Christ’s Fulfillment of Torah and Temple: Salvation according to Thomas Aquinas

By Matthew Levering

Christ’s Fulfillment of Torah and Temple is a concise introduction to the Christian theology of salvation in light of the contributions of Thomas Aquinas. In this cogent study, Matthew Levering identifies six important aspects of soteriology, each of which corresponds to an individual chapter in the book. Levering focuses on human history understood in light of the divine law and covenants, Jesus the Incarnate Son of God and Messiah of Israel, Jesus’ cross, transformation in the image of God, the Mystical Body of Christ into which all human beings are called, and eternal life.

Taking the doctrines of faith as his starting point, Levering’s objective is to answer the questions of both Christians and non-Christians who desire to learn how and for what end Jesus “saves” humankind. Levering’s work also speaks directly to contemporary systematic theologians. In contrast to widespread assumptions that Aquinas’s theology of salvation is overly abstract or juridical, Levering demonstrates that Aquinas’s theology of salvation flows from his reading of Scripture and deserves a central place in contemporary discussions.

Thomas Aquinas’s theology of salvation employs and develops the concepts of satisfaction and merit in light of his theology of the Old Testament. For Aquinas, Christ fulfills Israel’s Torah and Temple, law and liturgy. These two aspects of Israel’s religion provide the central categories for understanding salvation. The Torah expresses God’s Wisdom, incarnated in Jesus Christ. Christ’s passion, then, fulfills and transforms the moral, juridical, and ceremonial precepts of the Torah, which correspond to the three “offices” of ancient Israel—prophet, king, and priest. The New Law in Christ Jesus is also the fulfillment of the Temple, Israel’s worship. Christ offers the Father the perfect worship, participated in by all members of his Mystical Body through faith, charity, and the sacraments. Old Law and New Law are fulfilled in the perfect knowing and loving (perfect law and liturgy) of eternal life, the Heavenly Jerusalem.

As a Thomistic contribution to contemporary theology, this fruitful study develops a theology of salvation in accord with contemporary canonical readings of Scripture and with the teachings of the Second Vatican Council on the fulfillment and permanence of God’s covenants.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Release date: Apr 15, 2002
• ISBN: 9780268161248

Matthew Levering

Matthew Levering is the James N. and Mary D. Perry, Jr. Chair of Theology at Mundelein Seminary. He is the author of four previous books with the University of Notre Dame Press, including Mary's Bodily Assumption (2014).

Book preview

Christ’s

Fulfillment of

Torah and Temple

Christ’s

Fulfillment of

Torah and Temple

Salvation according to

Thomas Aquinas

MATTHEW LEVERING

UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME PRESS

Notre Dame, Indiana

University of Notre Dame Press

Notre Dame, Indiana 46556

All Rights Reserved

undpress.nd.edu

Copyright © 2002 by University of Notre Dame

Published in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Levering, Matthew Webb, 1971–

Christ’s fulfillment of Torah and temple : salvation according to Thomas Aquinas / Matthew Levering.

p.    cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-268-02272-0 (cloth : alk. paper)

ISBN 0-268-02273-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Salvation.    2. Catholic Church—Doctrines.    3. Thomas, Aquinas, Saint, 1225?–1274—Contributions in doctrine of salvation.    I. Title.

BT755 .L48 2002

234—dc21

2002000263

ISBN 9780268161248

∞ This book is printed on acid-free paper.

This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at [e-mail].

