Thomas Aquinas

K. Scott Oliphint

• Publisher: P Publishing
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781629951416
• eBook ISBN: 9781629951423
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Biografie in ambito religioso

Oliphint's is the first consistently Reformed critique of Aquinas's influential theological system (Thomism), analyzing his dualistic approach to the natural and revealed knowledge of God and use of Aristotelian metaphysics.

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INTRODUCTION

Anyone familiar with Thomas Aquinas and his influence will be skeptical that a work of this size can do justice to him. That skepticism is warranted. Aquinas composed more than sixty works in his relatively short lifetime. Some of those works were multivolume sets. Given the sheer volume of Thomas’s output, then, we must admit at the outset that the goal of this book will have to be a modest one.¹

There are a vast number of helpful resources from and on Aquinas that one can consult with profit. We need not detail those here; some will be referenced below. Instead, what we hope to do in the pages that follow is to focus our discussion on two specific areas of concern. These concerns, we hope to make clear, will find their home in the context of Reformed theology. That is, we will argue that there are significant aspects of Thomas’s thought that either cannot be incorporated into the theology that is consistent with the emphases of the Reformation, or, if incorporated, must be reworked and reoriented—“reshaped,” as it were—in order to be consistent with a Reformed theological context.

In order to narrow our analysis sufficiently, we will focus our attention primarily on the relationship of Aquinas’s thought to the two principia of Reformed theology. That is, we want to analyze Thomas in light of the two foundations of the Christian faith: the foundation of existence (principium essendi), which is God himself, and the foundation of knowledge (principium cognoscendi), which is God’s revelation.

In analyzing Thomas from the perspective of two central, Reformed truths, we are not promoting an anachronistic reading of him. Thomas, like all of us, was a man of his time. He did not have the advantages that we have, with two thousand years of the church’s thought behind us. Thomas had only twelve hundred years of church history behind him, and thus he was not privy to the great truths that gained ascendancy from the sixteenth century forward. He did, however, have extensive and thorough knowledge of Augustine and many in the early church, as well as of Aristotle, from which the theological notion of principium is derived.² As we will demonstrate below, Thomas was well aware of the importance of a foundational starting point, both for existence and for knowledge.

Our interest, however, is not so much historical as it is theological. Though Thomas had no access to the theology that issued forth from the Reformation, he did have the same body of truth available to him in God’s revelation. What he could not have seen historically, he could have seen biblically and theologically.

The theological analysis that we will engage in is, to be sure, much more clearly seen now. But that does not mean that we ourselves would have seen it in Thomas’s day. So the point of our analysis is not to say that we could have seen what Thomas failed to see. Instead, it is to highlight that, as people of our own time, we should now see what Thomas did not see then, and we should be careful to expunge from our theological data those aspects of Thomas that are not consistent with the theology of Scripture, as that theology has been expressed since the Reformation.

Whatever “Reformed Thomism” might be, or might mean, in our current context, it cannot be a synthesis of biblically foreign Thomistic teachings and a consistent, biblical theology. In our theological analysis, then, we need not be historically sensitive to the neglect or near eclipse of theological accuracy. Our primary concern will be that accuracy, with less direct concern for the historical context.

Aquinas was born in southern Italy in 1224/25. When he was five or six, he was offered by his parents as an oblate to the Benedictine abbey of Monte Cassino. At the abbey, he began his study of Scripture and of the church fathers, especially Augustine and Gregory.³

At the age of fourteen, Thomas went to Naples to begin studies at the recently founded studium generale. It was there that Thomas began to study the newly translated works of Greek and Arabic philosophy.

After becoming a Dominican priest, Thomas went to Paris to study, from 1245 to 1248, under Albert the Great. There he was introduced to the work of Pseudo-Dionysius, as he continued as well to focus his study on the works of Aristotle. During this time, because Thomas was a quiet and reserved student, he earned the nickname “the Dumb Ox” (not “dumb” in intellect, but in his lack of speech). It was Albert who, after hearing one of Thomas’s brilliant defenses, said, “We call this young man a dumb ox, but his bellowing in doctrine will one day resound throughout the world.”⁴

After a four-year stint in Cologne (1248–52), Thomas returned to Paris to earn his master’s degree in sacra doctrina. While there, Thomas worked diligently on the Sentences of Peter Lombard. Lombard’s Sentences were, in one sense, the systematic theology of the day, without which one could not presume to be fit for theological discussion. The Sentences were grouped into four books of the opinions (sententiae) of the church fathers and of many medieval theologians. The four books consisted of (1) the doctrine of God, (2) his works, (3) the incarnation, and (4) the sacraments and last things. Thomas’s comments on the Sentences included around 2,000 quotes from Aristotle, 1,500 from Augustine, 500 from Denis the Areopagite, 280 from Gregory the Great, and 240 from John Damascene, as well as others. Clearly the influence of Aristotle on Thomas’s reading of church history was substantial and significant by this point in his life. It was during this time that Thomas wrote De principiis naturae (On the Principles of Nature) and De ente et essentia (On Being and Essence). The latter work would frame his entire metaphysical position for the rest of his life. Both of these works “display a strong Avicennian influence.”⁵

It is noteworthy that Thomas, as a master of theology, composed numerous commentaries on the Bible. In addition to writing commentaries on Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Lamentations, he taught courses on Job, Matthew, John, and the Psalms. These commentaries have suffered some historical neglect, but are becoming increasingly relevant in showing the relationship between Thomas’s understanding of Scripture and his more speculative theology. As we will see below, his understanding of Scripture was, in significant ways, overshadowed by his speculative thinking.

