HIS CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD
We have already mentioned the two opposing theories at the University of Paris against whom Thomas had to defend his own positions on God and the world. They were, firstly, the traditional and predominating trends, primarily philosophical but also theological, which we are accustomed to designate as Augustinianism; and secondly, Latin Averroism. From the viewpoint of these two opposing theories we have, perhaps, the best opportunity of making clear the unique character of St. Thomas’s teaching.
In the strife between Thomas Aquinas and medieval Augustinianism two of the most revealing points in dispute were the following. Thomas taught the unity of the substantial form, while Augustinianism accepted several form-giving principles in man. Thomas asserted that all our knowledge, including the spiritual, and also our knowledge of God, took its starting point (and therefore always remained somehow dependent upon) sense while Augustinianism claimed that spiritual knowledge was independent of sense perception. At first sight, this appears to be a petty quarrel between “schools.” But for Thomas it involved nothing less than the saving of creation as a visible reality from any attempt at reduction, devaluation, or sheer annihilation.
What is the meaning of these two theses of St. Thomas? They mean that in man there is not one part—the soul—which is the “real” man, and another part—the body, a separate reality—which is the instrument or even the prison of the soul; rather, body and soul are an immediate existential unity. And further, that the “real” man is not the soul alone but precisely this existential unity of body and soul. The body belongs to the essence of The second thesis means that it is not the spiritual soul which is the ultimate bearer of our knowledge, but of body and soul. Therefore, our knowledge is always an image of our own being; knowledge is, like our being itself, an indissoluble unity of spiritual and corporal (sentient) principles.
These theses mean more than they directly express. In them is mirrored, as we have already remarked, that affirmation of the natural reality of creation which is so characteristic of St. Thomas: All created things are good because they were created by God. For the same reason, they have a reality and effectiveness of their own, which may not be ignored or obliterated through making absolute in one way or another the “spiritual” or “religious” element in man. Moreover, the reality of creation in man, the natural light of his reason, his five senses, all the powers of his being, have their place and assignment in the make-up of man as (On the other hand, one may well say of St. Augustine, without violating the reverence due to this great saint and great thinker, that, as the history of Christian teaching shows, his work falls more easily into the danger of being construed or, rather, in the sense of a de-actualization and devaluation of the visible reality of creation.) Of course, Thomas is also aware of the injury caused to creation through original sin. In fact, he even says that the more deeply a man recognizes the true being of created things, the more this knowledge becomes for him a source of sadness—because out of every created reality can arise a menace to But Thomas also knows that the same Christ Who founded the New Creation is simultaneously the eternal archetype of the first
In his Commentary on St. John’s St. Thomas remarks that we can find in Sacred Scripture three different meanings for the term “the world”: first, “the world” as the creation of God, and second, as the creation perfected in Christ; last, as the material perversion of the order of creation. To “the world” in this last-named sense, and to this world only, may one apply the saying of St. John: “The world is seated in wickedness” (1 John 5:19). It is precisely the claim of St. Thomas that the first meaning of “world” (as creation) may not be identified nor interchanged with the third—(“world” as material perversion of the order of creation); the world as creation is not seated in wickedness.
A single common denominator underlies all these theses. To affirm and accept the reality of creation in all its provinces is the response befitting quite particularly the Christian. This is the key to understanding his thesis on the unity of the substantial form in man. This is likewise the foundation of St. Thomas’s teaching on the true place of natural reason and philosophy with regard to supernatural faith and theology. From the standpoint of his affirmation of the wholeness of creation, one may, perhaps, also understand the ease with which, in the Summa he recommends bathing and sleeping as remedies against melancholy of the
One of the most penetrating remarks in Chesterton’s book on St. Thomas is the following: If, conformable to Carmelite custom, a fitting epithet such as John “of the Cross” or Thérèse “of the Child Jesus” were sought for Thomas Aquinas, the one most appropriate would be “Thomas of the Creator,” Thomas a
Only when we have truly recognized that the intention of St. Thomas is always directed toward God the Creator and His creation are we competent to evaluate his “Aristotelianism.” Aristotle is for St. Thomas (in the measure in which he follows him) nothing more nor less than a clear mirror of the natural reality of creation, a great and rich mind in which the ordo of the natural universe was Thomas confronted the work of Aristotle with greater freedom and independence than is normally the case in the attitude of a school toward the work of its master—the “Thomistic” school not excepted.
It is also not correct to speak of a “Hellenizing” of Christian doctrine in the teaching of St. Thomas. When the Reformers of the sixteenth century attempted to “purge” Christian theology of the supposedly Hellenizing scholastic element, it became quickly evident (and in the properly “reformed” theology of Karl Barth, for example, it is still evident today) that they were risking the error of removing from the Christian consciousness the reality of creation itself. (It is an unhistorical legend that Luther burned the Summa Theologica along with the papal bull in the marketplace at Wittenberg. The true story of that incident, however, makes a more telling point. A recently uncovered report of that auto-da-fé testifies that there was the intention of burning the Summa along with the papal document, but no one could be found who was willing to part with his copy!)