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

PART 1      The Fulfillment of Israel’s Torah

1      Divine Law and Divine Pedagogy

2      Incarnate Wisdom in Israel

3      The Cross of Jesus Christ

PART 2      The Fulfillment of Israel’s Temple

4      To the Image of the Firstborn Son

5      Israel, the Church, and the Mystical Body of Christ

6      The Heavenly Jerusalem

Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Acknowledgments

This book began as a dissertation at Boston College, so I am especially grateful to the members of my board. I was unusually blessed to work with such teachers. Stephen F. Brown’s enthusiasm for the project, and willingness to direct it, meant much to a young graduate student and improved the outcome enormously. Fr. Matthew L. Lamb guided me through the doctoral program and offered numerous suggestions and corrections for the dissertation. Fr. Romanus Cessario, O.P., mentored me in Thomistic theology and gave me my first insights into Aquinas’s theology of Christ and salvation. His teaching inspired me to undertake this project. While in the doctoral program I was supported financially by a doctoral fellowship from Boston College and by summer grants from the Bradley foundation for the years 1997–2000. My colleagues and students at Ave Maria College, especially William Riordan and Dominic Aquila, enriched this work by their conversation and friendship.

Other teachers and friends who contributed, in various important ways, to this work include Barbara Appleby, Christine Bowie, Fr. Bevil Bramwell, O. M. I., Fr. John Connelly, Michael Dauphinais, Tomás Fernandez-Whipple, Shirley Gee, Timothy Gray, Fr. Robert Imbelli, Susan Keefe, Paul LaChance, Fr. Antonio Lopez, Fr. Edward P. Mahoney, Donald Mathews, Michael Miller, Jason Pannone, Fr. Louis Roy, O.P., Lillian Smith, Michael Terranova, David Vanderhooft, and Jeremy Wilkins. Fr. David Burrell, C. S. C., Stanley Hauerwas, and Thomas Hibbs generously read the dissertation and gave valuable input as I was revising it for publication.

In the last stages before publication, Fr. Gilles Emery, O.P., and an anonymous reader at the University of Notre Dame Press greatly improved the book through their comments and criticisms; to them I owe heartfelt thanks. Jeffrey Gainey, associate director of the University of Notre Dame Press, did a magnificent job of guiding the book to publication. I am grateful to Gregory LaNave for reading the penultimate draft with his keen editorial eye.

Without the support given by my family, I would never have been able to undertake the work. To my parents, Ralph and Patricia Levering, along with my brother Brooks, I owe the greatest debt and deepest gratitude. My grandparents and aunts and uncles were also a cherished influence. My parents-in-law, Lynn and Ann Moretz, and sister-in-law, Jan Moretz, have shown extraordinary love. The generosity of my grandmother, Mrs. Irene B. Webb, made possible this book. To my children, David and Andrew, and my beloved wife Joy, I owe far more than can be expressed.

In short, the book, while its flaws are my own, is a result of many blessings. In gratitude to the author of all blessings, of which the foremost is salvation, I dedicate the book to our Creator.

Introduction

This book had its origins in a challenge posed to me by a friend. He remarked that no one had ever given him a coherent explanation of the belief that the acts of Jesus of Nazareth could be salvific for him today, two thousand years later. It seems to me that his question requires an answer consisting of at least six aspects.

First, my friend would need to be introduced briefly to the dynamic of salvation history. Since Christianity proclaims that God has acted in history, through the covenants with Israel and the New Covenant in Christ Jesus, to save humankind, an account would need to be given of God’s overarching plan. Second, he would need an account of Jesus’ person, and of Jesus’ ministry in Israel, that would show how Jesus in particular was able to enact God’s purposes for the salvation of the world. Third, he would need to understand Jesus’ cross in a way that would place Jesus’ suffering and death in the historical context of God’s covenants with Israel and the prophets’ proclamation that the whole world would be redeemed through Israel’s Messiah. Fourth, he would need to grasp what is meant by the claim that those united to Christ become temples of the Holy Spirit by sharing in Christ’s suffering and resurrection. Fifth, he would need to see how salvation in Christ, far from being an individualistic transaction, is a participation in the salvation of the world through inclusion in Christ’s Mystical Body. Finally, he would need to have a sense of the ultimate destination or goal, because salvation ends not in earthly existence but in eternal life in communion with the Trinity.

