Cum venit veritas, defecit figura Research on Allegorical Meaning in Thomas Aquinas

Thomas Aquinas’ Commentary on the Letters to the Galatians offers a brief synthesis of his exegetical theory. Allegory plays a central role, but it seems to be both the mainspring of any passage to a spiritual meaning and also one of those spiritual meanings. To clarify the hermeneutical leap that Thomas makes with allegory, we must consider the notion of figure in his Commentary on the Letter to the Hebrews: the old Law is a “figure” of the new Law.