Far from being or signifying a secularization of genuine Christian teaching, the affirmation of the reality of creation in the theology of St. Thomas surges from the very depths of Christian intuition, namely, from reverence for the reality of the Incarnation of God. According to St. Thomas, the Evangelist John had deliberately said the Word was made in order to exclude the Manichaean principle that the body is
It is this altogether religious and theological root which differentiates St. Thomas’s openness to the world from the truly secularizing concepts of his second and more dangerous opponent—Latin Averroism, named after Averroes (1126-1198), one of the great Arabian commentators on Aristotle. We are not concerned here with the individual points of teaching (the numerical unity of the intellect in all men, the eternity of the world, the denial of free will). The decisive point is that Averroism radically severed the connection between faith and reason, between theology and philosophy. It maintained the complete independence of philosophical thinking from faith and theology. Moreover, it overvalued excessively this separated philosophical inasmuch as it expected to find in it the true and final wisdom, i.e., an answer which would satisfy the human spirit inquiring into the meaning of the world and human life. To this, Thomas says: The Christian can neither seek nor find a wisdom outside A single divine grace exceeds, in its existential value, the whole of the natural
One notices that by this decisive secularization of thought, Latin Averroism is fundamentally the forerunner of the Renaissance and, therefore, of modern philosophy and science in general.
This family likeness extends to another, rarely noticed characteristic. In Latin Averroism appeared, for the first time, the purely historical approach to the interpretation of philosophy—the opinion that the true object of philosophy is its own history. For Siger of Brabant, the leader of the Averroists at the University of Paris, the study of philosophy signifies the exploration of the historical systems of philosophy, irrespective of whether they were true or Here for the first time appears that modern type of philosopher who, instead of discussing his true subject, reality, discusses something quite different, the philosophies. A magnificent and invigorating retort given by Thomas to Siger of Brabant should preface all translations and interpretations of Thomas, in order to cut short from the very start any attempt to take the “Universal Teacher” of the Church himself as a merely “historical” phenomenon: “The study of philosophy does not mean to learn what others have thought but to learn what is the truth of
In spite of this unequivocal opposition and in spite of the enormous differences between Thomas and Averroism, it is apparently Thomas’s destiny to be confused with his secularized opponent. Three years after the death of St. Thomas, for example, several misinterpreted propositions from his writings were condemned by the Bishop of Paris and enumerated on the same list with the errors of Averroism.
Since that time, not only has Thomas been canonized by the Church; he is also the first man, as Martin Grabmann says, to be canonized qua theologian and teacher. Moreover, Thomas has been solemnly declared a Doctor of the Church—and, indeed, the “Universal Doctor of the Church.” Pius XI says of him that the Church testifies in every way that she has made his teaching her Yet the censure that his teaching is tainted with a virtually pagan worldliness has persisted since the days when William of St. Amour wrote against Albert and his great pupil: “They arrogate divine wisdom to themselves, although they are more familiar with worldly wisdom.” To which Thomas answered: “The opinion of those who say with regard to the truth of faith that it is a matter of complete indifference what one thinks about creation, provided one has a true interpretation of God . . . is notoriously false. For an error about creation is reflected in a false opinion about
This censure is likely to take the following forms: the confidence which St. Thomas puts in natural reason goes beyond the Christian norm; his philosophy and theology are much too rational, indeed too they have a tendency to offer facile, all-inclusive “solutions” to all questions; the harsh daylight of his syllogisms deprives the human spirit of the dark glow of the mysteries of our faith; the element of mystery in supernatural truth is almost totally suppressed in favor of its supposedly demonstrable rationality . . . and so on.
It is indisputably true that a great number of “neo-scholastic” or “Thomistic” presentations, “according to the teaching of St. Thomas,” provide real cause and seeming justification for such objections. Thomas himself, however, goes so far in the recognition of mystery, both in creation and in God, that for us modern Christians, who seldom hear about the incomprehensibility of God, it comes as a cause of alarm when we find our ignorance so intrepidly and clearly pointed out in the Summa For in this “summary” of his teaching on God, Thomas begins by saying: “Because we are not capable of knowing what God is but only what He is not, we cannot contemplate how God is but only how He is Evidently, Thomas did not wish to withhold this basic thought of “negative” theology even from the beginner. And in the Quaestiones Disputatae is even said: est ultimum cognitionis humanae de Deo; quod sciat se Deum this is the ultimate in human knowledge of God: to know that we do not know
There is a saying frequently heard among Thomists which expresses a significant fact: Thomas feared logic as little as he feared mystery. He who fears the bold light of logic will never penetrate into the region of real mysteries. The man who does not use his reason will never get to that boundary beyond which reason really fails. In the work of St. Thomas all ways of creaturely knowing have been followed to the very end—to the boundary of mystery. And the more intensely we pursue these ways of knowledge, the more is revealed to us—of the but also of the reality of mystery.