Recovering our memory: Aquinas

Name: Aquinas
When: 1225-74
Where: All over the place! Born near Naples; taught in Paris; part of a travelling teaching college in Italy.

So what?

Thomas Aquinas (his theology is called “Thomism”) is often held up as epitomizing everything that was wrong with pre Reformation Catholicism. This is slightly unfair—while Aquinas was a product of his times, holding to and teaching several doctrines evangelicals today would strongly refute; and while many of those teachings have been developed and cemented as key beliefs of Roman Catholicism today; it’s wise not to throw the theological baby out with the bathwater. Perhaps Aquinas is a reminder not to read any great theologian either over-critically or under-critically. “Aquinas said it” does not clinch a doctrine’s falsehood any more than “Calvin/Luther/Edwards/Stott said it” clinches its truth!

So, two things Aquinas helps us with:

• He had a very high view of reason, holding that human reason had not been affected by the Fall (something Augustine and most of the Reformers disagreed with). BUT Aquinas said that while human reason could work out there is a God (and gave a fairly famous five proofs for doing so), divine revelation was needed to discern what natural reason could no—eg: the Trinity (who God is) and the Incarnation and Resurrection (how God came and what God did).
• In his greatest work, the unfinished Summae Theologiae, Aquinas gives us a great example of how to teach doctrine warmly and carefully. He looks at 512 disputed questions, and in each he first sets out the best objections to his position, both from Scriptural interpretation and from previous theologians and church leaders. Then he offers his own view, with reasons, and then responds to the counter-arguments. In a technological age where one-sided polemic and short soundbites are what we are used to, perhaps we need more than ever to make sure we are really listening to those with whom we disagree, and dealing with their best arguments rather than an unfair mischaracterization of them.

Random fact: When the young Aquinas became a monk, his family kidnapped him, and locked in him a room with a beautiful woman in the hope he would be corrupted. He wasn’t…

Good quote: “The person who knows God best is he who recognizes that whatever he thinks and says falls short of what God really is”.

Prayer of thanks:
Father, Thank you for your Word, showing me what human reason, either mine or someone else’s cannot. Help me always to bring all views and ideas to the plumbline of your Word, and to accept what is true and reject what is not. Help me to be careful in how I read and represent those with whom I disagree. Give me wisdom not to be over-critical nor under-critical of any writings that are not your Word. Amen.