The most ambitious undertaking of Aquinas—perhaps of any medieval author—was his Summa theologiae, the massive multivolume work that, as its title suggests, was intended to lay out in totality the fundamentals of the Christian faith. The contents of the Summa have been explored many times before. While it is not my intention to reduce this or any other theological work solely to its social context, the structure and literary form of the Summa must also be recognized as responding to the practice of university disputations no less than the collected disputed questions already mentioned. The Summa was a work aimed for beginners, and, for this reason, its literary form is as instructive as the explanations it contains. A question is put forth, followed by an argument, a counterargument (sed contra), and a resolution, just as in the classroom debates. Aquinas's prefatory comment regarding his authorial intention merit [sic] attention:
Students in this science have not seldom been hampered by what they found written by other authors, partly on account of the multiplicity of useless questions, articles, and arguments; partly also because the things they need to know are not taught according to the order of learning (ordinem disciplinae), but according as the plan of the book might require or the occasion of disputing (occasio disputandi) might offer; partly, too, because frequent repetition brought weariness and confusion to the minds of listening students. Anxious, therefore, to overcome these and other obstacles, we will try, confident of divine help, to present those things pertaining to sacred doctrine briefly and clearly insofar as the matter will permit.
Thomas is offering a new presentation of theology because, in his mind, (1) current works of theology are unsuitable for beginners; (2) present works are too verbose and detailed; (3) they are all unsystematic and are too repetitious because they are unsystematic. Consequently, Thomas has conceived of a work that will address these deficiencies, and his method will be to replace the random sequencing and questions of the earlier works with an ordered format that reflects the systematic, logical procedure of contemporary university classroom disputation. Among many other things, the Summa is a testament to the profound influence of dialectical pedagogy in the oral culture of the university—a summa not just of theology but also of the institutionalized form of debate, commentary, and exegesis that had become central to the day-to-day practices of scholastic culture.
(Alex J. Novikoff, The Medieval Culture of Disputation: Pedagogy, Practice, and Performance, The Middle Ages Series, ed. Ruth Mazo Karras [Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013], 166-7 [endnotes omitted])
