Thomas Aquinas: The Basics

Franklin T. Harkins

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367349912
• eBook ISBN: 9781000317701
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Thomas Aquinas: The Basics is an engaging introduction to the theology of arguably the greatest theologian and philosopher of the Middle Ages. The sophistication and complexity of his thought can be daunting for those approaching his work for the first time. Through this lively and accessible book, Harkins provides an entry point to understanding Aquinas's mature theological thought. As well as giving an overview of Aquinas's life and written works, this book examines Aquinas's understanding of:

• the nature and purpose of theology;

• God's nature, existence, and operations;

• the Trinity;

• creation;

• evil;

• the human person, human happiness, and the virtues;

• Christ and salvation; and

• the sacraments.

Including a useful glossary of key terms, this text is ideal for students and interested non-specialists seeking an understanding of the theology of Aquinas.

1

INTRODUCTION

AQUINAS THE THEOLOGIAN

WHY STUDY AQUINAS?

In March 2017, John Marenbon delivered the annual Aquinas Lecture at Maynooth University. It was provocatively titled, “Why We Shouldn’t Study Aquinas” (Marenbon 2017). Here Marenbon argued that, in an effort to correct the “exaggerated preeminence” that Aquinas has been given by scholars of medieval philosophy and theology particularly since the rise of Neothomism in the late-nineteenth century (see, e.g., McGinn 2014: 163–209; Kerr 2009: 109–113), all specialized study of Aquinas should be suspended and redirected to other medieval thinkers for several decades (Marenbon 2017: 2, 11). For Marenbon, my writing this book on Aquinas’s theology and your reading it serve only to reinforce the “Aquinocentrism,” as he calls it, that has dominated inquiry into medieval thought for the past 150 years. Both you and I would have been better served if I had produced a book on another significant, though less well-known, medieval thinker, perhaps Boethius, Avicenna, Gersonides, or John Buridan. My writing and your reading such a book would have served the noble task of undoing “Aquinocentrism” rather than advancing it.

Although Marenbon is hardly alone among contemporary scholars in seeking to encourage studies that reflect and exhibit the rich diversity of medieval thought, his lecture dramatically raises the question of why we should study Thomas Aquinas. What value, if any, is there in reading Aquinas, a Catholic theologian who lived some 800 years ago and whose patterns of thinking differ so markedly from our own? Aquinas is generally recognized as the greatest theologian and philosopher of the Middle Ages, and one of the most significant Christian thinkers of all time. But he is not easily accessible to beginning students or general readers of his works today, due to the apparently foreign modes of his discourse and the complexity of his thought. Yves Congar once told young Dominicans that it would take them 15 years to grasp Aquinas (O’Meara 1997: xvi–xvii). Aquinas’s discursive format can present a stumbling block even to seasoned scholars. Jan-Heiner Tück, for instance, describes the technical, scholastic Latin in which Aquinas wrote as “formal, impersonal, and without aesthetic appeal” (Tück 2018: 11). Similarly, John Marenbon maintains that the form of the Summa theologiae (ST) is characterized by a “strangeness and apparent perversity” (Marenbon 2016: 74). For Aquinas and his medieval readers, however, the format of the ST—with its parts divided into questions, which are, in turn, divided into articles—was neither strange nor perverse. In fact, its form, a model of rational clarity, was perfectly natural and commonplace in the medieval universities, having grown out of the standard pedagogical practice of disputation (Torrell 1996: 59–69; Noone 2003: 61–63; Bauerschmidt 2005: 22–24). Indeed, Jean-Pierre Torrell has described the ST as “the most beautiful specimen” we have in the scholastic genre of the disputed question (Torrell 1996: 63).

