An Essay on Aquinas’ Literal Exposition on Job, Part 1
Of all Thomas’ biblical commentaries, the Expositio super lob ad litteram has received the most attention and exerted the greatest influence.1 In this remarkable work, Thomas adumbrates a theology of providence that aims to show the coherence of the Christian doctrine that God cares for all rational creatures individually, bringing them through this present life toward the life to come, an eternal life in which they will be justly punished or rewarded. He aims to show that this doctrine not only has the merit of internal coherence, but also that it is supported by ‘probable reasons’, available to those who observe the nature of beings and events in the world. That is to say, while the truth of the divine rule and care for all individual rational creatures is not something that can be demonstrated, that is, definitively proved, once one has grasped the doctrine as revealed in the New Testament, including the promise of resurrection to a future judgment, it increases the intelligibility of the world.
There has been a profusion of scholarly work on the Expositio over the last four decades or so, in large part because in 1965 a highly praised critical text of the Expositio appeared in the Leonine series, one of only two of Aquinas’ biblical commentaries so far prepared.2 This article will sketch the main outlines of Aquinas’ reading of the book of Job, highlighting his method of exposition and three crucial aspects of his interpretation. It w1ll also argue that this reading is cogent, superior in some notable respects to some of the main alternatives and, when the premises supplied by Christian faith are accepted, provides a compelling account of human life under just divine rule.
The Expositio dates, according to the best arguments, from Thomas’ time in Orvieto, a time of intense study in service to both the Dominicans and to Pope Urban IV, from 1261-65.3 This is also the period when he wrote the third book of the Summa contra Gentiles (ScG), which deals with the doctrine of divine providence. As a magister in sacra pagina, one of Thomas’ three central duties was to lecture on the Scripture,4 and the book of Job was a fitting complement to the systematic doctrinal work he was concurrently carrying out on the ScG. Whether the ScG treats providence at such length because Thomas was working on the book of Job,5 or whether he chose the book of Job as his text for commentary because he was working on the theme of providence in the ScG is unclear.6 The conjunction, in any case, points to the close connection between Thomas’ biblical commentaries and his systematic works.
Thomas’ exposition follows what he takes to be a progression in the book itself. Following a Prologue introducing the work and setting out the theme of the book as a whole, he breaks the book into four sections: the opening prose narrative; the debate between Job and his friends, including the intervention of Elihu; God’s revelation to Job; and the narrative epilogue. These divisions within the book are fairly obvious, and almost all commentators observe them. This brief article will follow Thomas through his exposition, noting significant themes and issues as they arise, and conclude with comments toward assessing Thomas’ work.
Prologue: Job’s intention and Thomas’
According to Aquinas, ‘The whole intention of [the book of Job] turns on showing through plausible arguments (per probalnles rationes) that human affairs are ruled by divine providence.’7 When Thomas speaks of ‘providence’, he means the ordering of things to their end, the purpose for which they were created. ln a work that precedes the Expositio, the Quaestiones disputatae de ueritate, Thomas distinguishes the divine art that produces things, the disposition that keeps them in harmony, and the providence that orders them to their ends Underlying this distinction is a profound Christian metaphysics, synthesizing the causal theory of Aristotle and the Christian doctrine of creatio ex nihilo. This distinction is also apparent in the Summa contra Gentiles. At the beginning of Book III, which is devoted to divine providence, Thomas begins by recapitulating briefly what he has already said in the previous book, that as Creator, God is the source of all being, and endows creatures with being.9 Each thing so produced has an end, a purpose which it achieves through its own action, directed to its end by the Creator who endowed it with the power and principles of its action.10
The human being, Thomas says, is a special case:
Some beings so exist as God’s products that, possessing understanding, they bear his likeness andreflect his image. Consequently, they are not only ruled, but are also rulers of themselves, inasmuch as their own actions are directed to a fitting end. lf these beings submit to the divine rule in their own ruling, then by virtue of the divine rule they are admitted to the achievement of their ultimate end; but, if they proceed otherwise in their own ruling, they are rejected.11
So, Thomas’ conception of divine providence in the affairs of those beings endowed with God’s image is bound up with the notion that human actions have ordered consequences. Providence, as Thomas will argue in the Expositio, is concerned with a just order in the affairs of human beings, in which the consequences of human actions are not left to chance, nor governed by caprice, but by divine wisdom that includes appropriate rewards and punishments that culminate in final attainment or non-attainment of one’s end. 12
Thomas tells us that various philosophers have held divergent opinions on the matter of divine providence. “Although the opinion of the majority of men was confirmed in the belief that natural things were not driven by chance but by providence because of the order which manifestly appears in them, doubt emerged concerning the actions of men.’13 This doubt is deleterious, Aquinas says, because if belief in providence is taken away, ‘no reverence or fear of God based on truth will remain among men’, and that will lead to an apathy toward virtue and a proneness to vice.14 Now, this is an interesting statement. One might parse this as meaning that Thomas is concerned to encourage virtue and discourage vice, based on reverence and fear of God; that is, if one can convince people to hold God in reverence, as the rewarder and punisher of human actions, then this places a kind of constraint on human behaviour, a means to a good end. But several things make this an inadequate estimate or Thomas’ meaning.
