I Shall Hide No Secrets from You, but from the Very Beginning I Shall Search out and Bring
“I shall hide no secrets from you, but from the very beginning I shall search out and bring to light knowledge of her, nor shall I diverge from the truth.”(Wisdom 6:22)[1] In an age of philosophical oppression and societal chaos, and with the Catholic Church in a position of absolute power, the world was in desperate need of change. Thomas Aquinas was born of the privileged class, enjoyed the finest in education, and died a well-respected man. A scholar of philosophy and theology, Aquinas inherited the attempts of Aristotle and Augustine to explore God and his intent for man. The classical works of Aristotle had been rediscovered through a trade of information with Moslem Spain and introduced into European ideas. Of Saint Thomas Aquinas’ accomplishments, the foremost is his intricate solution to the obstacle of faith by justification of reason. This reconciliation of faith and reason would influence man’s ability to question objectively in the future, a true testament to Saint Thomas Aquinas’ phenomenal intellect. In an age that demanded exploration into new ideas and that brought about an exchange of information with the Moslem and Jewish philosophers of Spain, the medieval encounter of faith and reason was able to transpire.
Life in the High Middle Ages was brief and brutal for anyone other than the clergy or noble class. Society was Catholic-centric, but the papacy had been slacking on its basic fundamentals as well as losing the respect of the people. The Catholic Church had an integral influence on European morality; however, the church leadership was not pure in its roots. Some priests were married, a practice tolerated by the church but frowned upon, and sodomy was becoming a frequent issue among clergymen.[2] The Pope was selected, not by merit, but by whomever the royals deemed most profitable, and some top Catholic authorities saw themselves as part of that royalty. Political and religious leaders were individuals born of the noble and educated classes. These men were simply ignorant of the issues the every man faced. Society was feudalistic, and people were left with no other hope, except for that of their faith. A local priest, drawn from the lower class, was a rare and fortunate individual whom the previous priest deemed worthy to educate. He was likely to marry and continue his predecessor’s work preaching the sacred scripture.
Thomas Aquinas was born in 1224 the third son of Landulf, the Count of Aquino, and Theodora, the Countess of Teano.[3] The honorable family was related to the royalty of Aragon, Castile, and France and to Emperors Henry VI and Frederick II. At the age of eleven, Aquinas was sent to the University of Naples, where he studied logic, natural sciences, and liberal arts. In 1242 he abandoned his nobility to join the Order of Saint Dominic, a group of religious scholars. This decision was very much to the disappointment and disapproval of his parents, so much so that his mother would later, after years of attempted persuasion, have Emperor Frederick II capture and detain him for nearly two years.[4] It was during this time that Aquinas is said to have memorized the Bible. Aquinas was a man of great intellectual strength. A devoted and persistent man even at a young age, he astonished Church elders with his love and devotion to prayer. They were intrigued as well with his insistence on discovering the truth in God.
The roots of Thomas Aquinas’ work are embedded in ancient Greece, where the birth of philosophical thought had brought new light and hope to the region. A Greek man by the name of Thales (624-547 B.C.) was the western world’s first documented intellectual, who struggled with such simple issues as which of the four basic elements the earth was composed of.[5] Men like Pythagoras (569-475 B.C.) discovered that the world could be expressed in symbols and numbers, giving birth to arithmetic and mathematics (symbolic logic). Then came the Sophists, who through rhetoric, preached pleasure and power and lectured that organized religion was a tool for those who desired power to oppress ignorant inferiors.
Soon a new chapter in philosophy was born, a chapter where the focus was removed from material matter and centered on man and the internal being. Socrates (470-399 B.C.) introduced us to this new order of thought and created the foundation upon which modern western thought was built. Socrates’ pupil, Plato (427-347 B.C.), would advance his educator’s work and build the world’s first university. Plato’s finest scholar, Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), was to be Aquinas’ greatest influence. Aristotle, through rhetoric as well, spoke of man and man’s classical beauty. He also invited the issue of God’s apparent disconnect with his imperfect creation.
Saint Augustine of Hippo (354-430) was the first of three significant theologians. Augustine was able to define the Catholic Church’s position in favor of an individual’s free will. Born in Canterbury many centuries later, Saint Anselm (1033-1109) proved the existence of God. He stated that if each individual can perceive of the perfect being through reason but only through reason, then how might it be perfect? However, if the perfect being is perceived of and also exists externally as a matter of faith, then it would be truly perfect and therefore exist.[6] Saint Thomas Aquinas, the final and most consummate theologian, would take the ideas of his two predecessors and of the ancient Greeks to transform the history of theology.
Aristotle had perhaps the greatest influence on Aquinas’ work. Aristotle’s extensive revolutionary ideas from fourth century B.C. Athens were explosive in thirteenth century Italy. The Catholic Church was furious with this as Aristotelian thought had a strong disconnect with organized religion. Aristotle wrote that God merely created the world, but did not care for his creation, stating that if God were to be concerned with something as imperfect as us, he, therefore, could not be perfect.[7] Aristotle also stated that in order to achieve the ultimately fulfilled life, one must be attractive and have extensive concern with himself.[8] While Saint Augustine and Saint Anselm were fine theologians, they had lacked access to the majority of Aristotle’s works. Thomas Aquinas, however, took it upon himself to incorporate Aristotle’s ideas into traditional church theology.
