If we had but dwelt enough in time, I would probably start this lecture talking about the Eucharist

as the focal point of Aquinas' theory of salvation.

It's the sacrament of love, which constitutes the community of the believers as the body of Christ,

and which contains Christ crucified.

Or I could look at the sacraments in general,

which are an extension of the incarnation,

spiritual medicine, as Aquinas calls it, embedded in material things.

Through baptism and penance, for instance,

we become healed and come to know and love God,

which of course constitutes a participation in the generation of the word and the procession of the Holy Spirit as love.

What I'm trying to hint at is that there is hardly any topic discussed in the Summa theology

that does not prove relevant directly or indirectly for Aquinas' notion of salvation.

From his discussion of God as Trinity, culminating in question 43 of the first part,

on the mission of the Son and the Holy Spirit into the world,

to his understanding of the human person as image of God,

the theological and cardinal virtues, obviously his Christology,

sacramentology, and ascotology. Today, unfortunately, I will simply restrict myself to the

notion of making satisfaction. Now, this notion was conspicuously absent from Peter Lombard's book three of the sentences.

In Aquinas' commentary on the sentences, references to making satisfaction and on Anselm's

courteous homo surface far more frequently, especially in the treatise on penance,

but also many talks about salvation.

Anyhow, this link between satisfaction and penitential practices is rather significant for reasons

...