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Abstract
Recently, some scholars and members of the Magisterium of the Catholic Church have criticized modern methods of interpretation for their inability to address the spiritual or theological nature of the Bible. Reminding us of the Church's teaching on the importance of the Church Fathers and Doctors of the Church in biblical interpretation, these critics advocate returning to premodern methods and approaches as a way of curtailing the excesses of the modern.
My intent in this dissertation is to contribute to our understanding of premodern biblical exegesis by studying one of its most distinctive and elusive features, the mystical interpretation. As a focus for this study, I have chosen St. Thomas Aquinas' interpretation of the Gospel of St. John in the Lectura supra Evangelium S. Ioannis. I further focus my study on one aspect of the mystical interpretation, namely the ratio mystica.
Conclusions are drawn by methods respecting the historical context and compositional structure unique to the Commentary. I begin the study then by situating the Commentary within the Dominican program of education at the University of Paris in the thirteenth century, and with an assessment of Thomas' general teaching on the mystical interpretation of sacred Scripture. With this background in mind, I proceed to the textual analysis of the Commentary, beginning with Thomas' prologue. I then provide a classification and cursory overview of the forms employed by Thomas in his mystical interpretation, followed by a detailed analysis of the 12 cases of the ratio mystica.
On the basis of the textual analysis, I conclude that the ratio mystica is the exegetical congruent to the demands made on interpretation by the type of spiritual signification discussed in the Summa Theologiae , Ia, Q1, a10. This mode of signification allows it to transcend the literal meaning through an immediate relation to the Gospel's end, while at the same time serving the literal by way of collating, foreshadowing, and mnemonic functions. Finally, using Thomas' description of John's conditio and his teaching on exercitia spiritualia, I demonstrate how the ratio mystica presupposes and exercises a spiritual disposition in the reader requisite for encountering divine mysteries.
