Sunday, August 9, 2009

Aquinas on symbolic theology

"argument ought not to be fashioned of metaphors, as the Master says in Sentences 3, Distinction 11, and Denis says in the Letter to Titus. Symbolic theology is not argumentative, especially since it is not the exposition of any author [(ex tropicis locutionibus non est sumenda argumentatio, ut dicit Magister 11 distinctione III sententiarum, et Dionysius dicit in epistula ad Titum quod symbolica theologia non est argumentativa, et praecipue cum illa expositio non sit alicuius auctoris)]."

Thomas Aquinas, Expositio super librum Boethii De Trinitate, pars 1 q. 2 a. 3 ad 5, as translated by Ralph McInerny (Thomas Aquinas: selected writings, ed. and trans. with an introduction and notes by Ralph McInerny (London: Penguin Books, 1998), 137). The Latin is taken from the Leiden (i.e. Brill) edition of 1959, ed. Bruno Decker, as reproduced in Corpus Thomisticum here: http://www.corpusthomisticum.org/cbt.html#84436.