ABSTRACT
This chapter considers Aquinas' Summa, specifically his first thirteen questions, as a pedagogical instrument for developing a non-contrastive appreciation of religious language-use. While Scripture, especially the accounts of Jesus Christ and the early Christian communities, provides practical examples of the Christian life, the articles of faith derived from Scripture provide precepts upon which those Christian forms of life are based; in other words, the doctrinal aspects of Christianity shape and inform the practical aspects, and vice versa. The Dominican approach of study through contemplation grows out of the friar's religious practice, thoroughly based on and guided by scripture: silent prayer, divine liturgy, sacraments, acts of charity, preaching. Scriptural study was also integral to the medieval university curriculum, upon which the Dominicans built their own educational system, and the brightest students such as Aquinas and Eckhart were sent to the university with the expectation that they would master its curriculum as well as contribute to the order's own.
