THOMAS AQUINAS

It would be naive to think that, just because Thomas Aquinas wrote before the Reformation, Protestants will regard him as much theirs as do Catholics. After all, Aquinas was one of the most influential practitioners of that scholasticism from which Luther wished to separate. No one who reads the Summa theologiae can be unaware of Aquinas’s espousal of precisely those “additions” to which Protestants react so sternly. Needless to say, this point is an important one and it could be developed, but the intended readers of this book already know anything I might say about it. I want, in this prefatory note, to underscore another point, one that I think animates Dr. Geisler’s work.

Aquinas flourished in the third quarter of the thirteenth century. At the end of the century, one of the great imaginative works of Christendom was begun, a magnificent poem of our journey to God set precisely in Holy Week of 1300. I mean, of course, The Divine Comedy . Dante called Aristotle “the master of those who know,” but he himself can be called the poet of those who believe. If skeptics and atheists have found the hundred cantos through which Dante takes us through hell and purgatory to heaven irresistible, the person for whom these represent the eschatological stakes of life will read Dante for edification as well as for esthetic pleasure. I take it to be the conviction of my good friend Dr. Norman Geisler that Aquinas can function in a way analogous to Dante for all Christians.

Reading Geisler’s landmark volume, in which he straightforwardly confronts notable evangelical rejections of, or at least cautions about, Aquinas, and seeing the life and writings of the man who has been my philosophical mentor for some forty years freshly presented in a new and surprising light, made me think once again what poor stewards of Aquinas’s thought we Thomists have been. If, as Geisler argues, Aquinas has come under evangelical fire for holding things he did not hold, I sometimes think that Thomists have commended him for positions that are not his. For this reason I was particularly interested in Geisler’s treatment of the relation between faith and reason.

If it were the case that Aquinas taught that human beings can reason their way into faith solely by the employment of their natural powers wounded by sin, he would by any standards be heretical. Faith is a gift, not an achievement. There are no arguments with premises about the world that arrive at mysteries of faith as their necessary conclusions. On the other hand, if Aquinas’s view were simply that believers in meditating on and assimilating revelation bring to bear whatever enables them better to grasp God’s word, no Christian would take exception. Fides quaerens intellectum (faith seeking understanding) is how Anselm expressed it at the beginning of the twelfth century. Aquinas’s position, however, is more complicated, as readers of this book will learn.

It was Kierkegaard who said that the reason we have forgotten what it is to be a Christian is that we have forgotten what it is to be a person. No one would imagine that Kierkegaard held that the remembering of certain truths about human beings would produce Christianity, but the great Dane recognized the truth that Aquinas ceaselessly repeated: grace builds on nature but does not destroy it. What evangelicals will find most interesting, perhaps, is the way in which Aquinas understood Romans 1:19-20, an understanding that goes back at least to Augustine. What does Paul mean when he says that the pagan Romans can from the things that are made come to knowledge of the invisible things of God? Dr. Geisler’s discussion of “preambles of faith” in chapter 9 lays before the reader what Aquinas meant by truths about God that can be described even by sinful humankind independently of special grace. Pascal distinguished between the God of the philosophers and the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and this book will provide new understanding of that distinction. But just as Paul could preach to the Athenians before the altar of the unknown God and say that it was that God he had come to preach, it is the same God who is known imperfectly and with much admixture of error by natural reason and who has revealed himself in Jesus. It goes without saying that such comparisons are made from the side of faith. This book will show readers how it is that Aquinas is a champion of both faith and reason. It sometimes seems that only believers defend the range of reason.

I am flattered and pleased to have been asked to say a few words by way of introduction to this extraordinary book. Dr. Geisler is a man I have known and admired for many years. It is indeed the rare man who can find in an apparent enemy an ally.

But Geisler’s study of Thomas Aquinas is far more than an instance of the old adage fas est et ab hoste doceri (it is right to learn even from the foe). He enables evangelicals and Catholics to see the immense range of truths that unite us, not as some least common denominator, but truths that are at the heart of our Christian faith. RALPH MCINERNY

CHAPTER 1

THE CONTEMPORARY RELEVANCE OF AQUINAS

Should old Aquinas be forgotten and never brought to mind? Many contemporary Catholic and most Protestant thinkers say Yes. I for one would like to register a negative vote. But can a sevenhundred- year-old thinker still be relevant today?

Students of logic will recognize the implication of the question as the fallacy of “chronological snobbery.” “New is true” and “old is mold,” we are told. Logic informs us, however, that time has no necessary connection with truth. Or at least, if there were any kind of connection, then the timehonored thought ought to have the edge.

TRADITIONAL EVANGELICAL CRITICISM

There is a stylish reluctance among evangelicals to admit any allegiance to or dependence on Aquinas.

After all, wasn’t Aquinas Catholic, not Protestant?

Wasn’t his a natural theology resulting from human reason, not a supernatural theology based on divine revelation? And didn’t he hold an unorthodox Aristotelian view of Christianity as opposed to a more congenial Platonic philosophy, such as the Augustinian tradition preserved? Why should evangelicals be pro-Aquinas? Can anything good come out of Rome? Was the Reformation all in vain?

Should evangelicals borrow from a quasi-humanistic, heterodoxical, Aristotelian defender of Romanism?

Most evangelicals answer these questions negatively. They join regularly in a harmonious chorus of “Ole Aquinas should be forgot and never brought to mind.” A sample of some major evangelical thinkers will illustrate an almost universal disdain for the Angelic Doctor.

Widely read and highly regarded evangelical writer Francis Schaeffer blames Aquinas for the rise of modern humanism. He charges that Aquinas bifurcates faith and reason, giving autonomy to the latter.

Further, Schaeffer claims that Aquinas denies the depravity of humankind, thus making per-fectibility possible apart from God. In this way the stage was set for later humanists to affirm that reason alone is sufficient to resolve our dilemma. Aquinas’s separation of faith and reason is an “incipient humanism” where “reason is made an absolute rather than a tool.” l Due to his wide influence in conservative Protestant circles, Schaeffer’s position is taken as gospel by much of evangelicalism.

