Conclusion
The psychologist C.G. Jung once remarked that he had dipped into the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas and found the experience rather unrewarding.55 Undoubtedly Jung, like many others, encountered what appeared to be a terribly dry rationalism in the well-ordered texts of the Summa theologiae, an attempt to capture the elusive spirit of the divine in arguments and distinctions and syllogisms. What I have tried to show, in this chapter especially, is that the spirit of Jesus Christ, the spirit of the ever-greater and ungraspable God, blows through the dusty pages of Thomas Aquinas’ works. Thomas is decidedly not trying to capture or define the divine; on the contrary, he is attempting to show us precisely how to avoid the temptation of such definition. He is demonstrating how the soul can be liberated in the act of surrendering to the God who reveals himself as an unsurpassable and ecstatic power in Jesus Christ.
Thus, the simple God is the God who cannot be understood or controlled; the good God is the one who captivates us and draws us out of ourselves; the God who is present to the world is the divine power that will not leave us alone, that insinuates itself into our blood and bones; the eternal God is the one who invites us into the ecstasy of being beyond time; the immutable God is the rock upon which we can build our lives; the God of knowledge and love is the spirit who searches us and knows us, who seeks us and who will never abandon us.
It is this all-embracing, all-captivating, all-entrancing, all-surrounding power that Thomas Aquinas seeks to celebrate.
1. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 7, trans. Charles Kay Ogden (London: Kegan Paul, 1922), 189.
2. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae 1.2.3.
3. Summa theologiae 1.2.3.
4. Summa theologiae 1.2.3.
5. For discussion of the principle omne quod movetur, ab alio movetur see James A. Weisheipl, “The Principle Omne quod movetur ab alio movetur in Medieval Physics,” Isis 56, no. 1 (1965): 26–45.
6. Summa theologiae 1.2.3.
7. Augustine, Confessions 10.6, trans. F.J. Sheed, ed. Michael P. Foley (Park Ridge, IL: Word on Fire Classics, 2017), 236.
8. Summa theologiae 1-2.2.8.
9. Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain (Park Ridge, IL: Word on Fire Classics, 2017).
10. Summa theologiae 1.2.3.
11. Summa theologiae 1.2.3.
12. Summa theologiae 1.2.3.
13. See, for instance, Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles 2.30; Summa theologiae 1.50.5 ad. 3.
14. Summa theologiae 1.2.3 (translation mine).
15. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper Perennial, 2008), 174–225.
16. Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1951–1963), 1:196.
17. Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1952).
18. “Preface VI of the Sundays in Ordinary Time,” in Roman Missal (ICEL, 2010).
19. Anselm, Proslogion 2–5, in Anselm: Monologion and Proslogion, trans. Thomas Williams (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1996), 99–102.
20. Summa theologiae 1.3.1.
21. Summa theologiae 1.3.4.
22. Paul Tillich, “The Two Types of Philosophy of Religion,” in Theology of Culture, ed. Robert C. Kimball (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959), 10–29.
23. Summa theologiae 1.3.5.
24. Summa theologiae 1.6.1 obj. 2. See also Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1.1.
25. Summa theologiae 1.6.1.
26. Summa theologiae 1.6.1. See also Pseudo-Dionysius, The Divine Names 4, in Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works, trans. Colm Luibheid (New York: Paulist, 1987), 71–96.
27. Summa theologiae 1.8.1.
28. Summa theologiae 1.8.1.
29. Summa theologiae 1.8.1.
30. Augustine, Confessions 3.6 (PL 32:688) (translation mine). For an English translation of this work see Confessions, trans. F.J. Sheed, ed. Michael P. Foley (Park Ridge, IL: Word on Fire Classics, 2017).
31. Summa theologiae 1.8.1 obj. 1.
32. Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, trans. Edwyn Hoskyns (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), 355.
33. See Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. 1, The Doctrine of the Word of God, pt. 1, trans. G.W. Bromiley (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1975), xii.
34. Summa theologiae 1.8.1 ad. 1.
35. Summa theologiae 1.8.1 obj. 4.
36. Summa theologiae 1.8.1 ad. 4.
37. Summa theologiae 1.9.1.
38. Nicholas of Cusa, De docta ignorantia 1.4, in Nicolai de Cusa Opera Omnia, ed. Ernestus Hoffman and Raymundus Klibansky (Hamburg: Meiner, 1932), 1:10.1–11.22. For an English translation of this work, see Nicholas of Cusa on Learned Ignorance: A Translation and Appraisal of De Docta Ignorantia, 2nd ed., trans. Jasper Hopkins (Minneapolis, MN: Arthur J. Banning, 1985).
39. Pseudo-Dionysius, The Divine Names 9.
40. Summa theologiae 1.10.2.
41. Summa theologiae 1.10.3 obj. 2.
42. Summa theologiae 1.10.3 ad. 2.
43. Summa theologiae 1.14.1.
44. Summa theologiae 1.14.1.
45. Summa theologiae 1.14.5.
46. Summa theologiae 1.14.5 obj. 2.
47. Summa theologiae 1.14.5 ad. 2.
48. Summa theologiae 1.19.1.
49. Summa theologiae 1.19.1 ad. 2.
50. Summa theologiae 1.19.2.
51. Summa theologiae 1.20.1.
52. Summa theologiae 1.20.1.
53. Summa theologiae 1.20.1 obj. 1.
54. Summa theologiae 1.20.1 ad. 1.
55. In a letter to Victor White, Jung expressed dissatisfaction with Aquinas’ treatment of the problem of evil: “I also took a dive into S. Thomas, but I did not feel refreshed afterwards” (The Jung–White Letters, ed. Ann Conrad Lammers and Adrian Cunningham [London: Routledge, 2007], 141).