First, Thomas sees reverence and fear of God as itself the end of the human being.15 Elsewhere, he analyses reverence as a natural obligation to God.16 So Thomas must mean that a defect in this virtue is contributory to defects in all other kinds of virtues, or the habits of right living, in general. Far from being a means to some other end – a support to civility or decency, for example – Thomas takes reverence toward God to be the proper end of the human being. The relation between this virtue17 and other virtues is intrinsic, not external. Second, a few lines further on, Thomas substitutes for the term ‘reverence’, ‘love … for God’;18 so the kind of relation to God Thomas is interested in is based on love: ‘he who clings to God with his mind orders himself toward God as a servant of Jove, not of fear’.19 Finally, Thomas says that apart from a conviction that divine providence rules the affairs of human beings, ‘no reverence or fear of God based on truth’ will remain. The kind of reverence and fear that Thomas is interested in is love based on a conviction about the truth of the relation between God and human beings. Concern for the truth of the matter leads to one of the most startling statements in Thomas’ whole corpus, that one ought not he a ‘respecter of persons’, even toward God.20
Thomas says that the chief difficulties with accepting that God governs human affairs providentially arise from the fact that ‘no certain order appears in human events’21 For good things manifestly happen to bad people, just as clearly bad things happen to good people.22 The first of these is not such a grave difficulty, Thomas says, because one can easily ascribe to divine mercy the fact that good things happen to bad people;23 and mercy, in its pure form, he says elsewhere, is a uniquely divine attribute24 ‘But that just men should be afflicted without cause seems to undermine totally the foundation of providence.’25 In other words, while natural occurrences, such as the movement of the planets, follow orderly courses, human events do not seem to display an order in keeping with divine justice. Therefore the afflictions of one representative human being are posed, Aquinas says, as a kind of quaestio for debate, the participants being Job and his three friends 26The speeches of Job, Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar constitute a kind of mediaeval disputatio, which is eventually ‘determined’, or judged, by God Himself.
For Thomas, Job is a real historical figure, though he need not be; the truth of the book could be conveyed, he says, through a parable, a kind of hypothetical situation set up as the platform for a debate. This, however, would contradict Scripture, Thomas avers, because Ezekiel 14:14 names Job alongside Noah and Daniel, whom he takes to be clearly ‘men in the nature of things’. In addition, James 5.1 points to Job as a model or patience in suffering27 Besides this, Thomas points to certain details in the narrative that suggest Job is a real person, such as the fact that he, his friends and his homeland are named.28
While Thomas says the story could be a parable and still convey its message, if one takes the story to be historical, as Thomas does, it at least sharpens the point that he understands it to be making. In the Exposilio, Mary Sommers argues, it is significant that Aquinas argues, and sees Job as arguing, per probabiles ratios.29The discussion proceeds by testing hypotheses about the nature of providence for their adequacy in explaining the experience of Job. Job’s story is the evidence upon which any conclusion must be based, and that evidence is historical in nature.30 Sommers shows that for Aquinas, if doubts about divine providence are rooted in observation of the world, then a convincing response to such doubts must also help to make situations like Job’s more intelligible
Finally, Thomas tells his readers at the end of the Prologue that his intention is to comment upon the literal text because ‘Blessed Pope Gregory has already disclosed to us its mysteries so subtly and clearly that there seems no need to add anything further to them.’31 When Thomas speaks of the literal sense, he means something different than do modern exegetes, who usually use the term to refer to the conscious intention of the human author. For Thomas the meaning of the literal text may go beyond what the human author understood. In addition to this, while human authors use words to signify things, God, the Creator of all things, may use those things signified by the words of the text to signify other things.32 Literal exposition is distinguished from spiritual exposition, in that literal exposition confines itself to working from the letter of the given text, while spiritual interpretation searches out not only the things signified by the words, but the further things that those things may signify; so for example, Job’s sufferings may signify those of Christ and the Church. Thomas defines what he means by the literal text in a comment on Job. 1.6: ‘The literal sense is that which is intended by the words, whether they are used properly or figuratively.’33 Therefore, the literal sense includes metaphors and other poetic devices.34 This is important for Thomas’ interpretation of Job, because a good deal of his effort is directed at unpacking the poetic figures Job uses to describe his condition or to make his argumentative points.