Reformed apologist Cornelius Van Til is scarcely more complimentary of the medieval saint from Aquino. Thomism, he believes, is based on the “autonomy of man.” This, says Van Til, implies that man is “metaphysically distinct from ‘god.’” And if so, then “there is on this basis no genuine point of contact with the mind of the natural man at all.” Further, “the revelation of a self-sufficient God can have no meaning for a mind that thinks of itself as ultimately autonomous.” One of the problems that emerges from this autonomy of reason is “how it may be known that the God of reason and the God of faith are the same.” Van Til describes Thomism as “a position halfway between that of Christianity and that of paganism.”

Theistic arguments are invalid and, at any rate, do not lead to the “self-contained ontological trinity of Scripture.” In fact, if we follow Thomistic apologetics, “then Christianity itself must be so reduced as to make it acceptable to the natural man”. Van Til characterizes Aquinas’s thought as a hybrid of “the pure staticism of Parmenides and a philosophy of the pure flux of Heraclitus with much the same appearance as is the Christ of modern dialectical Protestantism.” Gordon Clark refers to Aquinas’s thought as a “Christianized interpretation of Aristotelianism.” He rejects Aquinas’s arguments for God as “circular,” purely “formal,” “invalid,” and “indefensible” because the skeptic David Hume and the agnostic Immanuel Kant gave irrefutable arguments against proofs for God. As for Aquinas’s doctrine of analogous God-talk, Clark confidently declares it to be an “equivocation” based on a “fallacy”. E. J. Carnell, former president of Fuller Seminary, yields to the same temptation to stereotype and stigmatize Aquinas: “Thomas sets out to Christianize Aristotle’s God.” He, too, accepts the skepticism and agnosticism of Hume and Kant against theistic arguments. These arguments are all empirically based and “from flux only flux can come.” Likewise, analogous God-talk is “sheer equivocation” that “makes God unknowable” and opens “the sluice gate. . .to [other] unknowables when one defends an ‘unknown God.” Noted evangelical theologian Carl F. H. Henry parrots the same type of criticism. Accepting the antitheistic conclusions of Hume and Kant, he calls Aquinas’s claims “extravagant” and built on a “debatable epistemology” whose conclusions are “hardly satisfactory.” Furthermore, Aquinas’s views are “betrayed also [by] a minimizing of the revelational insistence on the beclouding effect of sin in the life of man.” In fact, Henry claims that “the acceptance of thomism at the University of Paris after 1275 marks the real break from historic Christianity in the medieval Church”. Philosopher Arthur Holmes is less than complimentary of Aquinas when he characterizes his view as an emphasis on “the unaided powers of human reason as to press towards a Cartesian position.”

Holmes also mistakenly represents Aquinas as believing that “natural philosophy can demonstrate the premises of revealed theology.” Elsewhere he speaks of the “autonomous” nature of Aquinas’s philosophy that “fell apart under the strain of history” when “Aristotelianism fell into disfavor” Holmes also characterizes Aquinas’s view of God as “conceived abstractly as a metaphysical necessity, rather than showing himself concretely as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” On the seven-hundredth anniversary of Aquinas’s death, Ronald Nash had perhaps the best opportunity to praise the relevance of Aquinas, but was reluctant to do so. He settled rather for a few general words of historical commendation, carefially qualified by theological criticism.

These were based on alleged but unjustified assertions that the notorious problems of Thomistic philosophy were long ago exposed by Gordon Clark.

Nash wrote, “There are two errors [Aristotelian empiricism and metaphysics] so significant that they render Aquinas’s system beyond any hope of salvage.” With the impressive authority of these evangelical leaders dominating the theological scene for the last generation, there was an almost universal reluctance among other scholars to say a positive word for the Angelic Doctor. There have been, of course, a few secret admirers of Aquinas among us who no doubt crept in unawares. These men have taken Thomistic positions in natural theology, but even so they are usually careful not to identify themselves as Thomists. John H. Gerstner, Stuart Hackett, R. C. Sproul, and Arvin Vos are noteworthy exceptions. There are also a few closet Thomists who borrow the arguments of Aquinas without frankly acknowledging their allegiance to him. When all is told, however, there is really a strong but too often silent minority among us who are directly dependent on Aquinas for our basic theology, philosophy, and/or apologetics. The time is overdue for all secret believers to join in a positive word of gratitude for the masterful expression and defense of the historic Christian faith bequeathed to us by this humble giant of the faith. As for myself, I gladly confess that the highest compliment that could be paid to me as a Christian philosopher, apologist, and theologian is to call me “Thomistic.” This, of course, does not mean I accept everything Aquinas wrote naively and uncritically. It does mean that I believe he was one of the greatest systematic minds the Christian church has ever had, and that I can see a lot farther standing on his shoulders than by attacking him in the back. No, I do not agree with everything he ever wrote. On the other hand, neither do I agree with everything I ever wrote.

But seven hundred years from now no one will even recognize my name, while Aquinas’s works will still be used with great profit.

THE IRONY OF EVANGELICAL CRITICISM

There is a certain irony and poetic justice involved in much of the criticism of Thomistic thought. Many of those who condemn any kind of rational theology spend commendable effort via human reason and argumentation in order to establish their own view. This use of reason to argue for one’s view of God would warm the heart of the Angelic Doctor. Indeed, even those who argue against rational theology for fideism have a kind of inverse natural theology of their own by virtue of the fact they are using human reason to convince others not to do so. Of course, much of evangelical thought is not very rich philosophically. But a poor man’s philosophy is better than none at all.

And in whatever sense we engage in systematic Christian thinking, we are in the broad sense of the term indebted to Aquinas.

