Chapter Three
Chapter Three
The Task of St. Thomas
“Great men,” says Emilio Castelar, “are different embodiments of great ideas.” So, before we go on to speak of St. Thomas’s method and success, we must first find out from history what great idea he embodied and how he envisaged his task.
It should be obvious from what has gone before. We have seen him set on solving the problems of his times; we know what those problems were. Granted that he was in truth a great man, the rest should follow. But we can be a little more explicit. There are complications, certainly, but his task is quite simple in its general aim, for the very reason that M. Bergson is thinking of when he says, “All fruitful philosophical work is the outcome of mental concentration, with a pure emotion at its base.” What is the primary emotion to which St. Thomas’s work corresponds? What did he foresee? Toward what did he, instinctively or intentionally, direct his whole life?
There can be no doubt that his goal was the establishment of the mutual relations of faith and reason, by harmonizing an already existing philosophical system with the apparently disparate notions contained in tradition and contemporary thought. This he realized from the first, owing to his training under Albert the Great, and still more to his own vigorous reaction, which teaching may lead to, but cannot take the place of.
This, his principal aim, is the key to his whole life’s work: his message, as we now call it. And his message is of value, if reason and faith make up the whole man; if Aristotle’s doctrine can be termed, whether we agree with it or not, “the natural metaphysics of the human mind”; and lastly, if there is a good deal of truth mixed up with tradition.
According to M. Bergson, the chief characteristic of a primary intuition of this kind is that it begins with a negation. The first word formed in the mind of a philosopher should be the word impossible, as in the reason of Socrates arguing with his demon. This is obvious, for one only affirms to guard oneself from doubt, and the most dangerous and formidable form of doubt is that which takes the form of an error.
In the present case, it is easy to find the primary negation. St. Thomas was aware of the double position, taken by the Averroists, and previously countenanced by Abelard: as believers we affirm, as philosophers we deny or dispute. Even St. Anselm had betrayed some confusion on the respective scope, principles, and methods of faith and reason. St. Thomas was, moreover, convinced that, despite the great value of the Augustinian philosophy, it was incapable of answering the problems of contemporary thought. Therefore, he began over again. It was impossible that there should be any incompatibility, contradiction, or confusion between reason and faith. They must both be defended and brought into harmony. It was impossible for the Platonic philosophy of Augustine to remedy the ills caused by the new intellectual movement. The much-suspected Aristotelianism could furnish a remedy, provided it was corrected and brought into line with faith, and with what there was of truth in the other systems. That, in brief, was to be the life work of St. Thomas.
The first thing to be done was to insist on the autonomy and independence of both faith and reason; to give each its rights, and allow each to develop according to its own laws. Without that, any attempt at harmony would be special pleading. We cannot be said to reconcile two things if we allow either of them to suffer in any degree, yet that was precisely what had been done. Theology, in the preceding centuries, had had exclusive dominion, and a pure philosophy like Aristotle’s was, in certain quarters, looked upon as a scandal. The school of St. Augustine held that all philosophical speculation was derived from, and depended upon, faith; in other words, they did not believe in a philosophy that was autonomous. The well-known phrase fides quaerens intellectum13 sums up their position. Faith, they held, seeks to understand, but it remains faith for all that. It may be illustrated by reason, but it does not thereby lose its proper nature. While St. Thomas, it is true, admitted this principle and used it as much as anyone else, he did not consider it a complete expression of the work that had to be done. Reason also has its rights, its own province, its own methods, and its own certitudes, and its systematic treatment is not only man’s privilege, but his bounden duty.
The remedy certainly did not consist in pouring some philosophy, so to speak, into theology, or reason into faith; nor even in “reconciling” them, as we reconcile people who have incompatible views, yet are forced to live together. St. Thomas did not set out to readjust them by making concessions to both sides, or by sacrificing the one for the other; that would have been work thrown away. No, he had to crown each of them sovereign in its own realm; to acknowledge the rights, albeit distinct and unequal, that belonged to each. Then he could attempt to harmonize them.
