Ghosty and GregoryPalamas;
I’m trying to tackle the Summa, one article a day (it will take me 8 years!!!) I’m currently in Question 16 of the Prima Pars, and I feel I have understood maybe 75% so far. Do you have any recommendations for understanding it more easily? A year or two ago I read “Summa of the Summa” and “Aristotle for Beginners.” I would appreciate any ideas you have. Also, is it typical for someone to have difficulty following some of the arguments, or am I just a little slower than the average bear?
As weird as this may sound, I recommend a lot of prayer before the Eucharist. That is how Aquinas himself got through things that were difficult for him to understand. He would even rest his head next to the Tabernacle while praying and trying to grasp theological truths. I’ve found that this, more than anything, has helped me to grasp not only what Aquinas was arguing, but also what the Fathers were saying as well. It’s much easier to understand words about God when you’ve just come away from an encounter with God. This, incidently, is a significant aspect of Dominican spirituality in general: encounter God in order to preach about God.
And no, you’re not slower than the average bear. Aquinas himself actually wrestled with these questions, and often dictated after mystical experiences when things would “click” together for him. What I found most helpful was to re-read the first few sections over and over until I got a grasp of his style and language; the fact is that his arguments are often extremely subtle, and it takes time to understand just where he’s going with something. I would often think I understood a point of his, only to realize a few sections later that either I had MISunderstood, or he was utterly contradicting himself. Obviously it was the former and not the latter, so I’d go back and try to grasp what he was saying. After a lot of this I got a “feel” for his style, and the arguments started to fit together into an amazingly elegant and intricate web.
Beyond that I think the key issue was touched on by GregoryPalamas: we live in a nominalist age and think in a nominalist way. We tend to think of ideas as either not having a real, absolute reality, or that our definitions of them are merely our own conceptions put on an ultimately unknowable thing. Aquinas, like all the Church Fathers, operated from the assumption that things are
really, really real, and that there is a definate truth to be known about them (even if, as in the case of God, the Truth is infinite and can’t be fully comprehended by the human mind). It helps to think as concretely as possible when reading his work, and to take his examples as literally and simply as possible. For example, when he speaks of “participation in the Divine Nature” in terms of iron being heated by fire, he means it as bluntly as possible: our human nature, by contact with the Divine Nature, shares in the properties of that Nature just as iron shares in the properties of fire (heat, light, ect.).
So to summarize: pray, back track, think concretely, and pray.
BTW, I recommend you start with Aquinas’ own prayer that he penned:
Creator of all things,
true source of light and wisdom,
origin of all being,
graciously let a ray of your light penetrate
the darkness of my understanding.
Take from me the double darkness
in which I have been born,
an obscurity of sin and ignorance.
Give me a keen understanding,
a retentive memory, and
the ability to grasp things
correctly and fundamentally.
Grant me the talent
of being exact in my explanations
and the ability to express myself
with thoroughness and charm.
Point out the beginning,
direct the progress,
and help in the completion.
I ask this through Christ our Lord.
Amen.
After all these years we Eastern Catholics are still trying to get our unruly children back together.