What is even more ironic is that often evangelicals criticize Aquinas for holding a view he did not hold, while they unwittingly embrace the same view he did. Their views are often stereotypical distortions mediated through the teaching magisterium of our evangelical scholars. It is embarrassing to confess on behalf of our evangelical cause that it is still all too rare to find evangelical philosophers or apologists who really understand the views of Aquinas. As noted, many of them chastise Aquinas for views he never held. Perhaps first-hand and more sympathetic scholarship would have avoided this embarrassment to us. Others, like Schaeffer, make unsubstantiated claims, blaming Aquinas for the rise of modern secular humanism.

Several examples of evangelical misunderstanding of Aquinas will substantiate this point. There is almost unanimous agreement among evangelical scholars that the Thomistic view of analogy reduces to equivocation and skepticism. The reason given is that unless there is a univocal element in the analogy, we cannot be sure that language means the same thing when applied to God. And if there is a univocal element, then the language is not really analogical but univocal. What this criticism completely fails to understand is that Aquinas’s doctrine of analogy allows the use of univocal concepts but denies that finite concepts can be applied in anything but an analogical way to an infinite Being. That is, Thomistic analogy is not a doctrine about the essential unitary meaning of a conception but, rather, refers to the essential analogical nature of a predication. Thomists have written massive works defending this thesis on an exegetical basis, but few evangelicals have read Garrigou-Lagrange, Etienne Gilson, Jacques Maritain, George Peter Klubertanz, Ralph McInerny, and Battista Mondin. Even worse, while criticizing Aquinas for applying finite concepts to God in less than a univocal way, there is scarcely an evangelical thinker who does not do the same thing. Who among us mortals has an infinite concept of the infinite God? Who would claim to have an unlimited knowledge of the Unlimited? But this is precisely what Aquinas means when he says that terms taken from our finite experience—which is the only kind of experience we finite beings have—cannot be applied to God in a univocal way. On the other hand, neither our colleagues nor Aquinas believe that there is a mere equivocal or totally different sense of certain terms as applied to both God and finite things. But if our language about God is neither totally the same (univocal) nor totally different (equivocal), then it must be similar but not identical, which is exactly what is meant by analogical predication.

Why, then, do many evangelicals continue to criticize Aquinas when they hold the same basic position?

A second example will illustrate the irony of evangelical criticism of Aquinas. The Resurrection of Theism is one of the finest apologetic books ever produced by an evangelical who in most respects is confessedly a committed Thomist. Yet in it Stuart Hackett takes Aquinas to task for having a tabula rasa empirical epistemology that does not account for the a priori element in knowers that would enable them to recognize truth when they see it. The insistence on an a priori element is well taken and Hackett is essentially fight. Knowers must have some a priori inclination to truth with which they are born or else they could never come to know truth. If people were born completely blank slates, they would never be able to know any more than a completely blank slate can.

Unfortunately, Hackett wrongly assumes that Aquinas never allows for this a priori element in the knowing process. As a matter of fact, Aquinas speaks of an “innate cognition” of truth. Sometimes he calls this a priori element a “natural inclination” that is “divinely instilled in us by God.” Elsewhere he refers to our minds as being “naturally endowed” with principles “not known by investigation” but “bestowed on us by nature” In fact, “there is nothing in the intellect that has not first been in the senses, except intellect itself.” And there is within the intellect “preformed germs of which we have natural knowledge.” In Aquinas’s own words there is a “power of the soul” or “a form of nature,” a “natural appetite” or inclination toward the truth that is not derived from sense experience but is the indispensable prerequisite of meaning and truth. Hackett is entirely fight in defending this a priori element in the knowing process. But he is completely wrong in supposing Aquinas does not hold that there is an a priori, innate power or natural inclination to truth in us.

Cornelius Van Til, in a very frank summary of his own method in apologetics, castigates the “traditional method”: “This method compromises God himself by maintaining that his existence is only ‘possible’ albeit ‘highly probable,’ rather than ontologically and ‘rationally’ necessary.” Further, “it compromises the counsel of God by not understanding it as the only all-inclusive, ultimate ‘cause’ of whatever comes to pass.” In addition, “it compromises the revelation of God by. . .compromising its authority . On the traditional position the Word of God’s self-attesting characteristic, and therewith its authority, is secondary to the authority of reason and experience.”

We claim, therefore, that Christianity alone is reasonable for men to hold. It is wholly irrational to hold any other position than that of Christianity. Christianity alone does not slay reason on the altar of “chanced.”. . .The only “proof” of the Christian is that unless its truth is presupposed there is no possibility of “proving” anything at all.

Van Til also insists that we present the message and evidence for the Christian position as clearly as possible, “knowing that”, the non-Christian will be able to understand in an intellectual sense the issues involved. In so doing, we shall, to a large extent, be telling him what he ‘already knows’ but seeks to suppress. This ‘reminding’ process provides a fertile ground for the Holy Spirit.”

Finally, Van Til contends that “finite beings, by means of logic as such, [cannot] say what reality must be or cannot be.” It is wrong that “man must be autonomous, ‘logic’ must be legislative as to the field of ‘possibility’ and possibility must be above God.” What is so strange about this whole apologetic is how Thomistic it really is. Aquinas would heartily agree with virtually everything Van Til says.