It was treason to give up an article of faith in favor of reason, but, in his eyes, it was just as bad to give up reason for the faith. Indeed, the treason was fundamentally the same in each case — namely, treason against God, the living Truth. In the Church and in nature, in revelation and in the human mind, God is one and the same. True reconciliation could be brought about only by holding fast to this principle and by an unwavering insistence on the respective claims of both faith and reason. Truth must agree with truth.
This desire to give equal honor to the believer and to the philosopher shows a remarkably bold and noble attribute of mind. If faith is divine, why distrust reason? There can be no danger to faith in the study of philosophy, once granted that they have the same origin, and must therefore be in accord. God cannot contradict himself, nor is he jealous of the creature’s intellectual yearnings.
St. Thomas was determined to be neither arrogant in matters of faith, nor timid in matters of reason. He insists on the entire rights of each; he is theologian and philosopher, and these two sciences seemed to him, as M. Pierre Lasserre puts it, “two zones in the path of one and the same ray of heavenly wisdom.”
On the other hand, he did not regard philosophy as completely cut off from faith, or entirely independent of it. That would destroy the unity of truth, the unity of man, and, we may almost say, the unity of God. It would also be ignoring the fact that the relation of God and creature in faith is very different from the relation of God and creature in reason. In faith, God reveals himself directly and infallibly. In reason, he reveals himself indirectly, in the sense that he possesses the reasons of things and gives the creature the intellect whereby these things are known. But human reason is weak, and where its conclusions do not agree with faith, it must be abandoned in favor of the infallible truth.
But it is nonetheless true that, if nothing be affirmed as of faith which is not of faith, or as proved by reason, when it is only a hypothesis or a fallacy, then all conflict between the two is ruled out, and each is free to develop. We may defend dogma with the weapons of reason, or illustrate philosophy by faith, without compromising either of them, or confusing them. It is possible in this way to be at once the most orthodox theologian and the most rational of philosophers. This must not be taken to imply that we claim to demonstrate the truths of faith, as Abelard and even Anselm tried to do. St. Thomas considered such procedure as lowering the dignity of faith and making it the laughing-stock of philosophers. What we can do, however, is to bring each into harmony with the other, and both with experience, and to refute all objections against faith, seeing that they must of necessity be invalid.
All through his life, this was St. Thomas’s point of view. He was never merely a philosopher; he was Doctor Catholicus and theologian. But he was master in every department of truth. Having once bowed down his intelligence before God, he proudly defends its supremacy over all other truth. He makes it the handmaid of faith where he should, but queen in its own domain. Where this first homage is refused, reason soon comes even to doubt itself, as we see whenever there is a crisis in faith, and when the intellect rebels. When God has been ousted and reason made a god, reason has no remedy for its obvious weakness. It begins to doubt its own validity, and then there is nothing left. Humility, which emphasizes the due order of all things, is the greatest safeguard for the intellect, as for every other faculty.
There is every reason why the philosopher should make use of the data of faith for his own guidance and profit. There is no contradiction involved in using one science to direct and control another. There is no confusion between a branch and its flower; taken separately, they might differ in many respects, but taken together, they harmonize perfectly.
In the same way, the Thomist uses reason and faith, without confusing either them or their methods. In philosophy, he uses only philosophical arguments and deduces his conclusions from principles common to all things; therefore, these conclusions cannot be, properly speaking, disbelieved. If they could be proven false, the believer and the philosopher would fall together; but if they cannot be impugned, then both triumph together, by the action of one and the same intelligence. In order to light up a dark room, it is not necessary to shut out the natural light of day. Indeed, while firmly upholding the essential distinction between faith and reason, we have every right to endorse this daring proposition of John Scotus Erigena: “True religion is true philosophy; true philosophy is true religion.”
