Aquinas and Newton

[PoliSciProf]

If it makes sense to see Thomas Aquinas as a theological Newton (i.e., someone who brought intellectual coherence and perhaps even certainty, methodology and truth itself) to natural philosophy and theology, then who is the theological Einstein (a thinker who discovered deeper understandings of Newtown’s thought? Or, does Acquinas represent all that can be known about God, Man and World? A related question: does theology trump philosophy?

 

[Alopen]

PoliSciProf

You should check out one of my previous threads below - the current state of Catholic theology is in a bit of disarray.

With the replacement of the Aristotlean view of the Cosmos, traditional Thomism’s natural theology became untenable and was essentially dismissed by Enlightenment philosophers and their Modernist heirs.

Although his theology was never made the “official” theology of the Church, it was probably the most comprehensive and systematic we’ve ever had.

Since then we’ve all been kind of scraping around in the dark.

Some modern Thomists, or so i’ve been told, have taken up a merger with Analytic philosophy as a means to bolster Thomism.

Others envision a different view of theology, with a quasi-revolt occurring before Vatican II which lead to the displacement of NeoThomistic theology in favor of…well…nothing really.

We have a “Transcendental Thomism” courtesy of Rahner who tries to merge Thomism with Husserl’s Phenomenology.

We have Liberation Theology - thankfully almost dead - that seeks to merge theology with Socialist/Marxist Leanings and agendas.

And we have the “Resourcement” theologians, a collection of diverse thinkers (including the current and previous pope) who emphasize a return to the “sources” - the writings of the Church Fathers, in order to reconstruct a genuine conception of our faith. There is a heavy Neo-Platonic/Augustinian character in their writings.

From my limited vantage point, the only two viable options seems to be Analytical Thomism and the Resourcement Paradigm.

And we’re back to the age old debate again, represented in the “lines of thought” that go back all the way to Aristotle and Plato.

 

[1holycatholic]

With the replacement of the Aristotlean view of the Cosmos, traditional Thomism’s natural theology became untenable and was essentially dismissed by Enlightenment philosophers and their Modernist heirs.

Empiricists might dismiss St. Thomas Aquinas’ natural theology, but there is nothing untenable with Aquinas’ natural theology, and there are no valid refutations of it. Empiricism, however, is untenable.

 

[cpayne]

If it makes sense to see Thomas Aquinas as a theological Newton

Perhaps this is the problem. Newton’s macroscopic views can be revised or restated in view of some observed microscopic anomalies, or perhaps even rejected entirely. No one, however, is ever going to observe that humans are actually not rational animals, for instance, or that God is actually not a perfect being, or that childrearing is actually not the function of a father and mother, etc. In other words, perhaps the equation of Aquinas with Newton is not really a good place to begin?

Aquinas is definitely empiricist in orientation. However, so much of today’s scientific “empiricism” seems to me to be simply a sort of free-floating skepticism. Whenever someone says, “Well, science has proven that–” I always want to ask, “Really? Where? Which experiments?” Just because science has given up on finding natural teleology, for instance, doesn’t prove that natural teleology does not exist. It just means it can’t be observed if one begins with a methodological naturalism.