Philosophy: Is Aquinas Overrated?

[cpayne]

I just wanted to let everyone know that at least I’M still cheerful.

(I knew you all were worried.)

As for Aquinas’s writing being “as straw,” that doesn’t really reflect upon the logical structure or rationality or philosophic value of what he wrote. Wasn’t Aquinas comparing his writing to the mystical, unmediated revelation he had had of God? Compared to THAT, yes, his writing was “as straw.” But compared to the writing of other philosophers, not necessarily.

 

[cpayne]

I
I think that Thomas was single hearted in his love of God.

reen12

(Edited by Moderator to maintain thread topic) In the Summa Contra Gentiles, Aquinas wrote a sentence that has become my motto: “I am aware of this as the chief end of my life, that my every thought and word may be of Him.” Lovely, isn’t it? And such a simple guiding light for all the complex arguments that followed.

 

[Ani_Ibi]

I just wanted to let everyone know that at least I’M still cheerful.

Me too. I love being Catholic. I am reading that Chesterton book on Aquinas so should be out of everyone’s hair for a goodly bit of time. Although I can’t promise anything.

 

[Ani_Ibi]

“I am aware of this as the chief end of my life, that my every thought and word may be of Him.” Lovely, isn’t it? And such a simple guiding light for all the complex arguments that followed.

It’s mind-boggling! That philosophy sometimes requires such painstaking, meticulous, and lengthy structure to convey a solitary idea when that idea can emerge like a bubble from a pond without me even asking. Creation just floors me.

 

[cpayne]

Chesterton is great anyway, but that book in particular is good. I always confused the “Argument from Design” (not so good) with Aquinas’s “Argument from Teleology” (really good, I think), until I read Chesterton’s explanation of Aquinas’s Fifth Proof.

 

[tdgesq]

I didn’t link to it because I assumed it wasn’t available online yet. As it happens, it is available to subscribers only. You can link to the current issue here, but to read any of the articles (Reno’s is called “Theology after the Revolution”) you have to be a subscriber to the print edition.

I don’t think I’ll choose to become a subscriber at this time.

I’m not sure what you mean by this last sentence. Do you mean that he had a good influence in spite of his errors? I’m not sure why you conclude from what I said that Reno thinks Rahner’s theology was wholly orthodox. He doesn’t go into it much (because the subject of the article is the effect of these midcentury theologians on post-Vatican-II theology), but his point was that Rahner’s theology was the most deeply flawed of the lot, and that’s why it was unfortunate that he was the only one to provide a theoretical/philosophical structure that could replace Neo-Thomism.

No, I meant that some Rahnerian scholars insist that his philosophy is in harmony with Thomism. It is in response to claims like this where I normally see Thomists fly off the handle. I only thought Reno was applauding this effort, even if he may not have ultimately found it to be sound in the end - leading to an unorthodox theology. Imho though, the conclusions that Rahner reaches in his systematic theology are consistent with the dogma of the Church, regardless of how he went about reaching them.

I really want to read the article. I just don’t want to pay for a subscription!

 

[Vaclav]

I just wanted to let everyone know that at least I’M still cheerful

I should apologise for my earlier comments, which weren’t very charitable.

I have a lot of respect for Saint Augustine and even a Day by Day book of prayers and reflections

Yet, I should be respectful and charitable and my apologies to reen12 for not acting in such a manner.

I respectfully disagree with the premise that Augustine sought power (he could have had more as a politician in Rome, a career path that presented itself while he was a Manichaen).

 

[cpayne]

It does not seem that Augustine even wanted to be a bishop! One of the things in the Confessions he specifically repents of is his earlier over-ambition.

Also: Not to turn the thread into an advertisement for First Things, but it is my favorite journal–the only one I consistently read cover to cover. Recommended!

 

[LilyM]

An *additional *reason to heartily dislike
Augustine - apart from the fact that he abandoned
the woman who bore him a son, and then they
made him a bishop! Now there’s! a paragon
of virtue and thoughtfulness - who I would run a mile in tight shoes to sit at the feet of and “take instruction.”

Reen - you’re wrong about that. He kept the son, Adeodatus, with him for the rest of his life, raised the boy and instructed him in the faith, and father and son were baptised together if I remember rightly.

In view of this, I hardly imagine he callously abandoned the mother in the way you imagine. He may have chosen not to live with her, but appropriate restitution for sin doesn’t require anyone to remain in or with the occasion of it!!!

 

[mlchance]

As a philosopher and theologian, no, the Dumb Ox is not overrated. Where he touches on other sciences, such as biology and cosmology, Thomas Aquinas is most often best regarded as a historical curiosity.

– Mark L. Chance.

 

[cpayne]

As a philosopher and theologian, no, the Dumb Ox is not overrated. Where he touches on other sciences, such as biology and cosmology, Thomas Aquinas is most often best regarded as a historical curiosity.

