Contemporary Theological Heritage of Thomas Aquinas

In his 1998 Encyclical Fides et Ratio, John Paul II spoke about the ‘enduring originality’ of Thomas Aquinas. It is a somewhat paradoxical expression but strangely apt for one whose writings continue to be studied not just for historical reasons but for tire creative and constructive uses to which they can still be put.

Aquinas’s originality — here is another paradox — comes from the depth of his immersion in the earlier traditions of theology and philosophy. His subject was the Word of God, ever ancient and ever new. The first task of the medieval master was to read the writings of others, in the first place the Scriptures, but also the classical works available at the time. In the middle of the 13th century thls came to include the works of Aristotle, of other philosophers of the ancient and early medieval worlds, and of Islamic and Jewish thinkers, as these were being translated into Latin.

Aquinas’s reception of the work of others was always objective, respectful and benign. He was fearless in his openness to the truth no matter from what source or from what direction it came to him. He happily passed on a traditional saying, that ‘any truth, no matter by whom it is expressed, is from the Holy Spirit'.

The form in which he usually presents his thought — the famous structure of an article of the Summa theologiae  — can sometimes make it difficult for students to approach his writing. It is easy to see, however, that this is a scholastic version of the dialogue, a form which ancient and early medieval philosophers had used as a way of considering different aspects of a question, building towards an agreed understanding. In each article a number of people sit down together. Some voices are heard initially, raising objections to the position Aquinas plans to defend. After an appeal to some authoritative source — Scripture, a Father of the Church, Aristotle perhaps — he gives his own determination of the question. Finally he returns to the initial objections, some of which are shown to be resolved, others qualified, others clearly off target.

For people engaging in theological work today Aquinas remains a mentor second to none, at least in the methodology he follows. This is not just because of the breadth of sources to which he is open but to the way in which he received and engaged with them. That he was like that had as much to do with his holiness as with his intelligence. Combining those gifts, he was always humble and yet always courageous in his service of the truth. 'Strong in itself, he wrote, 'the truth withstands all assaults’, and this conviction made him, as has been said of Saint Dominic, ‘stupefyingly free’.

Contemporary study of Aquinas has freed him from the straitjacket of rationalism into which earlier generations of interpreters — no doubt for reasons that seemed good at the time — forced his
thought. There was a time when it was his arguments for the existence of God and his account of
natural law that were believed to be the most important and enduring parts of his work.. But removing these sections of his work from the contexts in which they are found, as if they were self-standing exercises in a philosophy of religion, did not do justice to the rich theological and intellectual setting to which they belonged.

Recent decades have therefore seen a fresh appreciation of the breadth of his work, not only by
studying texts in their original contexts in systematic works, disputed questions and treatises on
various subjects, but by looking also at his scriptural commentaries, sermons and poetry. The
Summa Theologiae has continued to attract much attention, but scholars have deepened our understanding of the theological setting of that work as well as of its pastoral and pedagogical concerns. Attention to his pedagogical interest — thinking always of his ‘audience’, whether students he was teaching or people to whom he was preaching — has helped give us a much fuller portrait of the
thinker, teacher, preacher and human being that he was.

Another important development in recent times has been a fresh appreciation of what he inherited from earlier thinkers and how their teachings found their way to him. Rather than regarding him simply as a disciple of Aristotle, the ‘pre-history’ of Aquinas is now seen to be much more complex, with Platonist, Neoplatonist, Stoic, Greek patristic and other strands of thought not only finding their way to him but having importance for his theological vision. Rather than simply a passive receiver whose thought was determined by earlier ‘influences’, he was always a creative theologian, weaving into a new pattern and expressing in new ways the central doctrines of the Christian faith.

Aquinas’s account of the unity of body and soul in the human person seems to have particular importance in a time of deepening anthropological confusion. It is a good example of his ‘enduring originality’. His understanding of the essential unity of body and soul in the human individual is a distinctive and original contribution to human thought. Much moral and spiritual wisdom follows from the conviction that the human is essentially a physical being, that the soul needs the body just as the body needs the soul, and that there is no human knowing, even the highest forms of spiritual understanding, that do not depend on what has been experienced in the body. It has been claimed that he is the first Christian philosopher to take the corporeal character of human existence calmly, for Thomas the human body is even essential to what he calls the well-being of our eternal happiness’: no one had given such honour to the human body before.

This is just one aspect of his overall defence of the goodness and integrity of the created order, material as well as spiritual. His ‘materialism’ shocked some of his contemporaries but in time its truth came to be appreciated. For G.K. Chesterton Thomas, together with Francis of Assisi, strengthened the Christian understanding of 'the marriage of God with matter’, a teaching that is fundamental for the central Christian doctrines of creation, incarnation, resurrection and sacramental life. The affirmation of the goodness of creation by Francis and Thomas strengthened a characteristically Christian understanding of the "Word becoming flesh and of God seeing all that he had made and finding it very good. The world
itself is already gift of God in virtue of the mystery of being that is found at the heart of the smallest thing there is. On this view all one needs is a leaf or a bee to initiate a meditation on existence that will lead ultimately to God. In Aquinas’s thought we find a mysticism of being in which the divine presence is recognised primarily in God’s creative and continuing emanation  — Thomas does not fear the term —that is the being of things. It is difficult to imagine a deeper theological underpinning for the ‘care of creation’ that has been so important for Pope Francis in recent years. 

What has been referred to as Aquinas’s ‘agnosticism’ is an aspect of his teaching that might well find resonance with contemporary concerns. The life of the believer, stimulated and sustained by Christ in his Church, is a life Jived in mystery, since in this life, Aquinas says, we can only be united with God as with an unknown. Faith is profoundly paradoxical therefore, a firm assent without evidence sufficient to satisfy the intellect, whose hold on truth reaches beyond what is contained in the words it must use, reaching the reality signified by those words which yet remains unknown. ‘It is in the dark night of ignorance’, he writes, ‘that we come closest to God in this life’.

We are viatores or travellers who live in a tension towards that which is and is not yet ours. We live then by hope, a virtue whose characteristic act is prayer, which Aquinas describes as ‘the interpreter of desire’. Charity means friendship with God. No longer simply creatures or servants, we are established in friendship with God by Jesus Christ so that we become God’s partners and co-workers in caring for the world and guiding its progress. The human being is, in one of Aquinas’s finest phrases, providentiae particeps, a participant in providence, not just a passive object of God s providence but an active collaborator with God in the construction of the world’s history.