Epilogue
EPILOGUE
Lest my appreciation for Aquinas be misunderstood to mean that I buy into his ideas "lock, stock, and barrel," let it be said that there are many things with which I disagree. In addition to many doctrines that divide Catholics and Protestants (see our Roman Catholics and Evangelicals: Agreements and Differences, Baker Books), I disagree with much of the Aristotelian science imbibed by Aquinas, including both the cosmology and biology of the day. I also disagree with his view that the human soul is created many weeks after conception. In point of fact, I suspect that were Aquinas alive today he too would reject much of this too.
There are other things with which I disagree with Aquinas. The same is true of all philosophers and theologians I have ever read in any detail. Indeed, there are things I have written with which I now disagree. That is the way it is with fallible human writers. There is only one Book I read to believe (viz., the Bible); all others I read only to consider.
There are, however, many important things in which I agree with Aquinas, most of which have been enumerated in the preceding chapters. And there is a very significant sense in which everyone can learn from him. Great thinkers of the past should be not our lords but our guides. When it comes to men like Aquinas, I agree with Bernard of Chartres, who said "we are like dwarfs sitting on the shoulders of giants, so as to see more and farther than they do, not as a result of our own sharpness of vision or bodily height, but because we are carried aloft and elevated on their gigantic stature" (cited by M.-D. Chenu, Toward Understanding Saint Thomas.Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1964, p. 68).