This broad principle, which he keeps on reiterating and is forever defending from attacks of all kinds, he now set himself to apply. He had two things to do. First, he had to show that, between faith and reason, in fact as well as in theory, there is no contradiction, even though faith surpasses reason. Therefore, none of the objections raised by philosophy can be really valid, however difficult they may be to answer. This was the more important part of his plan, since it was an attempt to save Christian society, and he set to work with an ardor equaled only by his loyalty. It may be said that he left very little for the unbeliever of the future to do, since he made a point of stressing, not only the truth, but all the pros and cons of the problems under discussion.
St. Thomas is fond of saying that the philosopher’s work par excellence is order. Having established a theoretical conformity between faith and reason, his second task was therefore to arrange the data of faith (which are naturally systematic, since they come from God) in as strict an order as possible, and then to construct a synthesis that would include them and the data of experience or acquired knowledge. He strove to create, not merely a system of dogmas, not merely a philosophy or a science, but a complete synthesis of knowledge, in which everything would find a place, and be related with everything else: “the hymn of the relations of all things,” to borrow a phrase from Mallarmé. It was an ideal and, therefore, could not be fully realized. He wished to found what we may call a divine humanism; he wished to connect sound common sense to sublime dogma, by a wide road traversing all degrees of speculative thought. He wished to explain Christianity intellectually, and to Christianize intellectual thought. He envisaged the world, philosophically as a network of causes and effects, and theologically as a receptacle of divine thoughts and divine intentions. His task was to “determine which was which, and set them in motion,” as Pascal would say. He grappled with this task until he exhausted his strength; he spent all his vitality and mental energy in the cause of truth, for which alone he lived and prematurely died.
Descartes, Malebranche, Leibnitz, and others have tried to form a similar system of Christian philosophy that would show forth the conformity of faith and reason. Although they did not entirely fail, it is quite certain that none of them met with a degree of success comparable with that which attended St. Thomas. What is more, some of these sincere attempts have ended by going against their very principles. Descartes’s harmony has produced Spinoza and Bayle, and prepared the way for Voltaire. Not that Descartes can be held responsible for these, but — by their fruits ye shall know them.
Now, why was Aristotle’s philosophy chosen as the basis of this great reform? Certainly not because St. Thomas wished to be in the fashion and to follow the new learning, which he had so often to confute. Albert the Great undoubtedly influenced him, in the sense that he finally convinced him, but all through his studies, and especially in his debates, the idea had been gradually taking hold of him, and we have a right to ask why.
There was one general incentive, which appealed even to the religious authorities, despite their misgivings about Aristotle. They saw that it was necessary to capture for the Church this splendid revival of learning, which was everywhere making its presence felt. Ever since the fleshpots of Egypt, the true religion has consistently pursued a like policy. Historians such as Harnack, and indeed, writers of any real insight, have noticed this remarkable fact. Barrès writes, “One of the most striking facts in history is the way in which Christianity, having once definitely conquered, stays the hand of the would-be iconoclasts and says: Now that our enemy is down, we may take from him whatever good he may possess.”14 There have been intellectual iconoclasts as well, and the Church has always checked them in the same way. There were plenty such in St. Thomas’s day. Albert the Great roundly denounced them, not sparing members of his own order: “They are mere brutes (bruta animalia) who blaspheme what they do not know.” St. Thomas himself would have no truck with them. He is a Christian, but antiquity was also Christian, in the sense that all truth is Christian, and it was the Church’s right and the Christian’s duty to take over whatever good it contained. Those rather too daring words of Péguy, which are often given a bad meaning, can be understood in a quite orthodox sense by the Thomist: “I wish to be a Christian, but I wish also to be pagan.”
This was to be a reconciliation of the Gospels and Greek philosophy, of faith and reason, of revelation and natural genius, under the inspiration of Aristotle. Thought was to be unified: past and present united.