These six aspects correspond to the chapters of the book. In brief, the first chapter is about human history understood in light of the divine law and covenants, the second about Jesus the incarnate Son of God and Messiah of Israel, the third about Jesus’ cross, the fourth about being transformed in the image of the risen Lord, the fifth about the Mystical Body of Christ into which all human beings are called, and the sixth about eternal life.

As such, this book is an introduction to Christian theology of salvation. Taking the doctrines of faith as my starting point, I hope to answer the questions of those (Christians and non-Christians) who desire to learn about how and for what end Jesus saves humankind. The book is also, however, an invitation to learn about these questions by studying in detail the theology of a Christian saint and teacher, Thomas Aquinas. The reader might wonder why I consider Thomas Aquinas to be such an important guide into the mystery of salvation. It might seem that expecting a thirteenth-century theologian to inform modern, historically minded persons about the significance of Jesus of Nazareth is a misguided endeavor, given the progress that theological and exegetical studies have made since Aquinas’s day.

Other theologians have answered this question before me. Jean-Pierre Torrell perhaps has put the matter best: It would be absurd to pretend that Thomas has the answer to all our questions, but we can be confident that his reading illumines the work of our salvation, and that, following him, one can speak of the work of salvation in a more sane and more balanced way.¹ Without suggesting that any theologian knows all the answers, one can affirm that Aquinas’s answers—and the sapiential structure of his questions—draw the student into the heart of the theological task of pondering the mysteries of the work of salvation.

Furthermore, contemporary progress has made possible a renewed appreciation of Thomas Aquinas’s theology of salvation. Spurred by contemporary biblical exegetes—some of whom I will discuss in these pages—most Christian theologians now recognize that no Christian account of salvation is possible that abstracts from the covenants and law of the people into which Jesus was born, the people of Israel.² At the same time, theologians today investigate medieval theology with a deepened appreciation of the fact that it derived primarily from lectio divina, the reading of Scripture. The recovery of this perspective in this century received its impetus from the contribution of neoscholastic theologians.³ As M.-D. Chenu noted, Aquinas’s systematic Summa is implanted in and fed with a continuous study of Scripture … its most perfect rational structures are never an end, but a means to arrive at a better knowledge of the Word of God.⁴ Theological interpretation of the Summa Theologiae cannot proceed without continual attention to the Summa’s scriptural fount.⁵ As we will see, at the heart of Thomas Aquinas’s scientific theology of salvation lies the narrative of Scripture—the fulfillment of Israel’s Torah and Temple through the New Covenant in Christ Jesus. One can thus expect to find in Aquinas’s theological questioning—his interweaving of dialectical enquiry and scriptural narrative⁶—a guide that reveals the meaning of the apostolic witness that the Scriptures have been fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth.

By way of exploring the Christian meaning of Jesus saves and salvation, I will therefore draw upon both Thomas Aquinas’s theology, especially as found in mature form in his Summa Theologiae, and the work of contemporary biblical exegetes and theologians. It is worth noting that there already exist valuable commentaries on Aquinas’s presentation of Jesus Christ in the Summa Theologiae, most notably Jean-Pierre Torrell’s recent commentary.⁷ These works generally follow the order of questions adopted by Aquinas and offer theological and historical insights into each question. My study, intended as a contribution to contemporary systematic theology in the Thomist tradition, complements these works by offering a reading of Aquinas’s theology of salvation that focuses on his use of central motifs from the Old Testament: Torah and Temple. The chapters that follow are an invitation to a dialogue, with St. Thomas as the major but far from the only interlocutor, on the meaning of Jesus saves and salvation.

