https://doi.org/10.21697/stv.2018.56.1.04
The purpose of this article is to present the development of Thomas Aquinas’s
concept of joy in the subsequent parts of Summa theologiae. Beginning with the
description of joy as simple movements of the soul, Thomas comes to present the
concept of spiritual joy, which is fundamental to the human visio beatifica. Therefore,
the article is divided into three parts, which discuss Aquinas’s accounts of
joy: Prima secundae, Secunda secundae and Tertia pars. The first part focuses on
the inclusion of joy as experience and feeling. Joy here is understood as one of the
feelings of the sensitive power is considered in the perspective of human emotionality
(vis concupiscibilis). Joy that comes from satisfying the lack of sensory goods
is called pleasure (delectatio). It differs from the joy of affection (gaudium) – the
intellectual and spiritual affrct, to which the second part of the article is dedicated.
Spiritual joy does not include the sensory-corporal component, and it superimposes
itself over purely intelligible beings. Thomas clearly emphasizes that only God
can be the cause of spiritual joy. This perspective allows Aquinas to develop his
concept of theology of joy in the next part of Summa (III pars), which is devoted
in the last part of this text. The emotionality of Christ is the central problem for
Thomas here. These considerations throw a lot of light not only on the supernatural
approach to joy, but also on the ways in which joy – the fruit of the Holy Spirit can
be experienced by a human being in hac via.
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