The Christology of Thomas Aquinas in Its Scholastic Context

The Christology of Aquinas is resolutely incarnational. Jesus, the incarnate Word, is true God, true human; and that Jesus is the Word, and God, and human, is, Aquinas insists, of decisive importance for human salvation. This chapter discusses the Christology of Aquinas’s Summa theologiae, with particular attention to the importance of the full, and distinctive, humanity of the Word incarnate. It deals with Aquinas’s view of the place of Jesus in God’s saving plan, and the principal sources of this teaching on Christ. The chapter looks at Aquinas’s teaching about the humanity of Christ, with particular attention to the co-assumed, to what is taken up by the Word in becoming incarnate along with the human nature itself. The chapter concludes with an assessment of Aquinas’s mature Christology by considering certain criticisms made of this teaching by those less comfortable with an incarnational approach.