Furthermore, the literal meaning of the Scripture for Thomas – the meaning intended by the divine author – is the meaning that emerges from reading the Bible as a whole, the work of a single divine author. Among modern options this is probably closest to, but still distinct from what modern Catholic exegetes sometimes call the sensus plenior.35 In this, Thomas reads the Bible not only as his mediaeval contemporaries did, but as the Christian tradition since at least the close of the second century had done: with a strong commitment to a closed canon and a conviction that both Testaments were written under the inspiration of the same Spirit.36
Yet, Thomas does not approach the book of Job primarily as a mine for figures of realities found in the New Testament. In numerous places, where Gregory the Great sees Job’s sufferings as a foreshadowing of the sufferings of Christ and the Church,37 Thomas’ exposition does not refer to Job as a type of Christ.38 Even in the chapters on behemoth and leviathan, which he reads allegorically, he takes the figural meaning to be indicated within the letter of the text, and thus his exposition of them as such remains, in Thomas’ mind, on the literal level. This does not mean that Thomas rejects the Gregorian interpretation of other parts of the book. If we take his statement in the Prologue seriously, he accepts Gregory’s mystical reading as both valid and seemingly unsurpassable. It simply means that Thomas aims to till a field of exposition in which there is work yet to be done. Where Gregory had richly nourished the contemplative lectio divina of the monk, Thomas intends to meet the exigencies of the theological schools founded to equip friars to preach.39
As a magister in sacra pagina, Thomas’ task was to offer theological teaching, built upon the literal sense, the only sense suited to and acceptable in theological argument.40 He brought to this all the tools of the mediaeval university: grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, and natural science.41 It was Thomas’ task to interpret the specific text under examination within an understanding of the truth that derives from reflection on the Bible as a whole, which then informs further reading of the Bible. There is thus a reciprocal relationship between the individual text commented upon, the Bible as a whole, and the dogmatic theology that derives from such reflection.42 To read the book of Job in light of the fuller teaching on the resurrection of the body, for example, is not illegitimate, but rather required by the demands of the theological exegesis that was the goal of the magister in sacra pagina’s work. This could suggest an arbitrary approach to the text that Thomas has claimed he will interpret according to the letter; but this impression would be imbalanced. Thomas finds indications of what further doctrines –such as the resurrection of the body – are germane to the book of Job, within the book of Job itself. This is evident in the fact that in commenting verse by verse upon the text, Thomas cites other texts within Job 410 times, while citing other biblical texts somewhat sparingly, when they are suggested by something within the text.43
The foundation of the debate: the history of a just man afflicted
Thomas sees the prose narrative in the opening two chapters of Job as ‘the premised foundation or the whole debate’,44 which follows. The heavenly scene of this narrative, Thomas says, is a figural representation of the truth that God takes care of human affairs and orders them.45 The figural nature of the scene is apparent in the fact that it speaks of Satan coming and going, angels walking and standing, and other impossibilities.46 Most importantly, he warns, one ought not to think that God was induced by Satan lo permit Job to be afflicted, rather, ‘he ordained it in his eternal disposition to manifest Job’s virtue’.47 Thomas finds three things in this narrative that are crucial for what follows in the exposition. First, it establishes Job’s condition and character. Job was a prosperous and a virtuous man. free from sin, and these two qualifications are connected. The description of Job’s prosperity, Thomas says, shows us the sharpness of his afflictions by contrast. It shows something further as well: ‘according to God’s first intention, not only spiritual, but also temporal goods are bestowed on just men … even in the beginning man was instituted in such a way that he would not have been subject to any disturbance if he had persisted in his innocence’.48 So, Thomas’ interpretation, drawing implicitly on the opening chapters of Genesis, sets the whole debate that is to follow on the question of the sufferings of the righteous in the context of a history in which not only moral evil, but temporal misfortune arises from the loss of human innocence.49 Even after the entry of evil into the world, however, there is a distinction between the sufferings of the virtuous and the wicked. God visits retribution upon the wicked, at least in another life, 50 and here perhaps remedially,51 but evils that come upon good human beings are attributable to God’s providence, ‘not from the principal intention’, but rather accidentally (per accidens).52 God turns this affliction to good purpose, by using it to make the virtue of just men conspicuous to others, in order to judge them, leading some to correction.53