Aquinas would agree: (1) that speaking in the realm of being (metaphysics), logic is dependent on God and not God on logic; (2) that the existence of God is ontologically necessary; (3) that without God nothing could be either known or proven to be true; (4) that the basis for Christian truth is neither reason nor experience but the authority of God as expressed in Scripture; and (5) that there is a revelation of God in nature that depraved natural humankind is willfully repressing. Of course, it would be naive to assume Van Til is a Thomist in disguise. But he is far closer to Aquinas than he is willing to admit, probably because his understanding of Aquinas is more remote than he realizes. The basic difference between Van Til and Aquinas is that while they both agree ontologically that all truth depends on God, Van Til fails to fully appreciate the fact that finite people must ask epistemologically how we know this to be a fact. In short, Van Til confuses the order of being and the order of knowing. (A corollary difference is that Van Til holds a coherence view of truth and Aquinas a correspondence view.) If there is a theistic God, then surely everything Van Til says is true. But we cannot beg the whole question and merely assume or presuppose the theistic God of Christianity. Our presuppositions cannot be arbitrary, or our apologetics is merely an arbitrary way of begging the question. If, on the other hand, we argue, as Van Til implies that we should, that Christian theism is a rationally necessary position, then it is difficult to see on what rational grounds we could criticize Aquinas for providing rational support for it. What Aquinas would ask of Van Til’s apologetical approach is this: How do you know the Christian position is true? If Van Til answers, “Because it is the only truly rational view,” then perhaps the medieval saint would reply, “That is exactly what I believe.

Welcome, dear brother, to the club of red-blooded rational theists.”

Space does not permit the debunking of all evangelical myths about Aquinas, but several more significant ironies occur. Many of our colleagues will repeat with Tertullian vigor: “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What have the God of revelation and the God of reason in common? What concord is there between the God of Aquinas’s demonstrations and the God of Abraham’s revelations?” Then, oftentimes, scarcely more than a breath or two later, they will decry the Thomistic separation of faith and reason, when their very question implies an even more radical separation between the two domains.

Aquinas’s answer as to how one identifies the God of revelation and reason is very clear. There is a formal distinction between faith and reason as procedures, but there is no actual bifurcafion of them in the believer. The individual as philosopher can understand certain things about God via his natural revelation ( Psalm 19; Acts 14,17; Romans 1-2). But the individual as believer in God’s supernatural revelation has access to much more truth about God. We make similar distinctions today. A scientist who is a Christian says, “As scientist I know that the moon is a celestial body that revolves around the earth about every 28 days and reflects the rays of the sun. But as a believer I know and accept that the moon was created by God and reflects his glory.” But we would not say that this is a bifurcafion in the scientist’s functions, simply because he has used two different methods that yield different information about the same thing.

The Thomistic distinction between faith and reason is no more radical than this one. In fact, it is the evangelical fideists and quasi-fideists who make the radical separation between the God of revelation and the God of reason. They try to build an unspannable Kantian gulf between philosophy and theology, between God’s revelation in nature and his revelation in Scripture. How can we identify the God of the cosmological argument and the God of the Judeo-Christian revelation?

Aquinas’s answer to this question is deceptively simple: “And this we all understand to be God” Why do we all understand the Infinite Cause of all that exists to be God? Aquinas insists that there cannot be two infinitely perfect beings, both of which are the cause of all the finite things that exist. If there were two infinitely perfect beings, they would have to really differ to be really different. But if they really differed, one would have to possess some perfection that the other lacked. And if the other lacked this perfection, then it would not be infinitely perfect. Hence, it would not be God, since it lacked in perfection. It follows, then, that only one being can be absolutely perfect. But both the God of the cosmological argument and the God of Scripture are held to be infinitely perfect.

Therefore, they must be one and the same God. So rather than maintaining an ultimate separation of the objects of faith and reason, such as quasifideistic evangelicals do, Thomism restores the ultimate unity between the God of the natural and the supernatural revelations.

Another interesting incongruity occurs in evangelical criticism of Thomistic thought. Very often the charge is leveled that Aquinas’s faith in the Christian God is based on reason and evidence rather than on the authoritative revelation of God.

Van Til speaks of this as “the authority of reason and experience.” If all truth comes as a revelation from God, then God’s authority, not human reason, is the ultimate basis for our belief in the Christian God. But here again Aquinas is in full agreement.

First, Aquinas strongly stresses that the truths of the Christian faith are above reason. While they are not contrary to reason, they are nonetheless unreachable by mere human reason and can only be known by way of supernatural revelation. But some Christian truth is above human reason and, therefore, cannot be based on human reasoning or experience.

Second, even the probable and historical type of evidence for Christianity cannot be used as the basis for belief. God alone is the basis for believing in God. The authoritative self-revelation of God is the only basis for Christian response. We may reason about and for God’s revelation, but we must never use reason as a basis for accepting it.

God should be believed for his own sake—for his Word’s sake—and not for the sake of the evidence or reasons about him or his revelation. Faith should be placed in the God of the evidence and not in the evidence for God. This is not an incidental point for Aquinas; he goes to great length to make it clear. And yet the full force of his distinction is almost universally misunderstood in evangelical circles.

In point of fact, a proper understanding and application of this distinction can make a most significant contribution to contemporary apologetics. It can provide a needed mediation between opposing camps in evangelical apologetics.

In the one camp are presuppositionalists, who claim that revelation must be accepted because it is God’s revelation by faith and not because of any alleged rational proofs we may have for it. On the other side are the classical apologists, who insist that we have evidences for our faith that make it unnecessary to simply believe it on authority alone. Aquinas would agree with both groups and reconcile the difference as follows. There is no evidence, either rational or experiential, for believing in God. God’s authoritative selfdisclosures are the only basis for our belief in him. There are good reasons, however, for believing that the theistic God exists and that the Bible is his revelation. We do not believe in God because of (or based on) evidence. Rather, we believe in God because of who he is and because of the sovereign but worthy authority he possesses by virtue of his supreme Godhood.

On the other hand, it would be idolatrous for us to make a leap of faith toward, or an ultimate commitment to, what is less than this sovereign and ultimately worthy God. We must possess good reasons and evidence for believing that it is this God we face before we believe in him for his own sake.

Likewise, we must have reasons and evidence that the Bible is God’s Word, as opposed to the Koran or the Book of Mormon, before we believe in the Bible as God’s self-disclosed authority to us. Aquinas would argue that God must be believed in simply because he is God, and his revelations must be accepted simply because they come from his authority. That is the only adequate basis for Christian belief. On the other hand, he would agree that we must have good reasons for believing that there is a God and that the Bible is the Word of God, otherwise belief is without justification.

