The introduction to this multi-author volume sets Aquinas's Expositio on Job in the extensive existing tradition of commentary on Job to which his contemporaries were also adding. It places it in a period (1261–5) when Aquinas was at Orvieto, teaching those brothers who were not enjoying the higher education available to those attending the studia generalia or provincialia. This was also the period when he was working on the Summa contra Gentiles.
In the school at Orvieto Aquinas had reason to approach the exegesis in a manner pedagogically appropriate to the fratres communes for whom he was responsible. He offers a literal exposition. He took the literal to be the sense the author intended (‘quem auctor intendit’). However, given the intricacy of the debates about divine and human authorship of Scripture, it was, as he well understood, a far from straightforward principle among contemporaries to make reasonably simple.
The three papers collected in the first section of the book, entitled ‘Job and sacra doctrina’, are accordingly concerned with what Aquinas understood about teaching. John F. Boyle considers the ‘University Master’, Jörgen Vijgen the ways in which Aquinas turned to Aristotle in the commentary for help in his treatment of the working of providence in Job's story; Matthew Levering explores Aquinas's treatment of the eleven citations of John's Gospel in the commentary.
The second section, ‘Providence and Suffering’, contains six papers. Serge-Thomas Bonino tackles Aquinas's discussion of Job's attempts to understand God's purposes in the context of what was happening to him; Rudi te Velde sets the treatment of providence in the commentary on Job against the treatment in the Summa contra Gentiles; Guy Mansini looks at the implications of God's speaking to Job at the end of the Scripture account, which helped Job as well as the readers of the Old Testament to understand his suffering. Harm Goris explores Aquinas's treatment of sin and its relation to suffering; John F. X. Knasas again looks across at the Summa contra Gentiles in search of a better understanding of Aquinas's thinking about suffering and the resurrection of the body in his commentary on Job; Joseph Wawrykow compares Aquinas's views on merit in the exposition on Job with his later thinking in the Summa theologiae.
In the last section of the book, ‘The Moral Life and Eschatology’, are four papers. Daria Spezzano explores the working of grace in Job's story; Brian Mullady examines Aquinas's treatment of the balance that Job struck between feeling or passion and the restraints of reason; Anthony T. Flood explores the role of the friendships of Job in the context of friendship with God; Bryan Kromholtz returns to the question of Aquinas's teaching on eternal reward and punishment in the commentary on Job.
This is a workmanlike and insightful collection of essays, in which breathes something of the spirit of the schoolroom for which Aquinas wrote his practical aid for the fratres communes in their study of the book of Job, and in which he can be seen developing his own thinking. There is a bibliography and an index, always useful in a collection of essays.