What made this unification more feasible was the fact that, whereas the ancient philosophies were all more or less deficient, Aristotelianism appeared to St. Thomas an incomparable masterpiece; a thoughtful system, and so adaptable as to give the impression of being sound good sense exalted by genius. It was searching enough to reach the precise position that the mind should take up in order to furnish a complete solution to all problems of a serious nature. It was comprehensive enough to include any lawful additions and any reasonable interpretation, and, for this purpose, was supremely synthetical. It was like an encyclopedia in the making, which could be extended in every way. It followed the laws of organic development, which always makes the fullest use of what it absorbs, without destroying the harmony of the whole.
It would be a great triumph to show how the dogmatic teaching of the Church could be expressed in terms of this philosophy and defended by it. It would be a grand victory that would secure a vast treasure and would avert the impending danger of the two doctrines drifting ever further apart, losing touch one with the other, and finally breaking out into open war, with harmful consequences to souls.
It was his great heart that gave St. Thomas the confidence he needed; the great heart of a believer, animated by a twofold faith, the faith of a Christian, and his faith, with which six years of intense study had imbued him, in the greatest of all purely human philosophies. He was confident from the start that this synthesis, however difficult, could be made, and he succeeded. We of today will appreciate his task, if we agree with the writer who says of Aristotle that he was “perhaps the only ancient who would have been a modern.”
It was imperative, however, not to mistake, still less to ignore, the relative values of the two sciences. Revealed truth must be put first, as the supreme rule of all Christians. Reason must be the handmaid of faith, and not vice versa. It was not a question of making faith tally with Aristotle, but of defining it in the philosophical language of Aristotle, whose teaching was, presumably, equally true.
Medieval paintings represent this subjugation of Aristotle to the faith in a rather crude manner, but they do at least bring out the fact that his subjugation in no way impaired his freedom of investigation, or denied his autonomy in his own sphere. In what is known as the Lay of Aristotle and is believed to refer to the story of Campaspe, the knight on horseback represents the new theology riding on philosophy, rather like the window at Chartres where St. Matthew, representing the New Testament, is riding on Isaiah, representing the Old. Now, just as St. Matthew’s divine mission does not belittle that of Isaiah, so the truth of faith does not damage the autonomy of philosophy.
We must not, however, forget the complementary truth contained in the following extract from a sermon preached by St. Thomas before the University of Naples: “Any old woman today knows more about things divine than did all the philosophers of antiquity put together.” Aristotle was to be made to serve, but without restricting his freedom of inquiry; truth is never shackled by becoming the handmaid of truth.
The sequel will show that this was a hazardous venture, and had St. Thomas sought peace and quiet, he would have done better to have tried some other means. But adventure is the lot of all heroes, not excluding heroes of thought.
Aristotle was to be “corrected,” not in the sense that any of his fundamental principles were to be rejected, but in the sense that they were to be more thoroughly investigated, and, with the guidance of faith, to be brought to their logical conclusions. If Aristotle had come to life again in the thirteenth century, he would have found this follower more Aristotelian than he had himself been, because he was going more deeply into his principles and applying them to correct incidental error.
St. Thomas adopted Aristotle’s principles as a kind of framework. Although, to all appearances, he accepted the Aristotelian world as it stood, he really transformed it basically by fitting into it such notions as creation, providence, free will, and miracles. Yet this is still Aristotle, only a better version of him, being more logically developed and nearer the truth. “Aristotle’s greatest achievement,” says Emile Boutroux, “is the Christian philosophy.” And the Christian philosophy of today is the philosophy of St. Thomas.
One other important fact, which helps us to realize St. Thomas’s greatness, was that he took over Aristotle’s philosophy at the point where it parts company with Plato’s, and not at a much later point where it becomes identified with the philosophies of his first disciples, who soon lapsed into naturalism. Plato was more religious than Aristotle, and St. Thomas had to combine the learning of the one with the religious spirit of the other.
