The feast today is that of St Thomas Aquinas. I know, I know. In the old calendar, it is on 7th March, a date which, last year, saw me blogging away about St Thomas with wild abandon (http://theburunderthesaddle.blogspot.com/2007/03/on-contrary.html). If I acknowledge the feast on 28th January this year, it is not because I am being inconsistent. I shall undoubtedly have something to say in March too. It's simply that I'd be quite happy celebrating St Thomas at least once a month. Once a week might even be better.
St Thomas of course is such an institution nowadays that it is perhaps hard to recapture that whiff of danger that he must have carried with him. As a nobleman who had decided to join a new-fangled mendiant order, he was something of a pariah. His business, as far as his family was concerned, lay in becoming abbot of a rich Benedictine monastery, not in joining the recently founded Dominicans who travelled across Europe begging their daily meals. As a theologian, his duty - which incidentally he did very well - lay ostensibly in mastering the theology of the day, the summit of which was Peter Lombard's Sentences. Taking off in a new direction by assimilating Aristotelian thought and developing his own metapysical insights: all that was somewhat off beat.
The consciousness of Thomistic thought has taken a battering these last few years. Although probably more people than ever study his Summa Theologica (due to the growth in student numbers in Rome, for example), the wave of neo-scholasticism on whose crest rode the likes of Anton Pegis, Reginald Garrigou Lagrange or Frederick Copleston is gone. Latter day exponents of Thomism (Joseph Pieper, David Berger et al.) can be found, but they do not seem to rival the giants of yester-year.
Which of course raises the question: if St Thomas were alive today, would he be a Thomist? I hazard the answer: yes and no. Of course the fundmental insights of his philosphy would remain the same, for they are true. Humanity, now as then, finds its primary intellectual light in being. But Thomas, in my humble opinion, would also today be knee-deep in studies and pursuits which are not readily associated with the latter-day bearers - self-proclaimed in some cases - of his light. Might they even find him shockingly modern? A friend of mine who contested one Thomistic thesis in cosmology - because it was elaborated before Newtonian physics - found himself accused of infidelity to St Thomas. Oh yes, and just plain stupidity.
But a modern-day Thomas would, I'm sure, be deeply interested in contemporary insights into physics and cosmology. Everything from dark matter to badly behaved photons would pique his curiosity. Being is the key!
I feel sure he would also be fascinated by the insights of contemporary psychology. The man who wrote the Prima Secundae could not but find engaging the immense body of data which corroborates his own understanding of the human as an embodied spirit, rather than as a Plantonic carriage driver or a Cartesian ghost in the machine.
And then, what a contribution he might have made to the harmonization of higher critical insights (in the acceptable sense!) and a faithful understanding of the Scriptures. Here, as in the domain of psychology, the truths of observation would be reconciled for St Thomas with a hermeneutic of divine inspiration. And why not! There is barely an article of the Summa which does not in some way cite Scriptural authority. He famously memorized the Vulgate while in prison and often quoted it from memory. Likewise, what an immense interest St Thomas would undoubtedly have taken in the revival of Patristics. His appreciation of the Fathers was another foundational element of his theology.
Human traditions often betray their originators. Fathers are often misunderstood by their children. It all leaves me wondering, as I say, whether St Thomas's preoccupation with truth above all things - above reputations, systems, conventions, hypotheses, etc. - would have been quite as feted by some of his present-day disciples.
The age of neo-scholasticism has declined, and it is much to our detriment. But what is certain is that the drive towards a more scriptural and patristically aware theology need not be at odds with Thomism. On the contrary, since Scripture and the Fathers were St Thomas's sources par excellence, they can only serve as the basis for a Thomistic revival which is less abstracted, less obsessed with theses severed from their origins, and more in touch with the seedbeds which helped open the mind of St Thomas to the light eternal.
It seems to me also that St Thomas would have seen his own ideal in the Ratzingerian imperative of doing theology within the Church. The light of faith, illuminating philosophy, is itself illuminated by the ecclesial anchor of the teaching Church, without which it drifts into the unexamined assumptions of privatized theology. In fact, apart from his quoting from the Song of Songs on his death bed, his last recorded words appear to have been:
If I have written anything erroneous concerning the Sacrament
or other matters, I submit all to the judgement and correction
of the Holy Roman Church, in whose obedience I now pass from
this life.
A lesson perhaps for those who are intent on teaching Rome a thing or two ...?
Still, in the end theology - especially theology within the Church - is not about Thomas, or Thomism, but about the light of Revelation that St Thomas, the faithful lover of God, beheld in contemplation and tried to explain...
until the light became so bright that all his efforts appeared - these are his own words not some enemy's - as so much straw.
Monday, 28 January 2008
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5 comments:
Dear Ches,
Please tell me about the theory that St Thomas purported in his early days about the question of women not having souls. I must say, this bothers me greatly! Just in case I can't refind your blog, could you write to my email address of djsmith4927@comcast.net? As you can see, this information is important to my well-being.
donna
"If I have written anything erroneous concerning the Sacrament
or other matters, I submit all to the judgement and correction
of the Holy Roman Church, in whose obedience I now pass from
this life.
"A lesson perhaps for those who are intent on teaching Rome a thing or two ...?"
Quite perhaps ... but there's something else there as well. It would help us to actually see "the judgment and correction of the Holy Roman Church" regarding the theses of these would-be teachers. Without this, they can continue to insist, rather uncontestedly, that it is they who do understand the patrimony of Tradition rightly and therefore claim the right to "withstand Peter to his face."
I would agree that were St. Thomas around today he would revel in the discoveries made these past hundreds of years. But I suspect that he would be chagrined that, despite so many discoveries, people have learned so little. I envision him ruminating: “So much information, so little knowledge!”
It was amusing (and chastening…) to me to read in his prologue to the Summa that this work was intended for ‘beginners’ – a sort of ‘Theology Light’, a catechetical primer for the uninitiated, a ‘shorter’ catechism, as it were! I can’t imagine what the full-length version might have looked like…
But I suspect that he - and perhaps to a greater extent Albertus Magnus – would lament the loss of so much knowledge, certitude and depth of faith so common in their day and so under attack today. If what Thomas wrote was so much straw, what would he call much of what passes for philosophy and theology today – ashes?
GOR, all excellent points. I think you're right. I suppose one might argue that a St Thomas could not exist today because nobody is cut off from their culture and in many ways it was undoubtedly the context in which St Thomas lived that enabled him to do what he eventually did.
We're he here today, I tend to think he would be a great devotee of the Benedictine (XVI) 'revolution' as a solution to our current ills which you so rightly point out. It was after all in Benedictine (OSB) sancturaries that he received his first formation and met his gentle death.
Somerset '76, I agree with you on that point, but the Holy See cannot deal with every theory that does the rounds. To some extent, theological opinions are peer-moderated, or at least they should be. I'm not sure we would necessarily want a CDF investigation of our own erstwhile luminaries, who in any case would not accept such an investigation if one was undertaken. Just to take one example, the famous SSPX Dubia on Religious Liberty sent to the CDF in 1987 were answered. But have we ever seen the answer? Not that I know of. Why didn't the SSPX publish the CDF's answer if it was so bad (as they say it was)? I don't see why the CDF would object.
The patrimony of tradition does have an authentic interpreter who settles disputes over its meaning, and in the final analysis that is the Holy See.
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