In Aquinas’ time, academics were tightly regulated, as the church feared losing its control. The Catholic monks, who constituted .5% of the population, were responsible for from 65% to 98% of all written information.[9] During the Germanic tribe invasions of Rome, a good portion of the written works of the classical ages was lost to European intellectuals. For centuries all that had remained to be taught was the ‘old logic’ of Aristotle. However, it was during Aquinas’ time that the ancient works were beginning to migrate into Europe from Spain, and Christendom was introduced to the ‘new logic’ of Aristotle.
When the Latin works of the classical ages, translated by Boethius (480-525), had been destroyed in the invasions, a few copies survived in Moslem Spain. As Central European contact extended to this area in the High Middle Ages, the works and ideas of the Catholic Church were exchanged with Maimonides (1135-1204), a Jew, and Averroes (1126-1198), an Arab. As well as introduction to ‘new logic’, so also came commentaries on many works of Aristotle, Plato, Boethius, and many other first millennium writers. It was from these works that Aquinas found his inspiration, his guide, his muse.
Throughout his religious career, Aquinas would come to write in excess of 40 volumes of philosophical and theological writings, of which his most complete and varied works are the Summa Theologica and Summa Contra Gentiles. Through these he was able to incorporate traditional Christian values and doctrine with the increasing desire to study and progress as a society on matters of morality, law, and theology. On the issue of morality, Aquinas instructed that, using Augustine’s work, mankind is between angel and beast[10] and the responsibility is kept entirely to God’s discretion to decide where on that scale each man lies. On law, he concluded that since law is the restricting of acts and the inducing of acts, and since it places no restriction on the soul, there is no immorality in enforcing mortal law.[11] Aquinas defines theology as “a reflection on the mysteries of faith in order to gain an understanding of what he [man] believes.”[12]
According to the Catholic Church “the human being does not possess the eternal intellect of God and, therefore, cannot possess knowledge of God’s essence,”[13]and under no circumstances was God to be questioned. It was also felt that the true believer would not feel it necessary to question. There existed a fear among Church authorities that they could lose control of their parishioners. If an idea were to somehow disprove the clergy on a matter of reason, or reason-influenced science, how could religious authorities regain their credibility on matters of doctrine?
Thomas Aquinas understood that an eventual uprising was inevitable and feared that the longer the church refrained, the grander the repercussions would be. He witnessed this in the growing interest in understanding the work of Aristotle. Aquinas hoped that by constructing a theology with the tools of Aristotelian rationalism, he could equip the Christian church with the ability to survive in the future.
Aquinas’ first struggle was to define philosophy and theology. Here he stated that philosophy is a product of human reason alone, while theology accepts revelation as its authority.[14] He then went on to distinguish between revealed theologies, a theology accepted entirely on faith, and natural theology, a theology susceptible to the proof of reason.[15] Philosophy only reaches to the extent of human reason, and theology begins with scared scripture and extends to human interpretation of scripture. Where human interpretation is objective, that area of theology (Natural Theology) can be subjected to reason.
Saint Thomas Aquinas’ final reasoning regarding faith versus reason lies not within faith and reason themselves, but rather in the order that one places them. He stated that to be able to question objectively with reason, one must first accept God with faith.[16] Just as a light allows us to see a rock, we must first accept the light’s existence and trust in its accuracy. Without the light first, we would lack the ability to observe the rock. “Faith is concerned with things that exceed human reasoning.”[17] Aquinas later drew the line to state that God and the Divine Realities are not a matter of reason, but rather faith, and thus it is not permissible to question them.[18] God created the world and gave us the ability to wonder and learn, but He, in his perfection, is not and can never be subject to our imperfect reasoning. “Since God is infinitely distant from creatures, no creature progresses toward God so as to equal him, either in what it receives from him or in knowing him.”[19]
The phenomenal career of Thomas Aquinas came to a halt when he passed away on March 7, 1274. Numerous miracles attested his sanctity, and on July 18, 1323, Pope John XXII canonized Thomas Aquinas.[20] The sacred remains were originally laid to rest at the Dominican Church at Toulouse where a magnificent shrine was erected, but it was destroyed during the French Revolution. At present, his body is laid to rest at the Church of St. Sernin in a sarcophagus of gold and silver.
However pleased church authorities were with the work of Thomas Aquinas, after his death, his works were restricted in the Condemnation of March 7, 1277.[21] His writings were philosophical in influence and seen as compromising to the Church’s authority. Curiously enough though, in March 1324, almost to the day of the fifty-year anniversary of the passing of Thomas Aquinas and nearly one year after his canonization, the Catholic Church adopted the theological works of the saint.[22] It was then that religious authorities publicly announced their approval of Aquinas, and their appreciation of his ability to reconcile the traditional doctrine with the modern ideas.