Torrell and other scholars who have studied Aquinas carefully for many years have come to understand not only the scholastic modes of discourse in which Aquinas wrote (e.g., disputed questions, summae, commentaries on Aristotle), but also—and more significantly—the deep theological and philosophical insights that these modes convey and even clarify. In my view, these profound insights constitute the primary reason why we should continue to study Aquinas. When we study a great theologian like Aquinas, we come to see how he saw God, creation, evil, the human person and the purpose of human life, Christ and His saving work, and the sacraments. The twentieth-century Jesuit Bernard Lonergan spent decades probing the massive Thomistic corpus, striving, as he described it, “to reach up to the mind of Aquinas” (quoted in Kenny 2002: v). Additionally, precisely at those points where Aquinas’s mind seems most exciting or strange to us, we are (hopefully) led to recognize, examine, and even question our own presuppositions and approaches. In treating Aquinas on evil and suffering, Eleonore Stump puts it this way:

One of the benefits of [studying] the history of philosophy, especially the history of philosophy from periods such as the Middle Ages whose cultures are so different from our own, is that it helps us to see the otherwise unnoticed and unexamined assumptions we bring to philosophical issues such as the problem of evil.

(Stump 2003: 478)

But neither understanding what Aquinas thought nor becoming more aware of our own assumptions is the ultimate end of studying Aquinas, it seems to me. Rather, both of these intermediate goals aim finally at helping us to see reality anew, with fresh eyes and with greater clarity. Thomas O’Meara notes that Aquinas’s writings, through which we gain access to the theologian and his vision, are “guides and witnesses to life,” in which, if read rightly, we find “an inspiring access to the real” (O’Meara 1997: xvi). Similarly, Lawrence Dewan observes that we study Aquinas not merely to find out what the medieval Dominican master thought, but to help us in our attempt to see reality (Dewan 2008: 8). This perspective on the objective of reading past thinkers is actually that of Aquinas himself, who, in commenting on Aristotle’s On Heaven and Earth, explains: “The purpose of the study of philosophy is not that we might know what people have thought, but rather [that we might know] what is the truth about reality” (In De caelo I lect. 22 n. 8; Dewan 2008: 480n2). This basic metaphysical realism—which affirms that there is a knowable reality that exists independently of our conceptual frameworks, perceptions, and linguistic practices—is a foundational element of Aquinas’s thought, as we will see throughout this book. It may also be precisely where Aquinas proves most challenging to our customary postmodern assumptions and thought-patterns, and thus ultimately most helpful in leading us to a different vantage point from which to see God, ourselves, and all that is.

Anyone who has tried to introduce others to the thought of Thomas Aquinas—whether through classroom teaching, public lectures, casual conversation, or writing a book—knows well its difficulties and dangers. As O’Meara says, “The wrong introduction renders a theological genius dry and tedious and turns intellectual excitement into boredom” (O’Meara 1997: xvi). Furthermore, the vast majority of recently published introductory volumes on Aquinas either focus on his philosophical thought rather than on his theology, or, if they do primarily treat Aquinas’s theology, they are lengthy, conceptually and formally sophisticated, and intended for specialists. This volume, then, aims to provide a basic introduction to Aquinas’s mature theological thought specifically for students and general readers who are relative newcomers to the medieval master. I hope it proves interesting and helpful to more advanced readers of Aquinas as well. My general method is twofold. First, I provide close readings and concise analyses of select topics and particular questions in the ST, though I also regularly invoke his other works in an effort to highlight Aquinas’s theological assumptions and working method. As more experienced readers of Aquinas will doubtless notice, many aspects of his thought and teaching—sometimes significant ones—have, of necessity, been omitted. Second, in order to demonstrate the continuing relevance of Aquinas for theology today, I engage some of the more influential modern and postmodern readings and critiques of his thought. My hope, through this dual approach, is to introduce Aquinas the theologian in an accessible and lively way so as to deepen understanding and appreciation of his teaching on its own terms.

