Download PDF

Tyndale Fellowship's Study Group in Philosophy of Religion, Date: 2023/07/05 - 2023/07/07, Location: Cambridge

Publication date: 2023-07-07

Author:

Choi, Wai Man

Abstract:

Until now, Thomas Aquinas’s biblical commentaries have been understudied and they are rarely involved in philosophical discussions. Yet, as a philosopher and a Doctor of the Church, his biblical commentaries not only rationalise the meanings of the biblical texts, but also display revealing philosophical insights. One of his understudied biblical commentaries is the Commentary on 2 Timothy. It expresses how Paul and Timothy, as the leaders of the early church who suffer from persecutions for the sake of faith, are the exemplars of testimonial martyrdom and fortitude. These exemplars enrich the studies concerning testimony and virtues, which belong to the realm of epistemology and moral philosophy respectively. By referring to both the commentary and other works of Aquinas, this paper explains what I call Aquinas’s account of testimonial suffering and how Paul and Timothy be the exemplars of the suffering. The explanation includes the cause of martyrdom, the telos of enduring martyrdom, fortitude as a virtue, the distinction between acquired and infused fortitude, and the operation of fortitude. In other words, by using the understudied literature of a medieval philosopher, this paper exhibits how testimonial martyrdom and fortitude with religious contexts flourish in our contemporary understanding of testimony in epistemology and of virtues in moral philosophy.