AQUINAS AND EVANGELICAL THOUGHT

There are numerous ways Aquinas can contribute to evangelical thought. We will only mention some of these contributions in summary form. The rest of this book will provide more detail.

First, Aquinas’s view of the nature and interpretation of Scripture is helpful in the current debate on inerrancy and hermeneutics. While he strongly holds to the divine origin and inerrant nature of Scripture, nonetheless he has great appreciation of its human characteristics and profound understanding of the relation between its divine and human elements. In addition, Aquinas was a forerunner of the literal hermeneutic and a first-rate exegete of Scripture Second, Aquinas can help us build a solid theistic basis for doing historical apologetics. It makes no sense to speak of miracles or interventions of God (e.g. , the resurrection) that prove that Christ was the Son of God, unless we have first established that there is a God who makes it possible to count this event as a miracle. Theistic apologetics is the logical prerequisite of historical apologetics.

Aquinas can help us do this foundational theistic work. Third, Aquinas can provide a philosophical answer to the growing influence of the finite god of process theology. There is no better philosophical system capable of answering the threat raised by process theology and defending the traditional theistic and biblical view of God as an eternal, unchanging, and absolutely perfect Being. Aquinas can give immeasurable help in responding to this growing movement of process thought that follows Alfred North Whitehead. Fourth, Thomistic analogy seems to be the only adequate answer to the problem of religious.

Without analogy there appears to be no way to avoid the sheer equivocation of skepticism (with its noncognitive myths, parables, models, and bliks) or the idolatrous dogmaticism of a univocal one-to-one correspondence between our finite ideas and the infinite mind of God. The middle road of analogy is one that was trod seven hundred years before us, and it still appears to be the best one. We can learn more about it from the scholastic sage.

Fifth, the value of Aquinas in overcoming the separation of the God of reason and of revelation has already been noted above. So too, we have already spoken of Aquinas’s reconciliation of the role of reason and evidence with the authoritative revelations of God.

Sixth, Aquinas makes a major contribution in the area of epistemology. His answer to the age-old question of which elements in the knowing process are innate and which are acquired is both insightful and enduring. Without sacrificing its contact with the real world through the senses, he shows how it is possible to know eternal truths by human reason.

Seventh, Aquinas’s answer to the relation of faith and reason is a suprising synthesis of the best elements of rationalism and existentialism. It preserves the sanctity of faith without sacrificing the necessity of reason. It stresses the need for faith without diminishing the importance of reason.

Finally, Aquinas addresses reconciliation of human freedom and divine sovereignty, the nature of divine and human law, Parmenidean monism, and the problem of evil. On these issues, Aquinas adds significantly to a deeper understanding and better defense of the evangelical faith.

OVERCOMING EVANGELICAL ANTIPATHY

Before concluding this chapter, I wish to offer a proposal for overcoming some of the obstacles to a greater evangelical appreciation of Aquinas. First and foremost is the need for a first-hand reading of Aquinas. Few Thomistic critics are Thomistic scholars. One critic of Aquinas actually wrote out his criticisms of Aquinas and then asked his students to find citations from Aquinas that would support his conclusions. Most criticism of Aquinas is based on either stereotyped textbook scholasticism or second-hand evangelical pseudoscholarship. If these critics interpreted the Bible the way they approach Aquinas—through secondhand critical distortions—we would justly cry “Foul!” In order to appreciate Aquinas, we must read him firsthand for ourselves. It is not necessary to be a Latin scholar to do so. His basic writings are translated into English.

Second, it is well to remember that many of our great theistic apologists of the last two centuries—including William Paley, Joseph Butler, F. R Tennant, Robert Flint, B. B. Warfield, Charles Hodge, and C. S. Lewis—are to a large degree indebted to Aquinas. Let us not forget the friendly theistic hand of the saintly doctor that has fed us.

Third, as even Aquinas would readily admit, we need not accept all that he said on physics in order to learn from his metaphysics. Nor need we accept all he said about the church in order to learn from what he taught about God. We need not be Catholics in order to learn from his theology. Indeed, Anglican Thomists like Eric Mascall, Jewish Thomists like Mortimer J. Adler, Reformed Thomists like John Gerstner, and Baptist Thomists like Stuart Hackett are proof positive that this is not necessary.

Finally, a frank ecumenical confession of our prejudice would be commendable. In our Reformation zeal we have thrown out the Thomistic baby with the Romanistic bath water. My plea is this: the baby is alive and well. Let us take it to our evangelical bosom, bathe it in a biblically based theology, and nourish it to its full strength. As a mature evangelical, Aquinas is a more articulate defender of the faith than anyone in our midst.

CHAPTER 2

THE LIFE OF AQUINAS

The traditional biographies of Aquinas are greatly embellished. Stories about his unusual birth, temptation, and even levitation were part of thirteenth-century legend. Beneath the mass of mythological material it is sometimes difficult to determine what is true. James Weisheipl frankly confesses that “most of the legends of his early childhood narrated by William of Tocco and Bernard of Gui have been considered nothing more than ordinary family anecdotes.” Factual material, however, can be derived from his writings, teaching career, official records of the groups with which he was associated, his biography (by Bernard of Gui), and the Bull of Canonization.

EARLY YEARS (1224?-1238)

There is no extant birth record of Aquinas. The date must be inferred from the alleged age he was when he entered the Dominican Order or began to teach at the university. Others use Aquinas’s age at death (either forty-eight or forty-nine ) Estimates of his birth date range from A.D. 1221 to 1227. Many place Aquinas’s birth at 1224 or 1225.

