3. Saints compared with theologians
3. SAINTS COMPARED WITH THEOLOGIANS
Isn’t the knowledge of God that a simple saint has, by experience and love and intimate personal relationship, a much higher kind of knowledge than the knowledge that the world’s most brilliant theologian has only by reason and study and thinking?
Yes it is; and St. Thomas explicitly says that:
Since judgment pertains to wisdom, the twofold manner of judging produces a twofold wisdom. A man may judge in one way by (personal) inclination, as whoever has the habit of a (particular) virtue judges rightly of what concerns that virtue, by his very inclination towards it. . . . In another way, by knowledge (scientia, science), just as a man learned (educated) in moral science might be able to judge rightly about virtuous acts even though he had not the virtue. The first manner of judging divine things belongs to that wisdom which is set down among the gifts of the Holy Ghost: “The spiritual man judgeth all things” (1 Cor 2:15). . . .The second manner of judging belongs to this doctrine, which is acquired by study, though its principles are obtained by revelation (I,1,6).
St. Thomas himself had both kinds of knowledge. When God gave him an intimate mystical experience of Himself, shortly before he died, he stopped writing. (The Summa, his masterpiece, is unfinished—like life itself.) He said, “I can write no more, for compared with what I have seen, everything I have ever written is only straw.”
Even before this experience, he showed that he had the higher knowledge. One of his fellow monks saw him alone on the floor of the chapel, and heard the voice of Christ speaking to him from the crucifix: “You have written well of Me, Thomas; what will you have as your reward?” And his answer was the very definition of a saint, and of the whole meaning of life: “Only Yourself, Lord.” In those three words he said more than he said in the 4,000 pages of the greatest work of theology ever written.
But the lower kind of knowledge can be a significant help to the higher. Even a book like this one can take you some small but significant steps toward St. Thomas’ wisdom and holiness, since it is based on St. Thomas’ own masterpiece, which in turn is based on God’s own Book of revelation, the Bible. A book is not a person, but it can help us to understand a person better—especially if the primary author of the Book is the very Person we seek to understand, and if when we read His books (He wrote two, nature and Scripture) we read with the person-loving heart as well as the truth-loving head.