American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly

published on February 23, 2019

Theology as Wisdom
Renaissance and Modern Scholastic Commentaries on Aquinas

One of the frequently commented-upon texts of Aquinas was and still is the first question of Summa theologiae. It is usually the question of whether theology is scientific knowledge that attracts the attention of readers or commentators. This study, however, deals with the question from the sixth article, regarding whether theology is wisdom. It investigates the commentaries of famous authors of Second Scholasticism (especially Bañez and Gonet), who comment on and explain this text of Aquinas. Although this question does not appear to be very controversial, some interesting developments and commentaries can be found even in this topic. The most interesting theme is the question of how theology can be both wisdom and science, i.e., two intellectual virtues. Moreover, there is a need for the interpretation of the texts of Aristotle and Aquinas holding that wisdom is a compound of scientific knowledge and intellectual intuition.