Chenu says that “Saint Thomas was born near Aquino, in southern Italy, in the fortified castle of Roccasecca, either at the end of 1224 or at the beginning of 1225. Aquinas’s father came from Aquino, Italy, a town north of Monte Cassino half-way between Rome and Naples. He was called “Count Landulf” of Aquino, but was probably more of a knight than a noble,s The title of count ended in 1137, a century before his time. Landulf and his brother Ronald II were apparently aspiring young adventurers who seized the castle of Roccasecca by force and stole the title of nobility with the aid of Emperor Frederick II. They were probably feudal lords. Aquinas’s father died around 1244. His mother, Theodora, survived her husband by about ten years. Some say she was a countess or sister of the emperor, a noble Norman. But she may be confused with the countess who married Aquinas’s great-great-grandfather (also named Thomas). The story may be a French fabrication designed to get Norman blood in the family.

The estimated number of Aquinas’s brothers and sisters ranges between six and fourteen, but many of these alleged siblings are probably other relatives. Foster claims there were twelve children. Scandone concludes there were seven sons— Aimo, James, Adenulf, Philip, Landulf, Reginald, and Thomas—and five daughters—Marotta (Martha), Mary, Theodora, Adelasia, and an unnamed daughter who died in infancy. Pelster, however, believes the number of sons was four, holding that James, Adenulf, and Philip were sons of a second cousin of Landulf, Thomas, count of Acerra. He also subtracts Adelasia, who he believes is a niece, not a sister, Aquinas did have a brother Aimo, who defected to Emperor Frederick II and was exiled. Another brother, Ronald, sided with the pope. This was considered an act of treason by Frederick, and led to Ronald’s execution. The story that Aquinas was told that the soul of his brother Landulf was in purgatory is probably legendary. His sister Marotta (Martha) was an abbess. Some scholars believe Theodora, Mary, and Addasia were not actual siblings of Aquinas. There is another story (perhaps legendary) about an unnamed sister who was killed by lightning.

If Aquinas was eighteen when he entered the Dominicans or Order of Preachers (O.P.), then his date of birth would have been around 1224 or 1225.

Some claim that he was a child prodigy and was inducted early. If so, then the Dominicans apparently had to break the rules to get him in sooner. Likewise, some claim that the age requirement for Masters was thirty-five, but here again Aquinas may have been sneaked in early.

Foster believes that “Thomas tried to excuse himself on the grounds of insufficient age and learning; he was now in fact, about thirty years old.” Assuming Aquinas was eighteen years old when he joined the Dominicans, then he was born around A.D. 1224 (or 1225). At any rate the year of his birth was undoubtedly between 1221 and 1225.

Others use the alleged age at which Aquinas died to determine the date of his birth. Since we do know that he died in 1274, if his age at death could be fixed, this would be determinative of the date of his birth. There is, however, disagreement at this point too. The earliest source (William of Tocco) states that Aquinas “was in the forty-ninth year of his Life” when he died. This would mean that he was forty-eight, not yet having reached his fortyninth birthday. This would place his birth in 1225- 26. Bernard of Gui, on the other hand, writing after he had read Tocco, claims Aquinas died “in the completion of his forty-ninth year,” that is, when he was still forty-nine. This would place his birth in 1224-25, a widely accepted date.

Aquinas was born in the castle his father had seized at Roccasecca, which according to Walz, is still standing and easily discernible by its gothic architecture. He was probably not born in a little house in the lower wall, as some claim. This is probably a later legendary attempt to reflect the humble birth of Christ. Actually, this is an unlikely place for an aspiring count to have his son born. At age five Aquinas was inducted into the abbey at Monte Cassino and instructed by the Benedictines there. Bartholomew of Capua later testified to this under oath. Aquinas makes a possible allusion to this in Questiones de quodlibet when asked if it is right to induct a five-year-old into a religious order.

Aquinas’s father wanted him to be an abbot as soon as possible. He was received into oblature by his uncle Landulf Simboldo. It was later discovered that a gift was given at this time to the Benedictines, apparently a customary way of gaining entrance into the order. According to the Rules of St. Benedict, parents of the oblate could give a gift to the monastery. Rule 59 reads: “If. . .they should wish to give an alms to the monastery for their own gain, let them make such a gift as suiteth them, and, if they will, reserve the fruits thereof for themselves”. Such a gift from Aquinas’s parents is recorded and dated May 3, 1231.

Little is known about life at the abbey, or whether this was a positive or negative influence on the young Aquinas. While there he was probably tutored in science, arts, letters, and morals. The traditional education in the Quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music) and Trivium (logic, grammar, rhetoric) occurred later.

Earlier forms of these subjects, however, may have been taught to Aquinas. According to Walz, reading and writing were taught, along with moral and religious principles. “Reading was practiced in the liturgical books, and so in the Sacred Scriptures themselves.” The education of Aquinas was cut short when the monastery was stormed by his relatives. Their efforts were supported by Frederick II in one of his many excommunications by the pope. Some say Aquinas was twelve at the time, but he was probably fourteen or fifteen, since he was considered a “young genius.”

UNIVERSITY STUDIES AT NAPLES (1239-1244)

The university at Naples, Italy, was established in 1224 by Frederick II as the first state university. It was operated in competition with the pope’s universities in Paris and Bologna. The clergy were thrown out the same year Aquinas entered (1239). He matriculated in spite of the fact that the pope threatened excommunication to any who attended Frederick’s universities. In response, Emperor Frederick II threatened imprisonment to any who went to papal universities.

The pope had also condemned the “reading” of Aristotle, although there is some confusion over whether this referred merely to official public “reading” (i.e. , teaching) or to any private reading. “Reading” in the thirteenth-century university, however, was understood in the technical sense of “teaching.” A teacher, for example, “read” his text. Frederick II, on the contrary, commanded the study of Aristotle. Since Arabian philosophers were experts in Aristotelian philosophy, he brought them in to teach it. Hence, the university was an Avicennian and Averroistic hotbed.

