. Each volume $6.75.

These three volumes are the first issues of a series, the Summa Theologiae in sixty (60) volumes: Latin text, English translation, footnotes, appendices, and a glossary of technical terms. It is expensive: $6.75 multiplied by 60 = $405, and who is going to afford that price?

There is no attempt at giving an over-all critical text. Each collaborator was left free to establish his own text, or to adopt and eventually revise an existing recension. Thus Volume I uses as a basis the text of ms. BN 15347, as it was printed in the Summa of the Librairie des Jeunes, from 1925 onward. Volume II gives a composite text, the basis of which is said to be the Leonine edition. Volume XIII uses the Piana, as reproduced in the Ottawa edition, and occasionally incorporates read. ings from the Leonine. This is supposed to give "a sound working version," and the editor of Volume II optimistically thinks that his text is likely to be "more authentic than the usual texts available."

The English version is new, and reflects the individuality of each translator. It ranges from a free, fluent rendering, to what will be adjudged as excessive freedom by many, who may well balk, or smile, at this incidental remark by the general editor, that English is "now becoming the second language of the Church."

The format adopted entails unavoidable repetitions. The glossaries at the end of each volume may be provisionally useful, but cannot at this point be considered as generally valid for the study of Thomism as a whole; in order to accomplish this, a further compilation will be necessary, in which the various meanings of a single expression would be traced, and eventually harmonized or distinguished. Speaking of repetitions, are we going to read at the beginning of each volume, as thus far we do, that "His Holiness Pope Paul VI was pleased to grant

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an audience" to the editors, who were led by His Eminence Michael Cardinal Browne, and that "at this audience, the Holy Father made a cordial allocution," etc., etc.?

The footnotes are laconic. Anonymous opinions recorded or discussed by Aquinas are tentatively identified and traced, for instance, to Bonaventura, Porretanus, or Grosseteste. But specific references are not always given. The appendices represent the distinctive part of the project. They are expository in nature, and aim at clarifying the thought of Aquinas by a thorough analysis of the text, and by comparison with other passages of the Summa or other writings of St. Thomas, with occasional help from the traditional commentators O.P., rather than through the historical approach frequently advocated by the French Dominicans. Nor does one see here much of an effort at relating the doctrine of Aquinas to modern theological thinking, trends, and problems. Such an introvert study of Thomism is methodologically doubtful. It tends to overlook the fact that the theology of Aquinas, far from being at once received or officially endorsed by the Church, was considered, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, an isolated venture. Failure sufficiently to confront the doctrine of Aquinas with alternate systems of the same period, particularly with the theology of the Franciscan school, cannot but result in a lopsided presentation and appraisal of the theology of St. Thomas.

Volume I is entirely devoted to Prima Pars, Q.1 We find no hint that the eighth article of this question raises in fact the problem of the value of arguments from tradition, nor that there is a very serious difficulty of interpretation of the sentence: "Quia vero sensus litteralis est quem auctor intendit," in article 10. The editor of Volume 11 states that the second objection of Q. 2, art. 2, is "a formulation of the celebrated argument of St. Anselm's Proslogion, the so-called 'ontological' argument." Indeed, it is even so important that it would deserve a full discussion, in a footnote, or in an appendix, or anywhere. The treatment of St. Thomas' doctrine of the creation of man, in Volume XIII, is dogmatic through and through. No uninformed reader could possibly realize that this chapter of theological anthropology, especially the problem of the endowments of man as a creature, had been, was, and still is, hotly debated. Fr. Hill works on the general, and admittedly oversimplified principle, that the Biblical narratives of the Creation are "historical in content, quasi-mythical in literary form," and he states that "theologically, we are bound to accept a monogenistic view of origins, that is, one original couple from whom the whole race has sprung." Such a blunt statement rates clearly as pre-Vatican IL Is it to be feared that, once the Council is over, there would be a serious

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attempt by ultra-conservative theologians at refloating pronouncements such as those of Humani Generis, which a good many Roman Catholic scholars would rather forget? As a matter of fact, the Introduction to Volume XIII betrays a considerable embarrassment on the part of the editor, or perhaps the editors, of the project.

Georges A. Barrois
Princeton Theological Seminary
Princeton, New Jersey