Aquinas and the Supreme Court: Biblical Narratives of Jews, Gentiles and Gender

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.