Aquinas had three Aristotelian teachers at the university: Master Martin, Peter of Ireland, and Erasmus (not to be confused with the Erasmus of Luther’s day). It was here at the university that the first signs of his genius emerged. Foster claims that “even as he made such swift progress through grammar, logic and natural science, God had begun to inspire him with the idea of wholly renouncing the world by entering the Order of the Preaching Friars.” His grasp of the material was such that he coached other students in their studies. Aquinas joined the Order of Preachers around 1243 or 1244— spite of the violent opposition of his parents. The reasons given by historians as to why Aquinas joined the Dominicans vary. Grabmann maintains that he liked the color of the habit—a doubtful hypothesis on the face of it for a young genius.

Others claim Aquinas was attracted by the “new spirit of the age.” This is more plausible in view of his subsequent life, especially if “the spirit of the age” includes the intellectual challenge of the times. Mandonnet sums up the reason for the founding of the Order of Preachers, which probably appealed to Aquinas: [It] was very dosely bound up with the general needs that were making themselves felt in the Christian world at the start of the XIIIth century. Having brought religious life to a new stage of development, the Church of Rome decided to make use of it in order to solve some of the urgent problems with which she was confronted. . .[It needed] a Church militia that was both welllettered and actually in contact with the social life of the times. It is not certain how old Aquinas was at this point. The Constitution of Dominicans demanded eighteen as a minimum age for enlistees. If Aquinas was only eighteen, then his birth would have been around 1224 (or 1225).

INCARCERATION BY HIS FAMILY (C. 1244)

After this Aquinas was incarcerated by his family for a period of one to three years. Foster believes it was for two years. The exact reason for the incarceration is not dear, but it seems to be tied to political struggles in which his family was often involved on the side of the emperor against the pope. Here again Foster seems to embellish the event, declaring that Aquinas’s brothers found Thomas with four friars of the Order, resting from the fatigues of the journey by the wayside spring; and immediately—behaving like enemies rather than brothers—seized him and carried him off by force. But they first tried to make him take off his religious habit, ordering him to do so at first, and then, since he would not obey, attempting to tear it from him violently; but he put up such a resistance that, for fear of wounding him, they had to let him continue to wear it. Fanciful stories, stemming from the accounts of Tocco and Gui, of Aquinas’s family-forced temptation by a beautiful young, seductress are interesting but probably legendary. Walz is no doubt correct in agreeing with Mandonnet, “who sees in the account of Tocco and Gui of the girdle of chastity not a material reality but rather the expression of an inner meaning.” The temptress is described as a “lovely but shameless girl, a very viper in human form [who] was admitted to the room where Thomas was sitting alone, to corrupt his innocence with wanton words and touches.” In response, “springing toward the fire that burned in his room, Thomas seized a burning log from it and drove out the temptress, the bearer of lust’s fire” —a beautiful but fanciful description at best. Aquinas, like other monks, did take a vow of chastity, a vow arising no doubt out of deep religious motivation. Some believe, however, that he had a basic fear of women.

Just why his family held him captive is not clear.

There is no reason to believe his family was vicious. It was probably simply a further stage in the political struggles in which his family was involved. Apparently, in one of their many “ins and outs” with the pope, this was an “out.” At any rate, they apparently wanted to rescue Aquinas from the Order of Preachers, just as they had seized him earlier from the Benedictines. His eventual release came when his uncle Ronald was caught plotting against Frederick II. This was apparently an attempt to regain the pope’s favor.

In short, the Aquinas family seemed to move with the political winds, as they blew back and forth between the pope and the emperor. Thomas was apparently a pawn in their political games on at least two occasions.

FURTHER STUDIES AT PARIS AND COLOGNE (1245-1248)

The Christian university of the thirteenth century has been called “the oven in which the intellectual bread of the Latin world was baked.” A letter of February 4, 1254, from the University of Paris to the church is a rich source of information about the university:

It was God’s own right hand that planted in Paris this venerable Studium, a fountain of wisdom, divided into four faculties: theology, law, medicine, and philosophy (the last divided into three parts: rational, natural, and moral), which like the four rivers of paradise directed the four quarters of the world, water and enrich the whole earth, so that inestimable advantage both spiritual and temporal is brought to Christendom. Beginning sometime around 1245 Aquinas began studying under Albert the Great in the Convent of St. James in the University of Paris. It is said that Albert incited him to study and to silence.

Aquinas was “a quiet boy with an unusually mature bearing; saying little, but already thinking much; rather silent and serious and, seemingly, much given to prayer.” It is probably from this meditative silence that he obtained the nickname “dumb ox.” Albert’s prophetic retort to the title was: “We call this lad a ‘dumb ox,’ but I tell you that the whole world is going to hear his roar.” Aquinas went to Cologne with Albert and helped start a school for the Dominicans (1248-1252). Here he held the position of bachelor lecturer, a minor young teacher. It was here also, according to the Bull of Canonization, that he was ordained to the priesthood.

Frederick II died on December 13, 1250, and the pope took his empire. The Aquinas family was understandably working hard for the pope. About this time it is alleged that Aquinas was offered Monte Casino Abbey. But this is unlikely, since it was Benedictine and he was a Dominican.

RETURN TO PARIS TO TEACH AT THE UNIVERSITY (1252-1259)

From this point details about Aquinas’s life are more clear, since they are directly connected to his abundantly documented teaching and writing career. Around 1252 Aquinas returned to the University of Paris. When Aquinas entered, the secular-religious fight was in full swing. As scholars have noted, “the University, at this time, was the scene of a bitter struggle, due precisely to the rivalries between the seculars and religious.” The seculars (priests belonging to no religious order) were jealous of the mendicants (priests belonging to religious orders). The seculars may have been envious of the success of the religious orders. Or, more likely, they may have felt that the mendicants were instruments of the pope. In a letter of Alexander IV, written on June 17, 1256, we read:

The aforesaid masters and students have had no care, as we well know, to preserve that concord which the thorns of discord have assailed. They have opposed in the most unworthy manner those who desired to attend the lectures, disputations, and sermons of the friars, and in particular those who wished to be present at the inaugural lecture of our beloved son Fr. Thomas d’Aquino. A fight broke out over the chair of John of St. Giles, who left the seculars for the Dominican Order. The Dominicans then claimed his chair. The seculars insisted that the defection of the teacher was from his chair, not with it. The mendicants proceeded to drive out seculars, and the police were called in to still the riot. Pope Alexander IV restored the seculars’ academic privileges around 1255. But the resulting tension was so great that by the next year King Louis had to provide a military guard to protect the Dominicans. Chenu notes that Aquinas was “at the heart of the controversy, which almost turned into an open battle.” Aquinas himself was one source of the tension.

