Life in the shadow of questions. Anthropological dimension of Expositio super Iob of St. Thomas Aquinas

Abstract

In the rich biblical activity of Thomas Aquinas, recently the attention of researchers is call by his exegesis of the book of Job. This commentary distinguishes with his style and content from the other biblical work of Aquinas. Determined already in its title as commentary ad litteram, not only concentrates his attention to the moral themes (analyzed by the Gregory the Great in his Moralia in Iob and which Thomas shared and accept), but on interpretation of mystery of Providence of God, that initiates a range of metaphysical (like a relation of God to the world, his knowledge of individual beings etc.) or soteriological issues, which have a special importance for Christian faith and for theology. Thomas interprets a book of Job as some kind of dispute (disputatio), where the way of thinking of Job is transformed: from sensual through rational to this one which is open and docile to divine inspiration. The change is made on the way of questions and trials, which are the key of this paper. The perspective of debate and question, that Aquinas discover in the book of Job, is very useful and inspire the theology as sacra doctrina, with all his references to the questions of relationship between God and human being (because of Aquinas’s project of theology that considers all things sub ratione Dei). Theology is situated in this dynamism of “bringing” questions and illuminating its by the light of revelatio, which manifest the final goal of man, but it is making this in clear existential dimension.