If only Aquinas would have lived to finish Summa Theologia, but atlas he didn’t, as morbid as that might read. I find it so fascinating, and yet I, as well as all others, are left to wrestle with its incompleteness. I like how his prologue suggests that he is about to attempt to understand sacred doctrine with clearness, “so far as the subject to be treated will permit.” So long as the subject permits, isn’t that the truth?
As a student studying English and Religion, I find myself frequently being plagued by the questions of interpretation. Interpretation of biblical texts is precisely that which divides those of the faith community. Our interpretation can have tragic implications, so we ought to take it quite seriously. In articles nine and ten Aquinas chimes in on the issues at hand in relation to figurative language. Those who study theology know that this is huge in relation to biblical hermeneutics. This is something that I find myself struggling with and pondering on a daily basis. How do I know what to interpret as figurative language? If I choose to interpret something figuratively what are the implications? How would people of a lesser education even know that Scripture can be interpreted figuratively? Even if they did know, how would they know what it meant to interpret it figuratively? Wouldn’t God communicate with people in a clear and contextual way? These are just a few of the questions I find myself constantly at arms with.
Maybe as an English major I should have a bitter distaste for Aquinas since he suggested that poetry is to be distrusted, that is obscures truth, that it is the lesser of sciences. Yet, I admire Aquinas for so much desiring to pursue that which is true, even though in the process, yes, he does downplay the value of poetry. Aquinas however does not completely disregard the use of figurative language. He does after all believe use the convention of searching for “hidden meaning” and agrees that texts sometimes have a multiplicity of meanings.

This is powerful, thank you Augustine:
“In the likeness of our word, there is also this likeness of the Word of God, that our word can exist and yet no word may follow it; but there can be no work unless the word precedes, just as the Word of God could be, even though no creature existed, but no creature could be, except through that Word through whom all things were made. Therefore, not God the Father, not the Holy Spirit, not the Trinity itself, but the Son alone, who is the Word of God, was made flesh, although the Trinity brought this about, in order that by our word following and imitating His example, we might live rightly, that is, that we might have no lie either in the contemplation or in the work of our word. But this perfection of this image is to be at some time in the future. In order to obtain it, the good master instructs us by the Christian faith and the doctrine of godliness, that ‘with face unveiled.’ From the veil of the Law, which is the shadow of things to come, ‘beholding the glory of the Lord,’ that is, looking as it were through a mirror, ‘we might be transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as through the Spirit of the Lord,’ according to our previous explanation of these words.”