Compendium of Theology
Compendium Theologiae — Aquinas's unfinished 1265-67 short summary of theology, written for his secretary Reginald of Piperno around the three theological virtues
Tradition: High medieval scholasticism / Thomistic theology
A compact synthesis of the whole of theology around the three theological virtues — Aquinas's short summary for his secretary
The Compendium Theologiae is Aquinas's unfinished short summary of theology, begun around 1265-67 and dedicated to his close collaborator and secretary Reginald of Piperno. Its structure differs from the Summa Theologiae: rather than the three-part division of God, the rational creature's return to God, and Christ as the way, the Compendium is organised around the three theological virtues. Book I (Faith) was completed: 246 short chapters covering the existence and nature of God, creation, the human person, providence, and grace. Book II (Hope) was begun but only ten chapters were written: a brief introduction to the doctrine of eschatology before Aquinas broke off. Book III (Charity) was never started. The Compendium is notable for its brevity — most chapters are a single paragraph — and for its non-disputational format: Aquinas presents the conclusions without the apparatus of objection-and-reply that organises the Summa and the Disputed Questions. It is the most accessible single-volume introduction to Aquinas's system and was widely used as a teaching text in the early modern Catholic seminary.
Author
Editions cited
- Compendium Theologiae (composed 1265-67, unfinished); Leonine edition vol. 42 (Editori di San Tommaso, 1979); English trans. Cyril Vollert, Compendium of Theology (Herder, 1947); recent English Richard J. Regan, Compendium of Theology (Oxford UP, 2009)
School Embodiments
The Compendium is the most compact single-volume statement of Thomistic theology and was used widely in the early modern Catholic seminary as an introductory text.
"There are two great commandments of charity, on which depend all the law and the prophets; for the Christian, charity is the principal virtue, and the others are ordered to it." (Compendium I.1)
The Compendium is metaphysically realist about God, creation, and the soul; the natural-theological arguments of Book I are realist in the standard medieval sense.
"That there is a first being I demonstrate through motion: nothing moves itself, but each is moved by another; this regress cannot be infinite, so there must be a first." (Compendium I.3)
The treatment of the human person, creation, and providence presupposes the Aristotelian hylomorphic framework that Aquinas had been developing for two decades.
"Man is composed of body and rational soul; the soul is the substantial form of the body, not joined to it accidentally." (Compendium I.83)
The natural-theological proofs of Book I (existence of God, divine simplicity, immateriality, eternity) are classical rationalist natural theology, intelligible without revelation.
"What can be known about God from creatures by natural reason must be distinguished from what can be known only from revelation; the Compendium begins with the natural and proceeds to the revealed." (Compendium I, prologue)
The Compendium's natural theology incorporates Platonic-Augustinian elements (divine simplicity, divine ideas) alongside the Aristotelian framework.
"In God there is no composition of matter and form, of essence and existence, of substance and accident; God is utterly simple." (Compendium I.9)
The treatment of the Trinity and the procession of the persons engages the Greek-patristic tradition (Athanasius, Cappadocians) seriously, even where Aquinas defends the Latin filioque.
"In God there are three persons distinguished by their relations; the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son as from a single principle." (Compendium I.44-48)
The discussion of divine ideas, providence, and predestination owes a debt to the Christian Neoplatonic tradition through Augustine and Pseudo-Dionysius.
"All things are ordered to God as to their end; providence is the divine ordering of creatures to this end." (Compendium I.123)
Thomist tradition.
Internal Tensions
The Compendium's incompleteness is telling: Aquinas's 1273 mystical experience (after which he refused to write more — "all I have written seems like straw") cut off the work permanently. Whether the Compendium represents what Aquinas would have done as a popular synthesis, or whether the Summa was already meant for that role, is debated by Aquinas scholars. The work's use as a seminary text in the early modern period sometimes flattened its philosophical sophistication; the modern critical edition has restored attention to the precise scholarly language.
I. Time
The temporal life of the human creature, from creation through the moral life toward the beatific vision; eternity as the divine mode of existence.
Attributes
II. Space
The created cosmos as the spatial setting; the immaterial God who transcends space.
Attributes
III. Matter
The hylomorphic creature — body and rational soul — whose composition Aquinas details.
Attributes
IV. Observer
The rational creature whose return to God is the soteriological topic of the work; the faithful subject as the addressee of the Compendium.
Attributes
V. Energy
The activating energies of grace through which the rational creature is moved to its supernatural end.
Attributes
VI. Information
The articles of faith and the conclusions of natural theology as the discrete propositional content of the Christian doctrine.
Attributes
Personas with the nearest attribute fingerprint
Historical figures whose own classification on the same six-dimensional grid lands closest to this work's. Computed by attribute-agreement on coordinates both address.
Computed school proximity
The work's attribute fingerprint scored against all schools using the same quiz scorer. Useful as a sanity check on the hand-curated embodiments above.
How Compendium of Theology resolves each dilemma
51 resolved positions across 4 dimensions, including 6 distinctive where the majority of schools go the other way · 6 unaligned.
Each dimension is sorted so minority positions come first. Mainstream positions are folded into an expandable list.
Time · 9 dilemmas · 3 distinctive
Persistence, the future, and the direction of becoming.
6 mainstream positions
Matter · 7 dilemmas, all mainstream
Observer · 37 dilemmas · 3 distinctive
Mind, agency, and the knower's relation to the known.