The Case for Aquinas

On the feast of St. Nicholas in 1273, Italian Dominican Friar Thomas Aquinas entered a chapel in Naples to say Mass before beginning a day of lecturing and writing. During the Mass, something profound happened to him: some kind of physical or nervous breakdown, perhaps accompanied by an overpowering mystical vision. Afterward, he ceased dictating his theological masterwork, the Summa Theologiae. "All that I have written," he explained to concerned friends, "seems to me like straw compared to what has now been revealed to me." He never wrote another line. Three months later--700 years ago last month--he died in a monastery on the way to a church council at Lyon.

He was 49, and the author of more than 40 thick volumes of philosophy and theology so harmonious to Catholic teaching that he became known as "the Angelic Doctor." This year Protestants and Roman Catholics alike are marking the seventh centenary of Thomas' death with a sympathetic reassessment of his writings.

Just two decades ago, St. Thomas Aquinas was the darling of Roman Catholic thought, a man so revered that he was the only philosopher actually named in the church's 1918 code of canon law. The code declared that his "method, doctrine and principles" were to be the foundation of every priest's philosophical and theological training. Brilliant Neo-Thomists like the French philosophers Jacques Maritain and Etienne Gilson had given Thomism a modern relevance. University of Chicago Philosopher Mortimer (The Great Books) Adler considered Aquinas to be one of the foremost molders of Western thought. In many Roman Catholic colleges, students got heavy doses of Thomism; later philosophical giants like Descartes, Hume and Kant were only mentioned for their errors.

Font of Truth. Catholic Theologian David Tracy, writing in a recent issue of the Christian Century, recalls the period somewhat ruefully: "Has Einstein spoken? Fine, but really--if you look hard and long enough, it's all there in Aquinas. Are you looking for an aesthetic or political theory . . . applicable to the modern situation? Fine, read Thomas. Do you want an adequate contemporary theology? Master the Summa Theologiae and the Summa Contra Gentiles." Even before the Second Vatican Council, some progressive Catholic theologians were abandoning the kind of worshipful Thomism Tracy describes. After the council had ushered in a new spirit of intellectual freedom in the 1960s, Thomas' fall into disfavor accelerated. His structured philosophy was criticized as too static, his rationality rejected for lacking the insights of existentialism. This year, at one typical U.S. Catholic seminary--St. Joseph's in Yonkers, N.Y.--only one course specifically offers studies in the work of Thomas Aquinas.

Now a more balanced view of St. Thomas is emerging as a result of the renewed interest in his works during the seventh centenary. While there is a broadening appreciation of Aquinas' accomplishments, few respected thinkers want him re-elevated to his position as the Roman Catholic font of philosophical and theological truth. German Jesuit Karl Rahner, whose own considerable body of work is a creative blend of Thomism and the thought of such modern thinkers as Kant, Fichte and Heidegger, in fact deplores such obsequious veneration. He points out that "it was not Thomas himself who was rejected, but Thomism as the only legitimate school of theology and philosophy." Rahner and other defenders of Aquinas argue that it was the church's rigid conservatism and generations of slavish and unimaginative imitators that gave Thomism its bad name.

Many of those taking another look at St. Thomas are emphasizing Aquinas' vigorous and comprehensive approach to philosophy rather than his teachings themselves. "Thomas was not a man who believed that one key would open all doors," says Rahner, "but he had infinite patience and tried to find different keys with which to open different doors." Presbyterian Theologian Paul Lehmann sees Thomas as an "astringent" model for seminarians. He was, Lehmann says, "a marvelously gifted and precise theological thinker."

New Knowledge. Like other great figures in history, Thomas rose to prominence by responding to the crises of his day. As Dominican Historian James A. Weisheipl points out in a new book, Friar Thomas a"Aquino (Doubleday; $8.95), Thomas emerged in a time of intellectual and spiritual upheaval, an era of "constant change" not unlike the present one. On one spiritual front, he was caught in a rivalry between the secular clergy and the new reformist "mendicant" orders, the Franciscans and his own Dominicans. On the philosophical level, he was part of an era of huge enthusiasm for new knowledge, particularly the works of Aristotle, which were then influencing Christian Europe through the commentaries of the Islamic philosopher Averroes (Ibn Rushd) of Cordoba.

The reigning philosophy of Thomas' time was that of the great church father St. Augustine (354-430), whose thought was largely a Christian expansion of the idealism of Plato. The rationalism of Aristotle was thus viewed as a threat; worse yet, Averroes' interpretation of Aristotle seemed to raise contradictions between reason and faith. Thomas conceded that reason could not prove every truth of faith, but insisted that rational thought is compatible with spiritual belief--and devoted his life to proving that contention.

"He was a man of his time," says Jesuit Theologian Avery Dulles. "He restated the whole body of Catholic dogma in terms that made sense to a person whose commitment was to Aristotelian philosophy. He showed how a synthesis between dogma and philosophy can be made creatively." Writing in Commonweal, Catholic Philosopher Michael Novak confesses awe at the way Thomas' philosophy "holds together the centrifugal tendencies of human experience . . . No thinker has forged a more true-to-life unity between subjectivity and objectivity, between story and reason, between revelation and sense."

Novak and other admirers cite Thomas' present-day usefulness in varying ways. A number of prominent ethicists, for example, find considerable relevance in such concepts as his understanding of moral habits and his conviction that acts must be consistent with the essence of human "being." Along with Aquinas' moral philosophy, Oxford Professor Anthony Kenny cites his work in metaphysics and philosophical theology among the achievements that "entitle him to rank with Plato and Aristotle, with Descartes and Leibnitz, with Locke and Hume and Kant."

Yet Thomas' defenders point out inevitable weaknesses in his work--poor texts of the Scriptures to work with, for instance, and none of the resources of archaeology or linguistic tools available today. More basically, Evangelical Philosopher Ronald H. Nash, writing in Christianity Today, takes issue with Aquinas' concept of epistemology--the nature of knowing truth. "Both Aquinas and Aristotle believed that sensory experience is the basis of all knowledge," Nash contends. Such empiricism paved the way for skeptics like David Hume, who ended up by concluding that the mind could know nothing beyond its own sense impressions. Only a philosophy that posits the presence of "innate ideas" in the mind can avoid such skepticism, argues Nash--but Thomas refused that Platonic concept.

Despite his rejection of Thomas' system of thought, concludes Nash, "I endorse his ideal. Christians ought to be engaged in developing a view of life and the world as a whole, in showing the implications of Christian theism for every area of human knowledge. No one before him and few since him have developed any world view--theistic or secular--as complete as his." Of course, any philosopher who picks up Nash's challenge will have to deal with a world of knowledge much more complex than that of Thomas' day, a world that the Angelic Doctor himself would likely have confronted with nothing less than intellectual glee.

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