The Reception of John of Damascus in the Summa Halensis

Abstract

: John of Damascus was perhaps the most important Christian encyclopedist of late antiquity. His influence crops up in two distinct ways in the Summa. He is an authority to be cited in support of positions adopted in the Summa , and sometimes the inspiration of those teachings; and he is an authority whose apparently deviant positions need to be given acceptable interpretations. Of the times that John is mentioned, his name crops up in association with some very distinctive issues: on the positive side, the will and passions (and action theory more generally), and the accounts of providence, faith, and images; and on the negative side, divine simplicity and associated epistemic and semantic questions, the Trinity, and the prelapsarian human condition. This chapter, accordingly, divides the material up in two ways: first, examining cases in which John clearly influenced the authors of the Summa , albeit not always unproblematically; and, secondly, examining those problematic cases in which John presents a position apparently in conflict with that adopted by the authors of the Summa. which follow the nature in creatures, and do not signify the substance but a property of the substance: for they signify the divine nature as a quality or habit. Uncreated grace is in us and makes us pleasing ( gratos ) to God. What I call “ pleasing to God ” either posits in us some disposition by which we are pleasing to God, other than the uncreated disposition, or not. If it does not posit some disposition in us other than uncreated grace, then the graced ( gratus ) and the ungraced among us do not differ, because uncreated grace is in the ungraced soul by essence, presence, and power, and likewise in the graced soul, in so far as God is said to be everywhere by presence, power, and essence.¹ ⁰ ¹