Free to obey
Lanza, Lidia
Free to obey - 2023.
4
Question 104 of the IIa IIae is one among several questions in the Summa theologiae where Thomas Aquinas reflects on obedience, establishing its necessity at all levels of reality and theorising about its scope and limits. Once Aquinas’ reflection is applied to a different doctrinal and historical context, it is broadened so as to include new elements, thereby triggering a new discussion of the complex relationships between the authorities to be obeyed and the obeying subject, considering those relationships in their multiple problematic aspects. This can be seen in the commentaries on the Summa theologiae by Francisco de Vitoria, Luis de Molina and Pedro Luis. The need to test or adapt the Thomistic theory of obedience to a context in which, above all, Protestantism must be tackled, leads these authors to focus on cases where the subject who must obey finds himself at an impasse. The solution to the most difficult cases of impasse – for example doubts involving the order of a prelate – requires also the retrieval of a key element of Aquinas’ view advanced in q. 104: the characterization of obedience as a specific virtue.
Free to obey - 2023.
4
Question 104 of the IIa IIae is one among several questions in the Summa theologiae where Thomas Aquinas reflects on obedience, establishing its necessity at all levels of reality and theorising about its scope and limits. Once Aquinas’ reflection is applied to a different doctrinal and historical context, it is broadened so as to include new elements, thereby triggering a new discussion of the complex relationships between the authorities to be obeyed and the obeying subject, considering those relationships in their multiple problematic aspects. This can be seen in the commentaries on the Summa theologiae by Francisco de Vitoria, Luis de Molina and Pedro Luis. The need to test or adapt the Thomistic theory of obedience to a context in which, above all, Protestantism must be tackled, leads these authors to focus on cases where the subject who must obey finds himself at an impasse. The solution to the most difficult cases of impasse – for example doubts involving the order of a prelate – requires also the retrieval of a key element of Aquinas’ view advanced in q. 104: the characterization of obedience as a specific virtue.
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