LIFE AND WORKS

Published treatments of Aquinas’s life, works, and Dominican and scholastic contexts—whether concise overviews or more extended studies—abound. Some particularly useful ones in English, on which the following sketch depends, include Weisheipl (1974), Torrell (1996, 2005: 1–16), O’Meara (1997), Tugwell and Boyle (1988), McInerny (1998: x–xxi), Chenu (2002), Wawrykow (2005b: vii–ix), Kerr (2009: 1–30), Mulchahey (1998), and Noone (2003).

Thomas Aquinas was born c. 1225 at the family castle of Roccasecca, located about midway between Rome and Naples in what was then the Southern Italian county of Aquino. His parents, Landolfo and Theodora, had nine children—four boys and five girls—and Thomas was the youngest son. Around 1230, when Thomas was about five years old, his parents entrusted him as an oblate to the ancient Benedictine monastery of Monte Cassino, where he received his elementary education and exposure to monastic life. In 1239, around age 14, Thomas was sent to Naples for more advanced study in the liberal arts and philosophy. Here the young Aquinas seems to have been first exposed to Aristotle’s natural philosophy and metaphysics by his teacher, Peter of Ireland. In Naples too Aquinas became acquainted with the Dominican Order, the Order of Preachers, a relatively new mendicant (“begging”) order founded by St. Dominic in 1215 in southern France with the express purpose of saving souls through learned preaching.

Aquinas took the Dominican habit in the spring of 1244, against his family’s wishes, and the Order sent him to Paris the following year to continue his studies in philosophy and theology under Albert the Great. When, in summer 1248, Albert left Paris to begin teaching at the newly established Dominican studium generale in Cologne, Aquinas followed him. Over the next four years, from 1248 to 1252, Aquinas would be deeply influenced by Master Albert, whom he heard lecture on Peter Lombard’s Sentences, Dionysius’s On the Divine Names, and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Aquinas was, most likely, ordained a priest during his sojourn in Cologne, and seems to have delivered cursory lectures on Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Lamentations toward the end of the Cologne period. These biblical commentaries constitute Aquinas’s first theological works.

On Albert’s recommendation, the Dominican Order appointed Aquinas, beginning in September of 1252, a baccalarius Sententiarum at Paris, in which capacity he lectured on the Lombard’s Sentences, “the standard theological textbook” on which every aspiring master of theology in the high and late Middle Ages was required to comment (Rosemann 2004: 3). His lectures, delivered over the next four years, have come down to us as the Scriptum on the Sentences, a massive commentary whose modern Latin edition runs to 6,000 pages! In February 1256, around age 31, still several years shy of the minimum age requirement of 35, Aquinas was awarded the Licentia docendi, the license to teach as a Master of Theology, at the University of Paris. From 1256 until 1259 (commonly designated the “first Paris regency”), he occupied one of the two Dominican chairs in theology at Paris, where his primary tasks were to lecture on Sacred Scripture, to hold private and public disputations on various questions arising from the biblical text and its patristic commentary, and to preach to his colleagues and students on special occasions.

Aquinas departed Paris in 1259, having been called back to Italy to serve the educational needs of his Order. For the next decade he taught his religious confreres in Dominican priories in Naples (1259–1261), Orvieto (1261–1265), and Rome (1265–1268), where he was commissioned by the Roman province, “for the remissions of his sins,” to found a studium at Santa Sabina. By the time he left Paris, Aquinas had already produced a number of significant works, including the Scriptum on the Sentences, the Disputed Questions On Truth, On Being and Essence, On the Principles of Nature, and the Exposition on Boethius’s On the Trinity. His impressive productivity continued during the Italian period, when he completed the Summa contra Gentiles and penned the Literal Exposition on Job, The Golden Chain (a Gospels commentary drawing on patristic quotations), the Commentary on Aristotle’s On the Soul, the first part of the Compendium of Theology, and various disputed questions. In 1268, Aquinas returned to the University of Paris for a second teaching stint as regent master of theology, which lasted until 1272. During this “second Paris regency,” Aquinas continued writing his magnum opus, the Summa theologiae, which he had begun in 1266 while in Rome. In this same period, he was busy lecturing on the Gospels of Matthew and John, composing various disputed questions (On Evil, On the Virtues, and On the Union of the Incarnate Word), and commenting on such works of Aristotle as On Sense, Physics, Meteorology, Politics, On Interpretation, Posterior Analytics, Ethics, and Metaphysics.