Second, Aquinas establishes the mediating activity in God’s providence of the incorporeal intellectual beings that the Bible calls angels or demons. While the dramatic events and dialogue of the heavenly court are figurative, the underlying truth is that divine providence works through higher beings to govern lower ones, and uses incorporeal intellectual beings in his government of human beings.54 The good spirits, called angels in the Bible, who have maintained their purity, move human beings to good actions, while the demons, who are evil because they have corrupted their good nature, move human beings to evil actions.55 The former act according to the divine will, but the latter resist the divine will.56 Thus, Satan performs acts that God permits him to perform, but his intention is to lead Job to blasphemy, while God’s intention is to use Job’s affliction to make a show of his virtue.57 God permits the actions of demons, but does not endorse them, and uses them to bring about good. Thomas is also insistent, however, that an evil human being participates in his or her own corruption by abandoning the spiritual goods which are the end of one possessing a rational nature, in favour of the earthly goods, which correspond to human fleshly nature.58 Aquinas, then, holds together several things in his exposition of the opening drama: the eternal disposition of all things by God; the accomplishment of affliction and evil by intelligent beings with divine permission, but not by divine intention; the active co-operation with evil by unjust human beings, and its resistance by the just, so that free human agency is maintained; the turning of affliction and evil intention to a good purpose.
Third, having alluded to the distinction between spiritual goods and earthly goods, fleshly and rational nature, as the affliction of Job progresses, Aquinas further elaborates a scheme of what constitutes human good. In the story, Job remains steadfast after the loss of his property and children, and this prompts Satan to charge that Job has remained faithful only because such goods are outside his own person. When God grants permission to Satan to afflict Job’s body, Thomas takes the occasion to comment on the various goods proper to human life and their relation to one another:
Man’s good is threefold, namely of the body, of the soul, and of external things. [These] are ordered to one another in such a way that the body is for the sake of the soul whereas external things are for the sake of the body and the soul. Therefore, just as it is wrong if someone intentionally subordinates the goods of the soul to the advantage of external goods, so it is wrong if someone intentionally subordinates the goods of the soul to the health of the body. And indeed, that Job abounded in the practice of the virtues, which are the goods of the soul, could be sensibly manifest to all.59
The external goods of the human being are those outside his own body, whether material, like Job’s wealth, or social, like his children. The internal goods of the human being are twofold: those goods related to the body, fundamentally bodily health; and those that pertain to the soul, the virtues.
Eleonore Stump has pointed out that Thomas does not deal in this work with ‘the problem of evil’ per se, that is, the problem of reconciling the existence of evil in the world with the existence of a good, omnipotent, omniscient God, though he does raise this issue in the Summa Theologiae.60 Almost all modern readers, however, or at any rate most of them, think that the primary intention of the book of Job is to address the problem of evil. That easily leads to some misreadings of Thomas’ Expositio because this book is not intended to address that issue comprehensively. Nevertheless, she argues, Thomas has some things to say here that may inform discussion of that question, at least by offering a radically different set of assumptions than those common to the modern debate. Chief among these is that the purpose of human life is union with God, that this present life is marked by disorder consequent upon the sin described in Genesis 3, that suffering in this life is turned by God to a good end, and that the fulfilment of human life is to be found in another life, in which human beings will attain the end for which they were created.61 This last point, which is crucial to the whole account, emerges in the debate among Job and his three friends.
This essay © 2005 by John Yocum is excerpted from Aquinas on Scripture: An Introduction to his Biblical Commentaries, published by T & T Clark International, London, New York, 2005.
Top image credit: illustration of Job raising his hands to God in the presence of his three companions, painting by Cleveland L. Woodward, © from GoodSalt.org. Used with permission.
Notes:
1 For background to the Expositio, see the introduction to the Leonine text by A. Dondaine, Thomas Aquinas, Expositio super lob ad litteram: Opera Omnia ed. Leon; (vol. 25; Rome: Cura et Studio Fratrum Praedicatorum, 1965). The text of the Ext,ositio is vol. 26.