University law said teachers had to be thirty years of age. Aquinas was well under age, so he was disliked. The Dominicans, on the other hand, wanted their most articulate spokesman at the university, and they were apparently willing to bend the rules to make this possible.

Between 1252 and 1256 Aquinas lectured on the Bible and the Sentences of Peter Lombard, a widely used textbook of theological propositions. In 1256 he received his licentia to teach. Subsequently, the pope appointed him to a chair at the university.

His principium (inaugural lecture), taken from Baruch 4:1, was boycotted, but in August 1257, Pope Alexander IV forced the university to accept both Aquinas and a young Franciscan teacher named Boniventure. By 1259 another papal decree was necessary to restore order at the university.

RETURN TO ITALY (1259-1268)

For the next decade Aquinas taught at several papal curiae in Italy. From 1259 to 1261 he served at the School of Anagni under Pope Alexander IV. Later he taught at the papal curia of Orvieto under Pope Urban IV (1261-1264) and the School of Viterbo under Pope Clement IV (1267-68). It is here that Aquinas met William Moerbeke, who was making fresh translations of Aristotle from the Greek on which Aquinas was later to base his famous commentaries.

Christian writers prior to this point had depended on an Aristotle mediated to them through the skewed Platonic eyes of Arabian commentators. The influence of medieval Platonic thought was lessening.

FINAL RETURN TO PARIS TO TEACH (1268-1272)

The old religious-secular controversy broke out again and Aquinas was called back to Paris. The fight was so hot that the usually calm Aquinas wrote an uncharacteristically heated booklet entitled Contra pestiferam (Against the Plague- Bearers ). Some of Aquinas’s students even stood up in his class and read St. Amour’s pamphlet against him.

The other controversy at the time was that of the Averroists (unorthodox Aristotelians). Averroes (1126-1198), the great Muslim philosopher, was called “the commentator” in Aquinas’s writings.

Averroes denied that man had either a passive or active intellect, claiming both were universal.

This, of course, was contrary to the traditional Christian belief that each individual had a distinct mind, rather than being part of some pantheistic universal Mind.

Averroes was highly rationalistic, claiming nothing is to be believed but what is self-evident or reducible to it. In addition, he held that creation and matter were eternal, contradicting the Christian teaching that creation had a beginning.

The Latin Averroists of the time, including Siger of Brabant and Boetius of Dacia, even went so far as to separate faith and philosophy. They espoused a “double truth” view, holding simultaneously to contradictory truthsmone from reason and the other from revelation. They also claimed that creation is eternal, the soul is mortal, there is one universal Intellect for all people, and there are no miracles. It is this heretical tide of Plotinian thought that history credits Aquinas with stemming.

Despite the intense controversy in which Aquinas engaged the unorthodox Averroists, at his death they wrote to the Preachers a most warm letter in which they begged to have his last writings as well as the honor of preserving his remains at Paris, calling him “so good a cleric, so kind a father, so outstanding a doctor.”

RETURN TO ITALY AND DEATH (1272-1274)

It is not certain why Aquinas returned to Naples.

It is possible that the Dominicans were bribed to get him out of France. The brother of the king of France did give gold at this time to the Dominicans. On the other hand, Aquinas may have simply been called back to resume duties at a papal school.

Near the end of his life Aquinas stopped his scholarly pursuits. After December 6, 1273, he wrote no more, leaving even his great Summa theologiae unfinished. According to Bartholomew, who was closer to the incident than others, Aquinas expressed the reason for not writing to Reginald as follows: “I cannot; all that I have written seems like straw.” It is assumed by some that Aquinas had a mystical experience, in view of which everything else paled into insignificance.

Weisheipl, although not ruling out a mystical experience, points out that Aquinas apparently had a “physical breakdown resulting in a mental disturbance, anxiety, and a change in emotional values wherein the Summa and the Aristotelian commentaries no longer seemed important.” We do know that Aquinas engaged in a physically exhausting daily schedule, which may have contributed to his breakdown? Weisheipl notes that Aquinas adhered to a “strict regimen.” He arose early in the morning and attended two services at the chapel. After this, he immediately began his teaching. After descending from the [professorial] chair, he set himself to write or dictate to his many secretaries until the time for dinner. After dinner he went to his cell to pray until siesta time, after which he resumed his writing and dictating. After working late at night, he spent considerable time praying in the chapel of St. Nicholas before the brethren arose for Matins [prayers]; when the bell for Matins sounded, he quickly returned to his cell and appeared to have risen with the rest. After Matins he seems to have gone to bed. Aquinas died on March 4, 1274, at Fossanova on the way to the Council of Lyons. Speculation ranges widely on why he was attending the council. Some say to be condemned; others say to be commended.

Some of Aristotle’s philosophy, which Aquinas utilized in expressing the Christian faith, was condemned in 1277 by the bishop of Paris. But Aquinas was canonized in 1326, and shortly after the Protestant Reformation he was made a Doctor of the Church (1567). In 1879 he was proclaimed a Father of the Church in the papal proclamation Aeterni patris . In 1880 he was made the patron of schools in the Catholic Church. Up until the time of Vatican II, his philosophy dominated Catholic schools. Although his influence has been somewhat diminished within Catholic circles, it is presently increasing particularly among evangelical Protestants.

BIOGRAPHIES OF THOMAS AQUINAS