The Angelic Doctor Today

By Robert Royal. I sometimes wonder whether Thomas Aquinas, whose feast is today, hasn't been ill-served by being so universally praised - and therefore less really read. Please don't misunderstand. He's the GOAT ("Greatest of All Time," in sports parlance) among Christian thinkers. And - except for a few names like Plato and Aristotle - among all human thinkers, period. But in the general decline of culture and its many current perversions, to have once been thought great in that way is now to become a prime target. When I was young and trying to find my way through the thickets of thought, I had a Catholic-schoolboy's assumption that Aquinas was, at the very least, someone to be reckoned with. But then you might come across a passage like this in what many might think an authoritative source: He [Aquinas] does not, like the Platonic Socrates, set out to follow wherever the argument may lead. He is not engaged in an inquiry, the result of which it is impossible to know in advance. Before he begins to philosophize, he already knows the truth; it is declared in the Catholic faith. If he can find apparently rational arguments for some parts of the faith, so much the better; if he cannot, he need only fall back on revelation. The finding of arguments for a conclusion given in advance is not philosophy, but special pleading. I cannot, therefore, feel that he deserves to be put on a level with the best philosophers either of Greece or of modern times. That's from Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy. I wonder if anyone reads it anymore, except for those ensorcelled by Russell's narrow, mid-20th-century skepticism cum libertinism. It's clear that Russell didn't read Aquinas; "he already knew the truth" about him and therefore made obvious assumptions. Many still do read Thomas - people not easily fooled, with names like Maritain, Gilson, Wojtyla, Lonergan, McInerny, MacIntyre, Feser, and many more. Because at the same time that he is creating a vast cathedral of thought and spirit, Aquinas establishes the gold standard for distinguishing between human reason (i.e., philosophy), and what by nature exceeds the scope of human reason (i.e., revelation). He sets out as a convinced Christian, to be sure, but uses his brains on matters that reason is fitted to address: It seems that the existence of God cannot be demonstrated. For it is an article of faith that God exists. But what is of faith cannot be demonstrated, because a demonstration produces scientific knowledge; whereas faith is of the unseen (Hebrews 11:1). Therefore it cannot be demonstrated that God exists. [ST Ia, ii, i.] Among the many interesting things about a passage like this in Aquinas is that it's presented as a question (actually an "objection"), one of three similar objections to demonstrating that God - absolute Being - exists. And so a kind of intellectual dialogue begins: people have said this on one side, and on the other side these other things. How can they be reconciled? Thomas thinks that the Absolute can be demonstrated by Reason - the famous Five Ways. To oversimplify and give them names, he posits an Unmoved Mover, First Cause, Necessary Being, Greatest Good, and Final End. These notions he gathered from thinkers like the pagan Aristotle and many Christian sources, to be sure. But they are categories of reason, not faith or revelation, which he recognizes as something quite different. Readers over the centuries have disputed whether these "ways" are watertight proofs or not, but they are at least material that can be rationally examined. And there's no denying that engaging those ideas has resulted in much remarkable Christian thought. Many Catholics and others believe that St. Thomas was the primary intellectual figure in Church teaching from the moment he appeared. He was always regarded as a great thinker, of course. But contrary to widespread impressions, Thomism had not been particularly prominent in Catholic philosophical training prio...