2 English translation: Thomas Aquinas. The Literal Exposition on Job: A Scriptural Commentary Concerning Providence (trans. Anthony Damico, with interpretative essay and notes by Martin D. Yaffe, The American Academy of Religion, Classics in Religious Studies; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989). The most substantial treatment of
the Expositio is that of Denis Chardonnens, L’Homme sous le regard de Ia providence:Providence de Dieu et condition humaine selon !’Exposition litterale sur le livre de Job deThomas d’Aquin (Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1997). Substantial shorter treatments, include: Susan Schreiner, Where Shall Wisdom be Found? Calvin’s
Exegesis of Job from Medieval and Modern Perspectives (Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 1994); Martin D. Yaffe, ‘Interpretive Essay’, in Thomas Aquinas, The Literal Exposition on Job. pp. 1- 65. Other shorter studies will be noted in thecourse of this essay.
3 Jean Pierre Torrell, St Thomas Aquinas: vol. L The Person and his Work (trans.Robert Royal: Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1996), pp. 11 7- 41.
4 See Torrell, St Thomas Aquinas, pp. 54–74.
s Suggested by Torrell, S1 Thomas Aquinas, p. 115.
6‘Suggested by Dondaine, ‘Introduction’, Exposilio super lob ad litteram, p. 5.
7 On Job, Prol., 55-57 (p. 68). I will make use in this chapter of the translation by Damico, indicating any points at which I have modified it. For ease of reference, Citations to the Expositio will cite the chapter and verse commented on, the line numbers in the Leonine edition, and, in parentheses, the page number in the Damico
translation.
8 De Ver. 5, I. ad 9. On the dating of this work to around 1256- 59, see Torrell, St Thomas Aquinas, pp. 59ff.
9 ScG, Ill. I, I.
10 ScG, IlI l, 2.
11 ScG, Ill, I, 4. Sec also On Job 7.12, 272- 8 1 (p. 151).
12 Sec ScG, IlI 140- 41.
13 On Job, Prot. 24-29 (p. 67).
14 On Job, Prol., 41-46 (p. 68).
15 Sec ScG, III, Il6 .
16 ScG. III 116.
17 Chief among the virtues. Thomas says, is the intention of the proper end. ScG. Ill, 143, 5.
18 0n.lob, Prot. 46- 48 (p. 68). See ScG, 11 5 16. 119.
19 On Job 1.8. 431 – 33 (p. 80). Sec also 011 Job 1.10, 18- 22 (p. 82).
20 On Job 13.7-8. 89-153 (pp. 215-16). See E.T. Oakes’ review of The Last Word by T. Nagel. Commonweal, 125/2 (1998), pp. 22-24.
21 On Job, Prol, 31 -32 (p. 68).
22 On Job, Prol, 33-35 (p. 6X).
23 On Job. Prol, 62-66 (p. 68).
24 See Yves Cougar, ‘Mercy, God’s Greatest Attribute’ in The Revelation of Cod (New York: Herder & Herder, 1969.
25 On lob, Prol, 66- 68 (p. 68).
26 On Job, Prol. 68-71 (p. 68).
27 On lob, Prol. 72-90 (pp. 68- 69).
28 On lob 1.1: 13-16 (p. 71).
29 Mary Sommers. ‘Manifestatio: The Historical Presenting of Being in Aquinas’ Expositio super Job’, in Hermeneutics and the Tradition, Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association. 62 (19X8), pp. 147- 56 (149).
30 Sommers, ‘Manifestatio’, p. 150.
31 On Job, Prol., 96-102 (p. 69).
32 Compare the working definition of ‘the literal sense’ in modern biblical scholarship that Raymond Brown gives: ‘The sense which the human author directly intended and which the written words conveyed.’ Raymond Brown, ‘Hermeneutics’, in The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, eds. Raymond Brown, Joseph A. Fitzmyer, Roland E. Murphy (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1990), p. 1148.
33 On Job 1.6; 232-34 (p. 76). See also ST, I, 1, 10, ad 3.
34 This differs from the understanding of some ancient authors. For example, Origen used the term ‘literal’ to refer to the sense pertaining to historical events and things, while metaphor and parable were part of the allegorical sense. See Henri Crouzel, Origen (trans. A.S. Worrall; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1989), ch. 4.
