Thomist Theology / Thomas Aquinus
In the church of St. Catarina at Pisa, at the third altar on the left, is a picture by Francesco Traini, the most gifted pupil of Orcagna, representing St. Thomas of Aquino. The figure of the saint is of colossal size. This picture faithfully represents the position of the greatest teacher of the mediaeval Church, her eatest philosopher, who was also her greatest eologian, absorbing into himself all the sources of wisdom, human and Divine. In his teaching he brought Scholasticism to its highest development, harmonizing the Peripatetic philosophy with the doctrine of the Church. Aquinas was born in 1225 or 1227 (the date is uncertain), most probably at the castle of Rocca Secca, 5 km. from Aquino. His father was Count of Aquino, a rich fief in the kingdom of Naples. His mother, Theodora, was of the line of the old Norman kings of Sicily. His family was therefore connected with the Hohenstaufen, and so the great doctor of the Church was related to Frederick II, its scourge. The mendicant orders were then at the zenith of their fame. Thomas was drawn towards them, and in the year 1243 joined the Dominicans without the knowledge of his family.
Thomas of Aquinus died on 07 March 1274. During the last three decades of his life Aquinas was busily engaged in teaching. The attraction of his lectures was so great that it was difficult to find a hall large enough to contain the audience. At times he employed three or four secretaries at once, and dictated to them about different subjects without confusion. For nearly a century the Dominicans and Cistercians disputed the honor of possessing his remains. The quarrel was not yet settled when, 49 years after his death, he was canonized. In 1567 he was made by Pius V the fifth 'Doctor of the Church,' and thus placed on an equality with St. Jerome, St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, and St. Gregory the Great.
His works till 17 folio volumes in the edition of Pius v. (Rome, 1570). Their exact chronological order is not yet completely decided, and the genuineness of some is disputed. He began his literary work at Cologne with the de Ente et Essentia (No. 30 of the Opuscula in the Roman edition). The most important are the Summa contra Gentiles, the materials for which he began to gather at Paris, during his first period of teaching there, at the request of Raymond de Pennaforte; the Summa Theologica, begun in 1265 in Italy and left incomplete at his death; the Quastiones disputatum (1261-1264); the Quodlibeta, of which the first five were composed at Paris, the last six at Rome; and the Aristotelian commentaries, begun at the instance of Urban IV. Besides these, there are commentaries on books of Sacred Scripture, of which the best known is the Catena Aurea, properly called Expositio continua, and the commentary on the Sentences, which was the first extensive work composed by him.
The age of St. Thomas was also that of Frederick II of Hohenstaufen and of St. Louis, and these names are representative of the conflicting tendencies of the period. The 12th century had witnessed a revival of learning, which was less important than that of the Renaissance, only in point of literary form. It had two sources — Arabian and Byzantine. The result was seen at first in the rapid growth of speculative heresy, popular pantheism (David of Dinant), and the more serious, and therefore more dangerous, tendency of thought which afterwards crystallized into Averroism. Hence the prohibition of 1210, and the letter of Gregory IX to the Parisian masters of theology, 1228. The question at issue was whether the Church would be able to assimilate the new learning, or whether its doctrines would be gradually corroded away by it. That the former was the case is due to the work of Albertus as completed by St. Thomas. That work was therefore twofold — to harmonize the new scientific teaching with the doctrine of the Church, and to refute heresy.
The distinctive characteristics of the system of philosophy which Thomism displaced in the Western Church are well known. The philosophical element incorporated in this school was essentially Platonic. Absence of any formal distinction between the domain of philosophy and that of theology, i.e. between the order of rational and of revealed truth; primacy of the notion of the good over that of the true, and in consequence primacy of the will over the intellect both in God and man; the necessity of an immediate illuminative action of God in accomplishing certain intellectual acts; actuality, in a low degree, but still some positive actuality in primitive matter independent of any substantial form; the presence in matter of rationes seminales ; even spiritual substances are composed of matter and form; plurality of forms in natural things; individuality of the soul independently of its union with the body, especially in man ; the identity of the soul with its faculties.
For this Thomism substitutes Aristotelianism: not blindly, for 'locus ab auctoritate est infirmissimus' (Sum. Theol. I. i. 8, ad. 2), but critically, 'si audierit omnes quasi adversariorum dubitantium' (Metaph. iii., Lect. 1), though respectfully. The novelty of the teaching of St. Thomas is universally dwelt upon — novelty not only in method, but in matter. The main novelties were: strict distinction between Natural and Revealed Theology ; unity of the substantial principle, as opposed to the plurality of forms; passive evolution of matter, as opposed to the theory of rationes seminales; the doctrine of subsistent forms, as opposed to the notion of spiritual substances being composed of matter and of form; the real distinction of the substance of the soul and its faculties, as opposed to the Augustinian doctrine of their identity; the primacy of the intellect over the will. The new system was, of course, not received without a struggle, which continued long after the death of St. Thomas. The articles of 1277 were directed not merely against Averroism, but against Peripateticism in general.
The great school of the Scotists takes its name from John Duns Scotus, a Franciscan friar, and it has been the pride of this order to maintain his distinctive doctrines both in philosophy and in theology against the rival school of the Thomists, to which the Dominican order gave its allegiance. In the Nominalistic controversy the Thomists were for the most part Conceptualists; the Franciscans adhered to rigid Realism. In the Free-will question the Franciscans strenuously resisted the Thomist doctrine of 'predetermining decrees.'
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
