Summaries / Resúmenes - Studia Moralia

16 JOSEPH A. SELLINGverse, in the inclinations of the human subject and in the reason-guidedwill” (99).After Johnstone presents his interpretation of Aquinas’moral vision, he offers a sketch of the history of the “separationof subject and object” and follows this with his critique of thetheories that he suggests embrace this separation. At variousplaces throughout the article one also finds a presentation ofJohnstone’s own idea about how moral theology could still(again) function with the so-called “unified vision” of the premodernage. This theory is largely based upon what he understandsas gift-giving (99, 100, 104, 113, 119 and 124-25).Interpreting AquinasIt goes without saying that Aquinas is probably the mostcommented upon theologian of the medieval period. This aloneshould alert us to the fact that the object of interpretation, be itthe Summa Theologiae (ST), the entire opus, or Aquinas himself,is anything but crystal clear. One can forgive any or all ofthe commentaries written up to Leo XIII’s revival of Aquinas atthe end of the nineteenth century for having an a-historicalview of Thomas, but (especially later) twentieth centuryThomistic studies cannot be taken seriously when they exhibitlittle or no conscious awareness of hermeneutics.Johnstone does refer to Aquinas’ vision as being “pre-modern”(98, 103) but apart from the implication that this visionwas not corrupted by the so-called modern “turn to the subject”(101) he offers no reflection upon the difficulties of interpretinga thirteenth century theologian. What Johnstone does present isa simplified notion about an “all-embracing framework” and “aunified vision of the moral world”. But what did this world looklike?Compared to our modern, “liberal” notions of human dignityand rights, democratic government, social participation andwelfare, to mention only a couple of the positive features, the“world” within which Aquinas lived was pre-scientific, authoritarian,intolerant, and generally illiterate and ignorant. In the