Scholastica commentaria in Primam Partem Summae Theologicae

IT IS DOUBTED lastly. Whether from the literal sense alone a certain argument can be made for confirming the things of faith?

It is answered, and let this be the first conclusion.

From the spiritual sense alone a certain argument is not fashioned from the Sacred Letters. It is proved from Augustine in epistle 48 against Vincent the Donatist, which passage St. Thomas cites in this art. 10, ad 1; and from St. Dionysius in the epistle to Titus, where he says that symbolical Theology, that is, mystical, is not argumentative. The same Jerome teaches on Mt 13.

SECOND conclusion. When the spiritual sense is certain from another literal passage of Scripture, then a certain argument can be drawn from it; since it already has certitude from the literal, as is the example from that of Dt 25: «You shall not muzzle the ox that treads out the grain»; which passage we hold from the Apostle, 1 Cor 9, to be necessarily understood spiritually.

THIRD conclusion. If all the Saints agree in the exposition of some passage of Scripture according to the mystical sense, then already, on account of the common authority of the Saints, so great an argument can be made from that passage that the opposite cannot be said without great rashness.

Finally, concerning the solution to the third argument, and the conclusion noted by us in the same place, advert from St. Augustine in bk. 8 on Genesis according to the letter, ch. 7, that it is not necessary that, if something in parabolic speech be true and other things contained in the same place be taken according to history — as for example, in that parable «A certain man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho» — even if according to history there was truly a Jerusalem, and there was a Jericho, we are nevertheless compelled to believe that the remaining things which are narrated there happened historically. Of this sort I think there are many things in the Song of Songs of Solomon, in which you will find certain things which can be verified according to history; but many others are joined to them which by no means can be verified literally in the proper literal sense, but are verified either in the metaphorical literal sense, or certainly in the mystical sense exceeding the propriety of the metaphor. But of this at another time perhaps (if it please God) we shall say more, more distinctly. Thus far, for the sake of the scholastics, let what has been said on the senses of Sacred Scripture suffice, and consequently on the whole first and most weighty question.