Congratulations to Phil Brandt, a research student in the Department of Classical & Archaeological Studies, who has just been awarded a doctorate for his thesis ‘Negotiating Authority and Epistemic Humility: Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae I, 65-74 as a Propaedeutic Training in the Reverential Reading of Patristic Texts’.
The treatment of the biblical creation narrative by Thomas Aquinas (c.1225-1274) in his work Summa Theologiae has long been, and remains, neglected within the community of the readers of Aquinas. This neglect is born of a mistaken expectation of this section of the Summa Theologiae as a quest for theological or philosophical truth. Those reading his parallel treatments of the same material have deemed this section as insufficiently robust, shallow, even embarrassing for those who see him as a theological touchstone. But the readers of Aquinas in general, and of the Summa Theologiae in particular, have not asked why Aquinas elected to engage in this apparently simplistic treatment of a Scriptural passage that addressed issues that were foundational to his philosophical and theological project.
Drawing upon Aquinas’ historical context and through comparison with his other treatments of the same biblical material, Phil’s thesis argues that within these Aquinas deliberately shaped his use of early Christian sources to create both a primer on the use of these patristic sources for his students and, in so doing, also made a necessary appeal to all his readers that they embrace Augustine’s epistemic humility. Read through this lens, the Summa Theologiae provides important insights into Aquinas’ use of ideas and authoritative texts and once more gives voice to his still relevant call for epistemic humility.
So again our congratulations to Phil Brandt, who is currently Professor of Theology at Concordia University.