Tertia Pars

Tradition:
Scholastic Christian
Author:
Thomas Aquinas
Form:
scholastic summa (Part III, incomplete)
Approx. date:
c. 1273 CE

Pars III of the Summa Theologiae, left incomplete at Aquinas's death (1274). 90 Quaestiones on the Incarnation, Christ's life, and the sacraments through the Eucharist. English from the Dominican Fathers (1920s); Latin from the Vivès edition (Paris 1871-1880).

Source context· Greco-Christian stream · Greco-Latin cultural age
Stream
Greco-Christian
Cultural age
Greco-Latin (4th post-Atlantean cultural age)
Composed
c. 1273 CE
Soul-faculty
Intellectual Soul

What this work carries

Tertia Pars carries forward the Christological substance of the early Church Fathers and the conciliar tradition (Chalcedon, Damascene), translating the mystery of the Incarnation into a systematic scholastic architecture. The 90 Quaestiones treat the union of divine and human in Christ, the events of Christ's earthly life, and the sacraments as ongoing channels of the Incarnation's effects.

Language frame

The work is high scholastic Latin in quaestio-articulus form: objections, sed contra, respondeo, replies. It presupposes Aristotelian metaphysics (substance, accident, hypostasis, nature) and treats the Incarnation as a fitting (conveniens) divine act analyzable by reason illumined by revelation.

Steiner’s engagement

  • GA 108, 1908-03-14Steiner describes scholastic philosophy as a peculiar synthesis of Aristotelian thought, defending its conceptual precision against its modern detractors.
  • GA 246, 1908-08-17Steiner characterizes the scholastic technique as suitable for rationally processing empirical knowledge and for pressing a limited distance upward toward spiritual truth.
  • GA 176, 1917-09-11Steiner names Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) within his account of the karma of materialism, positioning the scholastic moment as a decisive turning in Western soul-history.
  • GA 213, 1922-07-09Steiner argues that modern scientific thinking is the direct continuation of scholastic thinking, so that understanding scholasticism is required for diagnosing the present.
  • GA 213, 1922-07-15Steiner traces the sundering within scholasticism whereby the unified knowledge of faith and reason fell apart, preparing the later spiritual crisis.
  • GA 220, 1923-01-27Steiner takes up the realism–nominalism controversy of medieval scholasticism as the decisive battleground over the reality of universals and forms.

Cross-tradition congruence

  • Chalcedonian ChristologyAquinas's treatment of the hypostatic union in Pars III systematizes the conciliar formula of two natures in one Person, distinct from but coordinated with later anthroposophical accounts of the Christ-being.
  • Damascene's De Fide OrthodoxaJohn of Damascus's Greek synthesis of Christological doctrine stands behind much of Aquinas's structure in Pars III, particularly on the assumed human nature and Christ's operations.
  • Islamic kalām and falsafaThe scholastic quaestio method shares formal features with the disputational structure of Islamic theological and philosophical argument, mediated through Avicenna and Averroes whom Aquinas cites.

JSON: /api/sources/opera-omnia-aquinas/summa-theologiae/tertia-pars/index.json · Back to Sources.