35 See Brown, ‘Hermeneutics’, p. 1157. For a concise contrast between the sensus plenior principle and that of more traditional ‘spiritual interpretation’, see Henri de Lubac, The Sourc,es of Revelation (New York: Herder, 1968), pp. 150–53. This is a translation of L’Ecriture dans Ia tradition (Paris: Aubier, 1967), in which de Lubac gives a summary of the main themes of his comprehensive four-volume work, Exegese Medievale: Les quatre sens de l’Ecriture, Theologie 41 , 42, 59 (Paris: Aubier, 1959-64). On Thomas’ use of the spiritual interpretation, see Exegese Medievale 4/2, 2, pp. 285- 302.
36 See the citations in Luke Timothy Johnson and WilliamS. Kurz, The Future of Catholic Biblical Scholarship: A Constructive Conversation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), p. 49 n. 23.
37 In his preface to the M or alia, Gregory points to one of the keys to his interpretation of Job. It is fitting that Job ‘should signify by his words the One whom he proclaimed by his voice and by all that he endured should show forth what were to be the Lord’s sufferings and should foretell the mysteries of his passion as he prophesied not only by speaking but also with his sufferings’. Mora/ia in Job, Pref., 14.
38 For example, compare the comments on 1.12; 9.23-24;19.15; Gregory reads all of these christologically, while Thomas’ comments do not make reference to Christ’s sufferings. On Gregory’s Christological interpretation, see de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, vol. I, 187- 98; II/ I, 537-48, 586–99; 11/2, 53-98; see also Schreiner, Where Shall Wisdom be Found?, pp. 22-54.
39 See Chardonnens, L’Homme sous le regard de Ia providence, pp. 22- 26, 283-85.
40 Torrell (St. Thomas Aquinas, p. 58) points out that this conviction is one which characterises Thomas’ approach throughout his works. citing Quodlih. VII, 6, 1- 2; ST. l. I, 10; In Gal. ch. 4, lect. 7.
41 See the introduction to this volume.
42 Chardonnens, L’Hmme sous le regard de la providence, p. 283.
43 Sec Christopher T. Baglow, Modus et Forma: A New Approach lo the Exegesis of St. Thomas Aquinas with an application to the Lectura super Epistolam ad Ephesios,Analecta Biblica 149 (Rome: Editrice Pontifico lstituto Bihlico. 2002), pp. 49-50; and Damico, Thomas Aquinas, The Literal Exposition on Job, appendix.
44 0n Job 1.1, l-6 (p. 71).
45 On Job 1.6. 216- 26 (fl. 76).
46 0n Job 1.6-12 passim. 216- 5S5 (pp. 76·83).
47 On Job 1. 12, 580-85 (p. 83).
48 On Job 1.1-3, 47- 53 (p. 72).
49 Thomas cites or alludes to Genesis 1- 3 seventeen times in the commentary and also cites the murder of Abel in Gen. 4. 10.
50 On Job 14.6, 57-61 (p. 225).
51 0n Job9. 11,311-l5(p. 172); 0n Job 9.16,411 – 21 (p. l74).
52 On Job 1. 6, 312- 14 (p. 7R),
53 On Job 1.12a. 458-79 (p. 8 1).
54 On Job 1.6. 23 5-41 (p. 76). For a systematic account of Thomas’ understanding of the order of the universe. which, however, makes almost no use of the Expositio, see John Wright. The Order of the Universe in the Theology of St.Thomas Aquinas, Analecta Gregorian« 39 (Rome: Gregorina University Press, 1957).
55 On Job 1.6, 241-61 (pp. 76–77).
56 On Job 1.6, 286–300 (pp. 77-78).
57 On Job 1.12, 596–611 (p. 86).
58 On Job 1.6, 38(}-90 (p. 79).
59 On Job 2.1, 1-10 (p. 91). See also ScG, III, 28-32, where Aquinas discusses what makes for human happiness.
60 Eleonore Stump, ‘Aquinas on the Sufferings of Job’, in Stump (ed.), Reasoned Faith (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1993), pp. 328-57 (p. 333).61 Stump, ‘Aquinas on the Sufferings of Job’. pp. 343-45.
John Yocum is a lifelong member of the Servants of the Word. He is originally from Jackson, Michigan, USA and currently lives in Lansing, Michigan. He has served for many years as a mission leader in the Sword of the Spirit, for 15 years in the UK, and 7 years in the Philippines. He returned to the USA in 2011 to work with North American communities across the region. John has a Doctorate in Theology from The University of Oxford. He has taught Theology at Oxford, at Loyola School of Theology in Manila and at Sacred Heart Catholic Seminary in Detroit, Michigan.