In spring of 1272, Aquinas again left Paris and returned to Italy, this time having been tasked by the Roman province of his Order to organize a studium generale of theology in the location of his choice. He chose Naples, where he appears to have lectured on the Pauline epistles for a second time (the first having been at Rome from 1265–1268) and on the Psalms. Aquinas also continued working on the Compendium of Theology and the Third Part of the Summa theologiae, both of which remained unfinished at his death.

After composing a total of approximately 90 theological, philosophical, exegetical, polemical, liturgical, and occasional works—consisting of more than eight million words—Aquinas’s prolific writing career came to an abrupt end in late 1273 (see Gilson 1994: 381–428 for a catalogue of his works). While saying Mass on the morning of Wednesday, December 6—the Feast of St. Nicholas—Aquinas was suddenly struck by something that profoundly affected him. After this extraordinary experience, he never wrote or dictated another word. When his socius, Reginald of Piperno, encouraged him to continue working on the Summa, Aquinas famously replied, “I cannot do any more. Everything I have written seems to me as straw in comparison with what I have seen” (quoted in Torrell 1996: 289). Although we cannot know with certainty what exactly Aquinas experienced on December 6, the historical and biographical evidence points to some sort of mystical vision or special divine revelation. Of the event, Simon Tugwell and Leonard Boyle write: “It looks as if Thomas had at last simply been overwhelmed by the Mass, to which he had so long been devoted and in which he had been so easily and deeply absorbed” (Tugwell and Boyle 1988: 266). Aquinas was never the same after this experience. In February 1274, while traveling northward from Naples to attend the Second Council of Lyons, he fell ill and was taken to the Cistercian Abbey of Fossanova. There, in the early morning hours of Wednesday, March 7, 1274, Thomas Aquinas died. He was not yet fifty years old. Aquinas was canonized in 1323, less than fifty years after his death, and declared a Doctor of the Church in 1567.

SUMMA THEOLOGIAE

Aquinas’s greatest and most well-known work is his mature ‘summary of theology,’ the Summa theologiae (ST). Indeed, Aquinas’s ST is unquestionably one of the most profound and influential works of Christian theology ever written (Davies 2014: xiii; Bauerschmidt 2005: 11; Torrell 2005: ix). Over 1,000 commentaries have been written on the ST: the only works of Christian literature that have been commented upon more frequently, to my knowledge, are Scripture and the Sentences of Peter Lombard (McGinn 2014: 2; Rosemann 2004: 3). And even now, long after the heyday of Neothomism, countless books and articles on Aquinas’s most significant work are published every year (McGinn 2014: 3). The secondary literature is vast and daunting. When I mentioned to a fellow medievalist at a conference some time ago that I was planning to write an introduction to the theology of Thomas Aquinas, he responded, “You are brave, and you have a lot of reading to do!” I have indeed read much, but the studies that remain unread are even more numerous.

Students today are more likely to encounter Aquinas and his ST in philosophy courses than in theological studies, and—for a variety of reasons which need not detain us here—the Dominican master is usually thought of as a philosopher rather than a theologian. In general, Aquinas’s Five Ways (ST I.2.3) have been of far greater interest to modern readers than, for instance, his treatment of the mode of the hypostatic union (ST III.2). So the question is often asked whether Aquinas was (primarily) a philosopher or a theologian,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half Title Page
• Series
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction: Aquinas the theologian
• 2 Sacred doctrine
• 3 God’s nature, existence, and operations
• 4 The Trinity
• 5 Creation
• 6 Evil
• 7 The human and the virtues
• 8 Christ and His saving work
• 9 The sacraments
• Glossary of key terms
• Bibliography
• Index