Nonetheless, before we begin in earnest, a certain amount of strictly historical introduction is appropriate. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries were a period of enormously fruitful debate over the meaning of Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection. The debate’s starting point was Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo, written at the prompting of his fellow monks, which attempts to provide a rational explanation for Christ’s bloody death.⁸ Why, Anselm asks, did God choose this bloody means, involving the death of an innocent man, to redeem human beings? Would it not have been more reasonable for God simply to redeem human beings by the command of his will? Furthermore, why did God choose that his Son should redeem us? Why couldn’t we have been redeemed by the actions of a mere sinless man created for that purpose, or by an angel?⁹

In answer to such questions, Anselm develops his theory of satisfaction. As Guy Mansini has shown, Anselm drew this term from the Rule of St. Benedict, where it refers to the guilty person’s making amends for a violation of the communal rule of conduct.¹⁰ For Benedict and Anselm, satisfaction differs from punishment because the person performs satisfaction by his or her own free will. Anselm notes that right order between the creature and the Creator exists when the creature’s will is conformed to the Creator’s holy will. When the rational creature turns away from God, this right order is destroyed. Punishment ensures that the creature who sins (and does not make restoration) is not equal to the creature who does not sin. For Anselm, it is impossible that God would simply ignore the disorder and raise all human beings to the ultimate end for which God created rational creatures, namely eternal life.¹¹ Anselm illustrates eternal life by comparing it to a treasury, and each rational creature to a treasure. The blessed angels are sparkling treasures; sinful human beings are muddied treasures. God would not place muddied treasures in the same treasury where he preserves his sparkling treasures.¹² Thus the disorder in sinful creatures must be healed interiorly, not extrinsically by divine command.

To restore right order, a human being would have to do three things. First, the human being would have to subject his or her will to God’s will, thus returning what the first human being took away.¹³ Second, the human being would need to return to God all the people who, because of original sin, were not subject to God’s will.¹⁴ Third, in addition to healing the disorder, the human being would need to compensate for the insult bound up with (yet distinguishable from) the disorder.¹⁵ Anselm shows that a mere human being could not accomplish any of these three tasks. On the other hand, the incarnate Word, as God-man, achieves all three: his human will is perfectly in accord with his divine will; his undeserved death merits an eternal reward, which he transfers to those who are joined to him by faith and charity; and his free sacrifice of his bodily life, as the bodily life of the Word, compensates superabundantly for the insult bound up with the disorder.¹⁶

Almost immediately, Peter Abelard challenged Anselm’s theory (without addressing its particular details) by rejecting its framework of justice.¹⁷ For Abelard, Christ’s cross cannot be properly interpreted by analogies based on human conceptions of justice. Rather, the cross manifests God’s superabundant charity, leveling all conceptions of justice. Christ’s suffering reveals God’s charity, not God’s will to have Christ make satisfaction for sins.¹⁸ Abelard’s challenge was answered in kind by his contemporary Bernard, who defended Anselm’s perspective. Bernard argues that God’s mercy operates by means of justice.¹⁹ Christ’s suffering is not simply a revelation of God’s charity. On the contrary, it enacts God’s charity by accomplishing our salvation through the restoration of justice.²⁰ Retrieving the Pauline theme of the Mystical Body, Bernard suggests that Christ, by his undeserved suffering and death (paying sin’s penalty, which he did not owe), makes satisfaction as Head for the members of his Body.²¹ In this way, Bernard attempts to show that while our salvation is due to Christ’s suffering on the cross, nonetheless salvation is not an extrinsic event: by interior union with the Head, human beings receive the interior renewal that his suffering brings about.