– Mark L. Chance.

Jean Torrell puts it this way, in his incredibly good two-volume study of Aquinas: Aquinas’s metaphysical principles are good; when he applies those principles to incorrect information (such as the biology he took from Aristotle), he arrives at mistaken conclusions. However, if we scrap the biology and apply the metaphysical principles to the science we know today, the principles still work. An example: Aquinas argues that the intellectual soul is infused as a developing principle when the embryo is organically ready to receive it. Because of his faulty Aristotelian biology, he puts that infusion relatively late in the embryo’s development. However, if he had access to current knowledge of DNA, his basic metaphysical principle would correct the biological “timing” without changing the “principle.”

By the way, I’m not disagreeing with you.

 

[mlchance]

…By the way, I’m not disagreeing with you.

In his own way, Thomas Aquinas is instructive for those people who think that logical = true. As you note Torrell noting, Aquinas’s application of principles is spot on even when his conclusions aren’t.

– Mark L. Chance.

 

[Ani_Ibi]

Chesterton is great anyway, but that book in particular is good.

What a gift for language. All the hairs are standing up on my arms.

 

[Contarini]

Reen - you’re wrong about that. He kept the son, Adeodatus, with him for the rest of his life, raised the boy and instructed him in the faith, and father and son were baptised together if I remember rightly.

In view of this, I hardly imagine he callously abandoned the mother in the way you imagine. He may have chosen not to live with her, but appropriate restitution for sin doesn’t require anyone to remain in or with the occasion of it!!!

He did send her back to Africa (before his conversion) under pressure from his family (if they’d had devil’s advocates back then, this would have been a point to raise against the canonization of St. Monica!), in preparation for his marriage to a young woman of his own social class. Since she wasn’t old enough yet, Augustine couldn’t wait but took another mistress in the meantime. We aren’t told what happened to her, as far as I remember, though the relationship doesn’t seem to have been as close as the previous one.

For what it’s worth, Augustine said that when he sent his “common-law wife” back to Africa he felt as if his heart was being torn out at the roots, or something like htat.

Edwin

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

This is just me, but I find the notion that Eastern Catholics should not look to Aquinas or pray the Rosary to be a kind of parochialism. How would you respond to that?

I don’t know what to make of it.​

OTOH - the Roman Rite has been enriched by having Eastern feasts added to the festal calendar.

OTO - the rosary seems to be treated as a sort of foreign body, which must be cleared out of the East ASAP.

I don’t understand this. If we can take things from Eastern piety, why can’t they do they take things from that of the West ?

Or, are we to think the East is somehow uniquely pious, holy, devout, & Christian, & those those negligible Roman Catholics are no better than a pack of

• legalistic
• earthly-minded
• Father-free
• Council-lacking
• piety-deprived
• saintless
  troglodytes: who are starving for lack of the Christian faith because we do not have iconostases in the Liturgy, do not read the Philokalia, & have the cheek to use the 1983 Code of Canon Law ?

Sometimes, I think so

FWIW, St.Thomas was translated into Greek by Maximos Planudes (died 1310; he also translated Ovid’s Metamorphoses); & the Fathers at Trent praised Nicolas Cabasilas’ work on the Liturgy. That is healthy: but what we seem to have today - that is not.

Granted, they have their own Liturgy - but so did Rome by the time the Syrian Sergius I (687-701) was elected Pope. Theodore of Tarsus was Archbishop of Canterbury from 668 to 690.

heritage.villanova.edu/vu/spirituality/daybyday/tradition/authors.html

---------

Nicolas Cabasilas (1322 - 1387), a native of Thessalonica, was praised by the Council of Trent and by Bossuet for his treatment of deification by means of the sacraments.
---------
IOW - he was never in union with Rome: but that did not stop them speaking well of him.

These days, ISTM that there is a lot of “sucking up” to Churches not of the Latin Rite : “Your liturgy is soooo wonderful, blah blah blah…”. It is wonderful - but that is not a reason for an inferiority complex, & IMNSHO, we do seem, as a Rite, to have one. But whom does that help ? Appreciation for what they have received from God’s goodness - they certainly have nothing from themselves; it is all from the Good God, not from any man - should not translate into contempt for others; & there is an awful lot of that.

“Parochialism” is one possibility - so is xenophobia, in theological dress.

Not a lot of the foregoing has that much to do with St.Thomas

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

I suppose my thought on St. Thomas Aquinas is
that someone would have eventually “done” what
Aquinas did, and Thomas brought great powers of
intellect to his work. Yet even Aquinas, at the very end
of his life, knew that what he had written was as
straw.

