4. Conclusion
4
CONCLUSION
There is much that could be said about the thought and theology of Thomas Aquinas that has not been broached in this short study. We have had to be highly selective in our analysis. Whatever else is said, however, must take into account the methodological problems that underlie everything that Thomas wrote. Perhaps his claim at the end of his life that all he had written was of such “little value” was due, not to a “mystical experience,” but to the realization of his principial error from the beginning of his work. Perhaps not. Even if not, the value of reading Thomas—which is significant in terms of its historical and theological impact—must always be measured against this initial, seminal, foundational, theological misstep.1
We should reiterate here again that, from our perspective, McInerny’s analysis and reaffirmation of Thomas’s commitment to natural reason and its praeambula fidei certainly fits with centuries of the Roman Catholic tradition, all told.
Nonetheless, confusion remains in that debate. However, even if the “new” interpretation of Thomas is correct, there is no escaping his commitment to the neutrality of reason. And it is that commitment that allows for an incompatibility of the philosophical with the theological in his principia, which renders them impossible to merge. It is also the case, we should recognize, that these incompatible ideas are adopted in Arminian theology.2
For some, perhaps many, Thomists, it might appear strange that our critique of Thomas focused, in part, on an exegesis of Scripture, for whatever his strength were, he was no exegete. The point of that focus was twofold: First, it was important to see how Thomas’s understanding of some key passages—passages that outline a revelational epistemology—were read by him. Because Thomas was convinced that the philosophers were able, without special revelation, to come to some genuine knowledge about God by way of demonstration, his reading of “the light” in John 1 and of “the truth” in Romans 1 was informed by philosophical, rather than exegetical, considerations.
Second, it was important to recognize that a Reformed critique of Thomas’s epistemology—his principium cognoscendi—had to begin, not with philosophy, but with Scripture. Thomas was, as we have said, a man of his time. But he had the same Scriptures available to him that the church has had for two thousand years, and therefore he could have moved his theology explicitly onto a scriptural foundation. Any critique offered of Thomas must begin where Thomas should and could have begun: with the Bible.
Even as a man of his time, Thomas had access to a better, more biblical understanding of, for example, Romans 1. John of Damascus, whom Thomas quotes, says this about our knowledge of God:
God, however, did not leave us in absolute ignorance. For the knowledge of God’s existence has been implanted by Him in all by nature. This creation, too, and its maintenance, and its government, proclaim the majesty of the Divine nature. . . . That there is a God, then, is no matter of doubt to those who receive the Holy Scriptures, the Old Testament, I mean, and the New; nor indeed to most of the Greeks. For, as we said, the knowledge of the existence of God is implanted in us by nature. But . . . the wickedness of the Evil One has prevailed so mightily against man’s nature as even to drive some into denying the existence of God, that most foolish and woefulest pit of destruction.3
It is this very passage that Thomas cites in his argument against the self-evidence of God. In his first objection, he says:
Objection 1. It seems that the existence of God is self-evident. Now those things are said to be self-evident to us the knowledge of which is naturally implanted in us, as we can see in regard to first principles. But as Damascene says (De Fid.Orth. i. 1, 3), the knowledge of God is naturally implanted in all. Therefore the existence of God is self-evident.4
Thomas is clearly aware of the teaching of John of Damascus. He could have seen its cogency, had he looked more carefully at Romans 1:18–32 and John 1:1–9. Instead, his response to him is this:
Reply Obj. 1. To know that God exists in a general and confused way is implanted in us by nature, inasmuch as God is man’s beatitude. For man naturally desires happiness, and what is naturally desired by man must be naturally known to him. This, however, is not to know absolutely that God exists; just as to know that someone is approaching is not the same as to know that Peter is approaching, even though it is Peter who is approaching; for many there are who imagine that man’s perfect good which is happiness, consists in riches, and others in pleasures, and others in something else.5
This response shows Thomas’s neglect of a close, exegetical look at passages that are crucial for understanding how we know God, which was of primary concern for him. It also shows, as we noted above, Thomas’s weak view of sin and its devastating effects in us.
It is impossible to know how Thomas might have reacted if he had been born in the sixteenth rather than the thirteenth century. Would he have been a proponent of the Reformation? Perhaps. But his knowledge and rejection of the Damascene’s point calls seriously into question Thomas’s biblical instincts. The confusion of Thomas’s principia is owing, not centrally to his historical context, but centrally to his decision to try to synthesize “purely” philosophical with theological principia. The two principia cannot be merged.
This is why, with respect to the ways in which Thomas sets forth the knowledge and character of God, confusion reigns. If one reads Thomas from a Christian standpoint, then the terms and concepts that he employs can look familiar. If Thomas had begun forthrightly and explicitly from a Christian standpoint, his natural theology would have had a revelational foundation, instead of a foundation in natural reason. But reading Thomas from a Christian standpoint, in his natural theology, is to misread him; it cannot produce what Thomas wanted.
And because Thomas did not begin from a self-consciously Christian standpoint, what he wanted to argue in his natural theology cannot be sustained. Even such a devoted disciple as Cardinal Cajetan recognized that the best that Thomas’s proofs could produce were concepts that could apply to God; they did not prove the existence of the Christian God.