Later twelfth- and thirteenth-century theologians attempted to overcome the apparent divide between the two approaches by uniting Anselm’s emphasis on justice with Abelard’s emphasis on charity. The great theologians of the thirteenth century, such as Albert, Bonaventure, and Aquinas, all incorporate into their accounts of salvation Anselm’s theory of satisfaction (without Anselm’s effort to arrive at necessary reasons), the centrality of Christ’s charity, the role of merit, and the Mystical Body, as well as complex discussions of causality drawn from their reading of Aristotle. This wide conceptual agreement has led modern scholars to conclude that Aquinas’s contribution lay in synthesizing and at times sharpening the insights of his well-known predecessors. Brian McDermott expresses this view in concluding his brief summary of Aquinas’s doctrine of redemption: Aquinas’s treatment of redemption, though not original, is a very balanced and tempered synthesis of many key contributions from biblical and patristic soteriology.²²

Such depictions, although accurate as regards his sources, nonetheless underestimate his contribution. Most importantly, they do not appreciate the reemergence, during this period, of widespread Christian theological study of the Old Testament. As Chenu has pointed out, theologians in the twelfth century did not treat the Old Testament as a bygone and defunct stage in the divine plan but on the contrary resorted to the Old Covenant somehow to illuminate or elaborate elements in the New by recourse to what had gone before.²³ Chenu identifies a growing enthusiasm (even over-enthusiasm) for the Old Testament among twelfth-century theologians.²⁴ Behind this surge of interest lay a number of factors, from combat with the Catharist heresy, which rejected the Old Testament, to the development of increasingly complex legal and political institutions.²⁵

The growing interest in the Old Testament can be documented by tracing medieval theology from the eleventh century onwards, but I will not undertake that project here. The importance of the Old Testament for Aquinas’s theology of salvation can be traced in large part to the influence of the Summa Fratris Alexandri, whose completion preceded Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae by little more than a decade. The Summa Fratris Alexandri was finished around 1260 through a collaborative effort on the part of Franciscan theologians, among them Alexander of Hales (d. 1245) and his students John of la Rochelle and William of Middleton. As Beryl Smalley and more recently John F. Boyle have noted, this Franciscan compendium is an important source for the shift that took place in Aquinas’s theology of salvation between his Commentary on the Sentences (finished in 1256) and his Summa Theologiae (the early 1270s).²⁶ Whereas the Commentary on the Sentences contains almost no discussion of the Mosaic Law and lacks a carefully organized exposition of the mysteries of Christ’s life, Aquinas adds both to his mature theology of salvation in the Summa Theologiae.

In its massive treatment of the Mosaic Law, the Summa Fratris Alexandri proposes three classes of precepts: moral, judicial, and ceremonial (Maimonides had already anticipated this threefold division).²⁷ The author explains this threefold division by arguing that the purpose of the Mosaic Law was to confer goodness in accord with the branches of charity, namely love of God and love of neighbor (moral precepts); punishment of evildoers (judicial precepts); and preparation for the worship of God (ceremonial precepts).²⁸ The Summa Fratris Alexandri then makes explicit the connection between the three kinds of precepts and Christ’s fulfillment of the law. Citing Mt 5:17, the author addresses The Fulfillment of the Law of Moses by Christ.²⁹ The author holds that Christ fulfills each class of laws in a different way.³⁰ Christ fulfills the moral laws by perfect knowledge of the good, perfect execution of the good, and perfect revelation of the good after the fall. Thus, Christ fulfills the moral laws by his teaching and example and by giving grace so that others can follow this teaching and example.³¹ He fulfills the ceremonial laws "per terminationem, per exhibitionem, per manifestationem: as the end or term of the ceremonial laws, he shows what they prefigure, and he manifests their inner meaning.³² Finally, Christ fulfills the judicial laws by leading people away from evil; for instance, by abolishing divorce and by teaching people not to resist evil rather than exacting the retribution of an eye for an eye."³³ The author concludes that Christ fulfills the Old Law especially by two modes: by revealing grace in his teaching and conferring grace through the effects of his sacrifice on the cross and by teaching the truth about the way to God (particularly in the Sermon on the Mount).³⁴