But the Plato that he knew was hardly the real Plato, whose works were then little known, but Plato as found in the Fathers, and especially in St. Augustine. He, in a sense, pitted the Augustinian philosophy against its followers. But his system was balanced and coherent, and he regarded this Platonism, which was essential to theology, only as supplementary to philosophy. He interpreted St. Augustine in an Aristotelian sense, and Aristotle in an Augustinian sense. He discarded Augustine only where he was too Platonic, and Aristotle only where he was not sufficiently Christian. Thus, he avoided both extremes and built up a Christian Aristotelianism, animated by Platonism and tinged with the Neo-Platonism of the School of Alexandria.
We have just said that St. Thomas was forced to disclaim the naturalism of Aristotle, as developed by one school of followers, which departed from his principles and cut itself off entirely from the Platonic element in his philosophy. This must be understood to refer to that extreme form of naturalism which excludes all spiritual realities. In a different sense, St. Thomas was an ardent naturalist, because he found there a remedy for the baneful effects of false mysticism or unscientific spirituality, which was then, as always, a real menace.
We glibly criticize him for not paying sufficient attention to physics, and to the physical nature of man. Read superficially, he seems to merit this criticism, because of the kind of questions that he treats, and because he was a theologian before all else. But it is a criticism that has no solid foundation, especially when examined historically. He found in Aristotle a deep interest in nature, and a man of his common sense readily assimilated it. He taught that grace builds upon nature, and, in general, he makes the spiritual world the continuation and crown of the corporeal. Hence his oft-repeated axioms, that grace does not destroy nature but perfects it, and that the soul, despite its spiritual character, cannot be completely defined without the body. The soul is the form of the body, and grace is the supernatural form of the soul. As a pyramid has its base on the ground and its apex tending heavenward, so the Thomistic system unites the natural philosophy of Aristotle with the supernatural doctrine of God.
It was not St. Thomas, but the Augustinians and Neo-Platonists, his predecessors and contemporaries, who were so wrapped up in things divine and in man’s relations with God as to lose sight of the relations of God with material things, and the soul’s relations with the body. Not that they were positively wrong, but they were narrow, and something quite revolutionary was needed to broaden their outlook.
This, then, was St. Thomas’s plan. First formed before he left Cologne, it took more definite shape as he worked at it, for the blurred details in the conception of a plan are always brought into focus by its execution.
We must insist, especially in a book of this kind, that his constructive ability, which seems so impersonal and cold, was really the outcome of a great yearning. He longed to know, for his own sake, the answer to the question of his childhood: What is God? And he longed to spread this knowledge; to live up to the motto of his order: Contemplata aliis tradere.
Every great philosophy must bear a moral character, not only because it must treat of ethics, but also in its very inspiration and spirit. This is particularly true of Thomism. It would be but poorly understood and misrepresented if we dwelt merely on its questions and replies and its rigid logic. There is a great undercurrent of spirituality, the outflowing of a deep and ardent thinker who devoted his life to an attempt at finding out the true meaning of life.
What is first in order of execution is not, in this case, first in order of conception. It is not the principles that are our first concern.
We must go deeper than his teaching if we are to discover his real attitude; we must look where he reveals his heart as well as his mind.
We may not unfittingly apply to him the definition that Dante consecrates to God: “an intellectual light full of love.”15 He tackled these problems, not out of curiosity or ambition, but because they were of importance to mankind. To his superb intelligence was joined the faith of a simple child. While his task might justifiably have monopolized his talents, he was ever ready to use them for others. He thought in order to live himself and to help others to live. He sought to find his way about the world, that he might walk in it and help us to walk. He studied everything to find out the meaning of our existence and subordinated all things to the last end, where they find their true explanation.
It was fortunate that these times had a man sufficiently farseeing to discover what was needed, and sufficiently able and generous to satisfy that need. Barrès says that “a genius is one who can give us what we need, when nobody else can do it.”16 St. Thomas, of his own accord, shepherded the wandering flock, lest it be said that, by withholding his help, he had allowed it to perish.
Et que, faute d’un coeur, un siècle soit perdu.17 — Lamartine