So also for Thomas’s natural theology proper. There are concepts and terms with which orthodox Christians can agree. Surely, God is simple, eternal, immutable, impassable, etc. The problem, however, is that there are no categories available to natural reason that can establish that these are characteristics of the Christian God.
Hume’s radical empiricism showed the emptiness of dogmatic metaphysical assertions, and Kant’s “corrective” to Hume demonstrated exactly how such emptiness should be articulated (i.e., as noumenon). Of course, Thomas had no access to these philosophers. But he too easily conceded that the “absolutes” of Greek philosophy were coincident with the Christian God. In that concession, he lost the Christian God altogether and was left with concepts just as useless as theirs.
There are other important confusions in Thomas. The most sophisticated, thorough, and theologically articulate view of (what we now call) an Arminian approach to God’s sovereignty in relation to human responsibility came from the Thomist Luis de Molina (1535–1600) and his view of scientia media. Molina was a committed Thomist, and he worked out much of his theology as an exposition and commentary on the First Part of the Summa theologica, question 14, article 13, “Whether the knowledge of God is of future contingent things?” (Utrum scientia Dei sit futurorum contingentium). After significant debate between the Bañezians, who denied the conditionality of God’s foreknowledge,6 and the Molinists on Thomas’s view of God’s foreknowledge, the Roman church tried, in earnest, to resolve the issue. They discussed the two predominant views at eighty-five different conferences in the presence of the popes, from roughly 1587 to around 1607. But the issue was never resolved in the Roman church; both sides continued to hold their respective views.7
It is fair to say, however, that the view of scientia media, in that it presupposes libertarian freedom, is the predominant view both of Romanists and of Arminians. It is also fair to say that a lack of resolution of the matter exposes another serious inconsistency in Thomas with respect to the relationship between God’s sovereignty and man’s will. After such a strenuous effort on the part of so many Roman church leaders and popes who were committed to Thomas as the “Angelic Doctor,”8 it is highly doubtful that a resolution to the problem can be found in Thomas.9
However this and other controversies surrounding Thomas’s thought should be resolved, we hope to have made it clear that any adopting or adaptation of Thomas’s philosophical theology must first be filtered through the biblical theology of Reformed thought. With that filter in place, there are elements of Thomas’s work that could be instructive and useful, at least from a historical perspective. Even so, every word and doctrine must be read through the grid of Thomas’s two ultimately incompatible principia—the neutrality of natural reason, on the one hand, and the truth of God’s revelation, on the other.10 These two incompatible principia, more than likely, contribute substantially to the confusion that remains among Thomists with respect to some of his most significant teachings.
1. It is worth noting that, according to Swafford, de Lubac held that both views are in Aquinas and that it is not clear which one is predominant. For more on this, see Andrew Dean Swafford, Nature and Grace: A New Approach to Thomistic Ressourcement (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2014), 77.
2. Some evangelicals, however, have noted the inconsistency of adopting Thomas’s principia and rejecting the rest of his theology. In that sense, Arminian or evangelical theology is a subset of Romanist theology. Certainly for Thomas, his principia are consistent with his Romanist theology. For the similarities and differences between Arminian and Romanist theology, see Douglas M. Beaumont, ed., Evangelical Exodus: Evangelical Seminarians and Their Paths to Rome (Ignatius Press, 2016). See my review in Themelios 41, 2 (August 2016), http://themelios.thegospelcoalition.org/review/evangelical-exodus-evangelical-seminarians-and-their-paths-to-rome . Beaumont argues that Aquinas’s plea for a trust in man’s natural reason leads consistently to ultimate trust in the Roman church, and not in Scripture’s own self-attesting authority.
3. John Damascene, “An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith,” in St. Hilary of Poitiers, John of Damascus, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, trans. S. D. F. Salmond, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Second Series, vol. 9 (New York: Christian Literature Company, 1899), 1, 3.
4. Aquinas, ST, I q.2 a.1 obj. 1.
5. Ibid., I q.2 a.1 ad 1.
6. For a Bañezian view of Thomas, see Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, The One God: A Commentary on the First Part of Saint Thomas’ Theological Summa (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2012).
7. Antonio Astrain, “Congregatio de Auxiliis,” The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 4 (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1908). Available online at www.newadvent.org/cathen/04238a.htm .
8. After Thomas was canonized in the fourteenth century, he was given the title Doctor Angelicus in the fifteenth century and was declared a Doctor of the Church in the sixteenth century.
9. For an excellent introduction to Molinism, as well as Molina’s text on divine foreknowledge, see Luis de Molina, On Divine Foreknowledge: Part IV of the Concordia, trans. Alfred J. Freddoso (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988).
10. Although Christopher Hughes misconstrues Thomas in significant ways, his plea that Thomas must either give up his view of simplicity or give up his view of the Trinity recognizes, in my view, the incompatibility of Thomas’s two principia. See Christopher Hughes, On a Complex Theory of a Simple God: An Investigation in Aquinas’ Philosophical Theology (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989).