Aquinas, in his Summa Theologiae, adopts from the Summa Fratris Alexandri both the threefold division of the Mosaic Law and the claim that Christ fulfills each aspect of the Mosaic Law. Unlike the authors of the Summa Fratris Alexandri, however, Aquinas argues that Christ fulfills³⁵ the Old Law precisely in his passion or suffering on the cross. Aquinas suggests that Christ’s perfect obedience to the threefold law in his passion fulfills both the literal and the spiritual meaning of the Mosaic Law: Christ’s passion manifests his perfect charity (moral precepts), through which he freely wills to suffer the penalty of sin for all sinners (judicial precepts) and to give himself as a perfect offering to God (ceremonial precepts).³⁶ While I will explain this fulfillment in detail in the body of the study, it should already be clear that viewing Aquinas’s theology of salvation in light of the covenants opens up a new range of possibilities for contemporary appropriation of his theology of salvation. It should also be clear why the chapters that follow focus on Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae. The sustained theology of salvation found in the Summa Theologiae—specifically its treatises on law and on Christ—moves beyond his earlier systematic work.³⁷

Aquinas’s biblical commentaries, the most important of which were given (as course lectures) at the same time that he was composing the Summa Theologiae, also influenced the direction of his systematic exposition. While it seems unlikely that he rediscovered the theological importance of Scripture late in his career, nonetheless his commentaries and his Catena Aurea certainly assisted his mature theological expression.³⁸ In his commentaries, as well as in his selection of patristic authorities in the Catena Aurea, he identifies Christ as the fulfillment of all that is recorded in the Old Testament.³⁹ Thus, commenting on Rom 3:31 (explicitly in light of Mt 5:17), Aquinas interprets St. Paul to mean that the Mosaic Law is established (statuimus) by being perfected and fulfilled (perficimus et adimplemus) by Christ.⁴⁰ This fulfillment is not a revocation. Commenting on Rom 11:29, he states, someone could say that although the Jews were formerly most beloved of God on account of their fathers, nevertheless the enmity which they exercise against the Gospel would prohibit them from being saved in the future. But this the Apostle affirms to be false, in saying: ‘For the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable.’⁴¹ Aquinas goes on to show that while God is frequently said to repent or change his mind in the Old Testament, St. Paul is here speaking of the permanent election of the Jews, which belongs to God’s predestination.⁴²

Approached in this way, Thomas Aquinas’s theology of salvation can be linked with certain of the concerns and insights of current biblical exegesis. As we will see, Aquinas reads the Old Testament in terms of Torah and Temple, a reading that flows from the Psalms, chanted daily by Dominican friars, which continually refer to the beauty of God’s law and of the Temple.⁴³ This reading is by no means a Christian imposition upon the text of the Old Testament. In his Sinai and Zion: An Entry into the Jewish Bible, Jon D. Levenson has argued that the Old Testament (Jewish Bible) should be interpreted through these two primary covenantal narratives about the relationship of Israel and God.⁴⁴ Along with Jewish exegetes such as Levenson, contemporary Christian exegetes have emphasized the significance of Torah and Temple for understanding the Messiah presented in the gospels and epistles of the New Testament. Luke Timothy Johnson has remarked, In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus is the teacher of Torah, the fulfillment of Torah, and the very personification of Torah.⁴⁵ As Richard B. Hays points out, it is now widely accepted that authentically Christian biblical interpretation would necessarily be an exercise in intertextual reading, attending with great care to the way in which the canonical NT writers heard, echoed, and transformed the voices of their precursors in the OT.⁴⁶

In its current manifestation, the attention given to the importance of the Old Testament is a response to the attempt, originating in Protestant liberalism but flowering in Roman Catholic transcendental theologies as well, to ground theology in universal anthropological categories abstracted from the history of God’s revelation. Classical Protestant liberalism was particularly eager to distance itself from the Old Testament.⁴⁷ In his Glaubenslehre, Friedrich Schleiermacher remarks that Christianity cannot in any wise be regarded as a remodelling or a renewal and continuation of Judaism, and he goes on to conclude that the Old Testament appears simply a superfluous authority for dogmatics.⁴⁸ He adds that whatever has a certain flavour of the Jewish or the Heathen is more in keeping with the Roman Church, just as every opposition to these elements, even in earlier times, contained something akin to Protestantism.⁴⁹