“…in comparison with what [he had] been shown” - not unqualifiedly: he was not saying, “What I’ve written is a heap of useless balderdash, so chuck it in the bin”. The anecdote makes the point that no theology, however excellent, can possibly match the experience of the Living God: how could it ? But to relativise the value of theology, whether his or anyone else’s, does not even begin to amount to a rejection of it. It’s useful as a means to explore God - but it is a means, not its End; it’s not the God Whom it explores.​

For to know and love God is a simple thing, in a way.
This is why so many of the saints had childlike hearts.

And I often wonder if Jesus meant those of childlike heart
[no matter how brilliant the mind] when He said both

Let the little children come unto Me, for of such is
My Kingdom.

You must become as these little hearts are, in order
to know My Father.

It wouldn’t surprise me one bit, if it turned out that
Aquinas had a childlike heart, despite his vast
intellectual capabilites. These are not, of necessity,
disjoint sets. In a sense, God rewarded Thomas for
his devoted work by letting him know God in a way
that God may not be apprehended by intellect alone.
For God is most vested in that which is in the heart.

And children are single-hearted, not capable yet of
the duplicity that adults seem to occassionly thrive on.

Blessed are the single of heart, for they shall see God.

I think that Thomas was single hearted in his love of God.

reen12

 

[Michael_Francis]

Please remain on the topic of Thomas Aquinas and nothing and no one else.

Other topics/persons will need to be discussed in their own thread.
MF

 

[Truthstalker]

Can one be a Catholic but not a Thomist - by that I guess I mean one would reject - oh, rats.

Ignorance is not bliss.

I guess some of the non-Latin rites aren’t as enthralled with St.Thomas Aquinas as the Roman Rite is. Is his work eclusive to the Roman rite? If it is truly Catholic then it can’t be.

 

[Ghosty]

Chesterton is great anyway, but that book in particular is good. I always confused the “Argument from Design” (not so good) with Aquinas’s “Argument from Teleology” (really good, I think), until I read Chesterton’s explanation of Aquinas’s Fifth Proof.

This is actually one of my pet peeves. I see Intelligent Design advocates say all the time that Aquinas utilized their argument as a proof of God, and that’s just dead wrong. Aquinas Fifth Proof has NOTHING to do with the intricate design of things, and everything to do with the fact that the entire universe seems to be designed to operate towards and end, i.e. natural laws are laws that lead in certain “directions” (water flows down hill, matter decays, gravity pulls mass together, ect). From this he points out that strictly material things, which are by nature “deterministic”, don’t act of themselves, so if this deterministic element does exist in them, it must have been put there by something that DOES act, like dominos being set up to fall.

The “design” Aquinas is talking about isn’t of individual complex things, but of natural material things in general. He’s basically pointing out that you don’t have non-actors setting up laws themselves, rather they act according to the design given them, and this means there must be at least one “first actor” who gives design to all material things. It may not be the strongest proof (hence it’s the last one he makes), but it’s MUCH stronger than the “argument from complextiy of design” that Intelligent Design advocates push!

Peace and God bless!

 

[Ghosty]

Can one be a Catholic but not a Thomist - by that I guess I mean one would reject - oh, rats.

Ignorance is not bliss.

I guess some of the non-Latin rites aren’t as enthralled with St.Thomas Aquinas as the Roman Rite is. Is his work eclusive to the Roman rite? If it is truly Catholic then it can’t be.

One can certainly be a Catholic and not be a Thomist (both in the sense of the classical “Thomist” school of Banez, famous for opposing the Molinists, but not necessarily for strictly following St. Thomas Aquinas, and in the broader sense of not following Aquinas’ ideas)!

Aquinas simply isn’t altogether relevant to many of the non-Latin traditions, not because he is wrong, but because he’s entrenched in a theological framework that is peculiarily Latin. Most traditions have their own way of asking questions, and of approaching the mysteries of God; some are quite compatible with Aquinas, others aren’t. This is true, in fact, even within the Latin context; Franciscan spirituality, for example, really doesn’t owe much to Aquinas’ approach, and wouldn’t depend much on him.

Ironically the mystical elements of the Latin tradition, especially the Carmelites, owe a lot to Aquinas’ theology. His strong emphasis on Realism, and therefore on REAL participation in Divinity for a very solid basis for the mystical experiences of prayer and the Sacraments. For Aquinas, when we receive Sanctifying Grace we are not merely being uplifted within our own nature, we are actually sharing in God directly; our nature remains human, but is modified by a Divine addition, and Divine powers actually become part of our soul (the theological virtue of Charity, for example, is literally a share in the Divine Love according to Aquinas; we no longer love with the power of human nature, we love with the power of the Divine Nature as humans). This emphasis had a profound impact on the writings of Latin mystics like St. John of the Cross, who was unapologetically Thomistic (in the broad, non-Banezian sense) in his theology.

Peace and God bless!