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Journal of Advances in Education and Philosophy (JAEP)
Volume-10 | Issue-09 | 458-465
Review Article
The Logical Conviviality of Thomistic Biblicism
Joseph Thomas Ekong, OP
Published : Sept. 14, 2026
DOI : https://doi.org/10.36348/jaep.2026.v10i09.002
Abstract
Thomistic Biblicism may be understood as an approach that brings together the philosophical and theological resources of Thomas Aquinas with the witness of Sacred Scripture, particularly through the complementary relationship between faith and reason. At the heart of this approach is Aquinas’s effort to articulate the intellectual content of Christian faith by drawing upon Aristotelian philosophy without reducing revelation to philosophy. Biblical Thomism, in particular, seeks to recover the profoundly biblical character of Aquinas’s theology by examining the dynamic relationship between Scripture and speculative theology, as well as the interaction between doctrine, moral teaching, and Christian life. The present study proposes the expression “logical conviviality” to describe this relationship. Conviviality, from the Latin con-vivere, meaning “to live with,” suggests a harmonious and mutually enriching coexistence. Applied to Thomistic Biblicism, it refers to the ordered coexistence of biblical revelation, rational inquiry, metaphysical reflection, and theological tradition. Thomism, as a systematic philosophical and theological tradition, cannot simply be identified with a form of Biblicism that accepts isolated biblical texts without philosophical or theological interpretation. Rather, Aquinas integrates Scripture with reason, tradition, metaphysics, and rigorous logical analysis. The “logical conviviality of Thomistic Biblicism,” therefore, denotes a relationship in which reason does not compete with revelation but serves it, while revelation provides the horizon within which reason operates. This paper examines this relationship through three major works of Aquinas: The Summa Theologiae, the Summa Contra Gentiles, and the Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard. It argues that, for Aquinas, Scripture provides the foundational content of sacred doctrine, while logic, philosophy, and metaphysics provide the intellectual means through which that content is clarified, defended, and contemplated.
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