Summaries / Resúmenes - Studia Moralia

18 JOSEPH A. SELLINGthat addresses what one could call “the moral life” in the broadestpossible terms. Aquinas’ moral psychology occupies an evensmaller part of the work, basically questions 1(6)-21 of the I-IIthat treat of “the human act.” It is here that he treats whatJohnstone calls the subject and object of human activity, a distinctionAquinas surely had known and used, albeit in a waythat does not correspond to many of the insights of modernpsychology.If one were to recast the second part of the ST into the contemporarylanguage of “moral theology,” one could suggest thatalthough Aquinas does have a sense of divinely willed order increation, the real source of moral living is not ‘order’ but ‘attitude’.When it comes down to the concrete questions abouthow we should actually live and behave, in the II-II we find theextended treatise on virtues. Moral living is virtuous living, andalthough it takes place within the ‘order’ of creation, it is notrestricted to that order.For instance, the seventh commandment might forbid‘stealing,’ but a proper sense of justice demands that the goodsof creation are at the service of all human beings, although certainlynot equally or evenly in Aquinas’ view. Thus, if one claimspossession of property (goods, wealth) in an unreasonable mannerwhile others suffer from deprivation, one may overridesuch claims and appropriate that property (II-II, 66, 7).Similarly, although the fifth commandment forbids killing;there are situations in which taking the life of another humanbeing can be an expression of exercising virtue (II-II, 108, 3).With regard to Aquinas’ understanding of moral activity,therefore, I would agree with Johnstone (99-100) that theProvince. The text of the entire Summa is available at: http://www.newadvent.org/summa/The Summa is available in Latin at: http://www.corpusthomisticum.orgSee also, Leonard E. Boyle, “The Setting of the SummaTheologiae of Saint Thomas”, in Facing History: A Dirrerent Thomas Aquinas(Textes et Études du moyen âge, 13; Louvain-la-Neuve, 2000) 35-91.