Aquinas and the Supreme Court: Race, Gender, and the Failure of Natural Law in Thomass Bibical Commentaries

Eight centuries after he lectured on the Bible, both advocates and critics agree that Aquinas remains the most influential “natural law” philosopher. Lawmakers, judges, pundits, and clergy deploy natural–law reasoning on all manner of public issues, from gender roles to just war; the US Supreme Court still cites Aquinas on abortion and homosexuality. In this insightful new work, noted scholar Eugene Rogers critiques turn–of–the–21 st century natural law theory by its founding text, using Aquinas′s own commentaries on the bible. Exploring newly translated, or untranslated commentaries, Rogers compares the passages where Aquinas’s systematic works quote the Bible with the biblical commentaries on the passages which are cited. A very different understanding of natural law emerges in which Aquinas embeds all law, even natural law, not in a particular logic , but in a particular story. The commentaries describe a nature that differs by ethnicity, varies over time, and changes sexuality by God’s decree. This challenges current understandings and uses of Aquinas’s natural law from both sides of the debate, both liberal and conservative. The result is a brilliant and genuinely ground–breaking book.

Acknowledgments xi Bibliographic Note xiv List of Abbreviations xvii 1 Aquinas on the Supreme Court – and on the Bible, or How to Read This Book 1 Part I Aquinas on the Failure of Natural Law 23 2 What Aquinas Thinks We Cannot Know 25 3 How God Moves Creatures: For and Against Natural Law 63 4 How Aquinas Reads Scripture 97 5 How the Law of Nature Is a Character in Decline 118 6 How the Narrative Sexualizes Nature’s Decline 147 Part II Aquinas on the Redemption of Natural Law 177 7 How Aquinas Gets Nature and Grace Back Together Again: Aquinas Meets Karl Barth 179 8 How Faith and Reason Follow Glory 215 9 How Aquinas Makes Nature Dynamic All the Way Down: Aquinas Meets Judith Butler 232 10 How the Spirit Moves the Law 247 11 How Natural Science Becomes a Form of Prayer 265 12 How the Semen of the Spirit Genders the Gentiles: Rereading Romans 289 Conclusion: Questions Answered and Unanswered 298 Subject Index 305 Index of Thomistic Citations 313

Eugene F. Rogers is Professor of Religious Studies and Faculty in Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He has taught at Princeton, Yale, Shaw University Divinity School, among others, and has held numerous fellowships.  He is author or editor of five books and many articles and translations. In 2010, Christian Century named his book Sexuality and the Christian Body among “essential reading” published in the past 25 years.

“This book will be particularly useful for graduate students in philosophy and theology.  Summing Up: Recommended.  Upper–division undergraduates and graduate students.”  ( Choice , 1 November 2013)