The work of Saint Thomas Aquinas found its greatest influence in seventeenth and eighteenth century philosophy. “There are such grounds, not which are such, that can be firmly held by faith, without compromising the legitimate autonomy of reason and philosophy.”[23] Through saying there is no harm in objective reasoning, he gave Descartes, Hume, and John Locke, the man who gave birth to the soul of America, the freedom to develop individual ideas of society. John Locke, raised Protestant, spoke of inalienable human rights and demanded a government by the people, a government that honored these rights. He was able to preach these ‘natural rights’, rights God-given and guaranteed, which would eventually lead to the freest nation in history, because a half-millennium earlier Aquinas stated, “Just as sacred doctrine is based on the light of faith, so philosophy is based on the natural light of reason. So it is impossible that the contents of philosophy should be contrary to the contents of faith.”[24]
Aquinas’ work influenced people to question how they were to be governed and to choose the life they wished. Thomas Aquinas allowed his intellectual successors to explore new ideas and gave the people a voice to reason and question. The Renaissance, medical revolution, natural rights, even the discovery of the new world are all of Aquinas’ influence. The world as we know and accept it would be dramatically different had it not been for Saint Thomas Aquinas. Whether deemed a great gift to the world or the plague of the recent millennium, the gift of innovation is unique in its own right; “through revelation human beings have a method for understanding God’s will on earth.”[25]
“In the original creation of the world God made us perfect with the perfection of nature, but over and above what is due to our nature there were later added to the human race certain perfections that are solely owing to divine grace. Among these is faith, which is a ‘gift from God’ and reason.”[26] Aquinas provided man with the ability to question his world, and to do so not only free of fear from the Church, but with its blessing. The exchange of classical ideas excited new ideas in the mind of Aquinas. From these came his ability to satisfy the need for exploration pivotal in our history and still a strong aspect of today’s society. Aquinas allowed for the successful medieval encounter between faith and reason.
Aquinas’ teachings are still a large and important part of Christian Doctrine. He was a strong intellect with an immeasurable influence on both modern philosophy and modern theology. Saint Thomas Aquinas was able to develop, in my opinion, the most satisfactory solution to the ageless issue of faith versus reason.
1
[1] The Holy Bible. The New American Bible. Nashville: Catholic Bible Press, division on Thomas Nelson Publishers, (Wisdom 6:22) “Now what wisdom is, and how she came to be I shall relate; and…” 545
[2] Diefenbeck, James A. Wayward Reflections on the History of Philosophy. Maryland: University Press of America, Inc., 1996. Chapter 8, “Faith and the Re-Emergence of Reason.”
[3] Thurston, Herbert S.J., Donald Attwater. Butler’s Lives of Saints. Maryland: Christian Classics, INC., 1980. 509
[4] Thurston, Herbert S.J., Donald Attwater. Butl. 511
[5] Palmer, Donald. Looking at Philosophy; The Unbearable Heaviness of Philosophy Made Lighter. Mountain View, California: Mayfield Publishing Company, 1994. 8
[6] Palmer, Donald. Loo. 107
[7] Diefenbeck, James A. Way. 64
[8] Diefenbeck, James A. Way. 67
[9] Milis, Ludo J.R. Angelic Monks and Earthly Men. Rochester: The Boydell Press, 1992. 7
[10] Augustine, Saint. “On Christian Doctrine,” Medieval Thought: Augustine and Aquinas. Massachusetts: Blaisdell Publishing, 1969. 77
[11] Aquinas, Saint. Thomas. Treatise on Law (Summa Theologica, Questions 90-97). Trans. Stanley Parry. Washington D.C.: Regnery Gateway, Inc., 1992. I-I0
[12] Aquinas, Saint Thomas. Faith, Reason and Theology. Trans. Armand Maurer. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1987. Saint Thomas’ Introduction ix
[13] Foucault, Michel. Power/Knowledge. New York: Pantheon, 1980. 94
[14] Palmer, Donald. Loo. 118
[15] Palmer, Donald. Loo. 118
[16] Aquinas, Saint Thomas. Fai. Question 1, Article 1, 13
[17] Foucault, Michel. Pow. Article 1 pg. 176
[18] Aquinas, Saint Thomas. Fai. Question 2 Article 1, 35
[19] Aquinas, Saint Thomas. Fai. Question 2 Article 2, 39
[20] Thurston, Herbert S.J., Donald Attwater. Butl. 299
[21] Wippel, John F. Mediaeval Reactions to the Encounter Between Faith and reason. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1995. 67
[22] Wippel, John F. Med. 69
[23] Aquinas, Saint Thomas. Ess. III Human Nature, 74
[24] Aquinas, Saint Thomas. Fai. “On Making the Divine Realities Known.” 48
[25] Foucault, Michel. Pow. 4
[26] Aquinas, Saint Thomas. Fai. “On Topics Relating to the Praise of Faith.” 68