In order to understand Thomas’s writing, and his entire way of thinking, it is important to recognize that, aside from writing commentaries, one of the requirements for a master of theology was to sponsor and engage in “disputed questions.” After morning lessons, the master and a bachelor would join the other students in the afternoon in order to “dispute” on a given topic. Topics chosen would be discussed for three hours. The discussions would include objections, replies to the objections, and then final determinations on the question. This procedure required not simply a certain knowledge of a particular topic, but also a knowledge of the objections to the topic, replies to those objections, and the final conclusions given, all things considered. We can see why, then, Thomas’s Summa theologica conforms to this basic approach.

During this period, Thomas wrote the only commentary in the thirteenth century on Boethius’s “On the Trinity,” as well as a commentary on Boethius’s De hebdomadibus,⁶ which began Thomas’s reflections on his all-important principle of participation. During this time as well, probably in 1257, Thomas (along with Bonaventure) received his doctorate of theology.

Between 1261 and 1265, Thomas wrote one of his most important works, the Summa contra gentiles. Torrell’s assessment of this work is worth quoting:

The work proposes to study all that human reason can discover about God:

I. What is proper to God: His existence and His perfections.

II. The procession of creatures from God; that is to say, the act of creation.

III. The ordering of creatures to God as their end: providence and divine governance.

IV. The truths inaccessible to reason and known only by faith: God as Trinity, the Incarnation of the Word and redemption, sacraments and the last things.

The order of the first three books clearly echoes the structure Aquinas had already found in the Sentences of Lombard, and it prefigures the circular structure that he sets out in the Summa theologiae: all things come from God and all things return to God under His guidance. It should also be said that this structure also follows Aquinas’s own logic.⁷

It was during this time as well that Thomas developed his doctrine of the Eucharist and composed a commentary on the Gospels, the Catena aurea. In the Catena, Thomas shows remarkable familiarity with the patristic writers of the church. He is particularly fond of quoting Gregory the Great and John Chrysostom, but is most indebted to Augustine (roughly ten thousand quotations in his corpus). Thomas was also the first in the Western church to use the complete corpus of the first ecumenical councils.

By 1265, Thomas moved to Rome to found a studium and began in earnest to write his Summa theologica.⁸ That work occupied him for the rest of his life, with the Supplementum being added by his students, who based their work on Thomas’s commentary on the Sentences. Torrell, who gives a helpful précis of its contents, adds this:

As to its sources, the Thomistic synthesis owes tribute to multiple philosophies from stoicism (through Cicero and St. Ambrose) to Neoplatonism (through Augustine and Pseudo-Dionysius), but Aristotle is the dominant authority along with his Arabian (Avicenna and Averroës) and Jewish (Avicebron and Maimonides) commentators. From a theological point of view, the predominant influence is that of the Bible and the Fathers of the Church.⁹

Though Thomas’s Summa is not his only important writing, it does give a useful summary of his views, some of which, however, would change as he grew older.

While in Rome, Thomas also wrote De potentia, a series of ten questions that deal with the power of God, but also with the relationship between God’s simplicity and his triunity. During this time, Thomas also wrote a commentary on the Divine Names, by Pseudo-Dionysius. In this commentary, the Platonic and Neoplatonic elements of Thomas’s thought are most obvious. For Thomas, however, unlike Pseudo-Dionysius, God is not beyond being, but is alone the ipsum esse subsistens (subsistent being itself ). Thomas also wrote a number of commentaries on Aristotle’s works, which commentaries were written in order to prepare for the Summa.

When Aquinas went back to Paris in 1268, he was engaged in controversy with many who saw Aristotle as a threat to the Christian faith. Specifically, Aristotle’s view of the eternity of the world was considered to be contrary to Christian teaching. Thomas took up this matter in De aeternitate mundi, which was written in 1271. In this work, he endeavors to defend Aristotle, but also argues that it cannot be demonstrated that the world either is eternal or had a beginning. That matter can be settled only by faith, he says, not by reason.

By 1272, Thomas was sent back to Naples to found another studium. There, says Torrell, “due to repeated mystical experiences and massive physical and nervous fatigue, Aquinas c...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Series Introduction
• Foreword by Michael A. G. Haykin
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Introduction
• 2 Foundation of Knowledge
• 3 Foundation of Existence
• 4. Conclusion
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index of Scripture
• Index of Subjects and Names