I will propose that Thomas Aquinas’s theology of salvation does, as Schleiermacher might have predicted, revolve around the way that Christ brings to fulfillment and thereby transforms God’s covenantal relationship with Israel, concretized by law and liturgy.⁵⁰ Because of the nature of sacra doctrina as integrative wisdom, Aquinas manifests Christ’s fulfillment of Torah and Temple by bringing together investigation of the nature of triune God, Christ’s life, and human salvation: as Valkenberg has pointed out, the Summa Theologiae’s form means that theological, christological and soteriological considerations [while distinct] are never separated.⁵¹ By means of his systematic attention to the interplay of the Bible’s central narratives, Aquinas also avoids the kind of supersessionism (the view that the fulfillment of Israel’s covenants means that they are now revoked) that mars the work of earlier medieval theologians such as Robert Grosseteste.⁵²

I should note at the outset that Christ’s fulfillment of Torah and Temple is not divided sequentially. Perfect fulfillment of the Torah (perfect holiness) is perfect fulfillment of the Temple (perfect worship). As we will see, this approach gives equal importance to the missions of the Son and the Holy Spirit. Similarly, this approach overcomes the dichotomy between objective and subjective redemption.⁵³ Through the grace of the Holy Spirit, human beings are enabled to share, by their own free will, in Christ’s self-giving on the cross and in his resurrection into eternal life. Thus the entire Mystical Body, Head and members, fulfills Torah and Temple. The objective redemption accomplished by Christ is not isolated from the subjective appropriation of redemption by other human beings. As Aquinas remarks in discussing how Christ’s merit causes our salvation, Christ’s passion merited glory, and through his passion Christ was glorified, not merely in Himself, but likewise in His faithful ones, as He says Himself (Jn 17:10).⁵⁴

The book is for theological readers who, with the perseverance requisite for entering into Thomas Aquinas’s thought, seek to gain a better understanding of what Christians mean, or should mean, when they speak of salvation. As in Aquinas’s own theology, voices from various traditions will be present throughout the work. The book is not a comparative study of how the various religious traditions understand salvation.⁵⁵ Yet I should emphasize that the Christian approach presented here is inclusive in the sense of not ruling out the salvation of adherents of other religions. As a Christian theologian, I affirm the Christian confession that all salvation—understood as transformative and eternal communion with the Trinity—ultimately is received through the mediation of the incarnate Son of God. Precisely because salvation is primarily a divine rather than a human work, however, I do not pass judgment on the ways in which human beings, if unable to receive Christ explicitly, might nonetheless be joined to the blessings of his mediation.

Thomas Aquinas’s theology of salvation flows from his intertextual or canonical readings of the Old and New Testaments, in which the New constantly sheds light on the Old, and vice versa. Fully appreciating Aquinas’s theology is possible only when one recognizes, in the words of the Thomist theologian Servais Pinckaers, that Scripture is the primary source of all theology, and we need to return to it if we wish to make any kind of worthwhile contribution to the work of renewal.⁵⁶ For Aquinas, theology is the scientific expression of the sacred teaching authored by God in Scripture and summarized in the Church’s articles of faith. The task of theology is to employ scientific reasoning in order to understand more profoundly God’s teaching.⁵⁷ With this in mind, we are prepared to turn to the task of learning, guided by Aquinas, how the words and deeds of Jesus of Nazareth can be said to accomplish the salvation of the entire world.

PART  1

The Fulfillment

of Israel’s Torah

1    Divine Law and Divine Pedagogy

What significance does the Mosaic Law have for Christians? Is the Old Law (Torah) merely a preparation for the New Law in Christ Jesus, whose passion, death, and resurrection