St. Thomas Aquinas (part 2)

In this lecture, we're going to go into our second half of our lecture on Thomas Aquinas, and we should stress yet again that really in the Middle Ages, there is no theologian or figure who looms larger over the context of the development of scholastic thinking, medieval theology, etc., than Thomas Aquinas. There's just simply nothing that compares to what historians and theologians have called the Thomistic synthesis, which is this great coming together of faith and reason and a number of lurches forward in the Catholic Church's articulation of some of its core principles than what we find in the writings and the output of Thomas Aquinas. Now, don't overplay that, of course. Don't make Thomas Aquinas so important that everyone else becomes pale by comparison. What we've done so far is notice a number of different threads that are leading up to Thomas Aquinas, a number of different fights about obscurantist views of faith and reason, and then on the other side, the Abelardian view of the way that reason seems at times to trump faith. So Aquinas fits within a context, and he has a number of debates and issues and fights and things that fit within his world and that he is attempting to address. But what we don't want to say is that Thomas Aquinas is just simply one of the others. There are some that come close to matching his greatness, but there are none that surpass it. And what we said in our first lecture on Aquinas is really kind of a context for how you approach him overall. And what I said in that lecture was that when you're looking at Thomas Aquinas, one of the more important keys, one of the more important hermeneutical grids by which you approach what he is trying to say is this concept of faith and reason. And what I said in that lecture was that the way to understand Aquinas is to look at grace perfecting nature. That this reality in Aquinas, that he wants to both affirm what is natural, what is part of the created order, what is part of who we are as God's image, and the natural use of our reason and our minds should not be seen in isolation or in opposition to the revealed realities and doctrines of the faith. And we really only gave a brief synopsis as to what we meant by that, but it really will play a big role in this lecture as well. The key issue for Aquinas from start to finish is that he wants to both affirm that reason and our minds are given to us by God for a reason, and therefore we can use them. But yet on the other hand, he wants to say that there are things that have to be revealed. There are things that come from scripture. And the essence of this idea that grace perfects nature plays a role in a number of different ways. The two main categories that we want to really emphasize here, or the two main principles that Aquinas lays out, is that on the one hand, grace does not overpower nature. This is, you might say, Aquinas's understanding of sin and creation. All of Christians embrace the idea that we are made in God's image, that we are his creatures, that we were created for a purpose. But yet we have sin, and that sin clouds our judgment and it causes us to think low thoughts and to be in rebellion to God. And so therefore, what Aquinas is trying to say here, when he says that grace does not overpower nature, is that he is saying, in essence, that when grace comes upon the person, when the person moves from darkness into light, it is not an obliteration of who they are, but rather a making whole of what they were always intended to be. And he has a number of things that he does with this, and we're going to go through a couple here in this lecture. But what he's saying here, in essence, is the image of God was not lost, it was simply clouded, obscured, overshadowed, and overpowered by sin. And so when grace comes, it is a freeing from the slavery of what sin has done to us. Grace does not change us in the sense that it makes us entirely different people, head to toe, in a holistic sense, you might say. It doesn't bring in new pieces into us that then elbow out who we are as God's image. Rather, and this is the second point, grace actually inflames, frees, and then perfects that which we already were. Or maybe to be a bit more New Testament biblical, that which we were always intended to be. And that's a real important piece, and it's really a wonderful element of Aquinas' thinking. He has managed to balance two of the more complex realities of the Christian life, which is that a human, as the image of God, has the capacity for wonderful, great, amazing things. All Christians embrace this. They don't say that only Christians are good, happy, smart people. There is the image of God even in those who deny God's existence. And so the great things that humanity is able to achieve in all types of arenas is a result of that nature. However, Aquinas will say, nature on its own, as a result of sin, is inadequate. And it might be summed up this way. For Aquinas, nature is good but sinful, and yet grace is powerful but not eradicating of who we are. And so we're going to continue on with that piece of what Aquinas does with his idea of grace perfecting nature. And we're going to look at two areas in particular. We're going to look at Aquinas' understanding of ethics and the good things of this world. And then we're going to pivot and we're going to look at the question of, how do we describe God? And how does Aquinas apply some of these elements as well as others to come up with his conceptualization of the relationship between faith and reason? And we can begin with ethics. Aquinas, again, applies this idea that we have a natural capacity within us that is there because we are the image of God, that is there just by the nature of who we are. And yet, of course, we affirm that there are biblical ethical virtues, you might say, that come into the person once they are justified and adopted by Christ, once they become his, once they have loyalty to the King. Suddenly they are a new creation, Paul tells us. So there is something changing. And Paul, throughout the New Testament and other places, repeatedly stresses the change that is wrought in the person by the Holy Spirit. And we're not here necessarily dealing with the question of justification and sanctification, though, of course, it does play into that. Rather, what Aquinas is doing with his ethics is he's trying to come to grips with how we understand those who are not of the faith and their ethics and their principles of virtue over against the Christian understanding of the good life. You might say it's more of a question of apologetics than it is of soteriology. And what Aquinas says is that there is a division between how we categorize concepts of virtue and ethics. And again, he follows this same pattern almost to a T. He says, on the one hand, there are natural virtues that all people seem to embrace throughout history, time, and space. And he says that in this sense, everyone does have the capacity for some level of ethics, some level of engagement with the world. There is, you might say, a natural DNA in all of us where we have a love of what is just and true, etc. You don't have to be a Christian to abhor violence and want to see an end to all that is evil in the world, etc. But what Aquinas says here is that those instincts, the reality of those virtues, even amongst those who don't name the name of Christ, are natural to humans, natural to us, because we are the image of God. You might say that even though it is obscured, it is nevertheless there. Children may have rebelled against their parents, gone off, and they may say that they no longer belong to this family, etc. But the fact is, to keep the analogy going, they still have the DNA within them as the children of their parents. So a rupture in the relationship between humanity and God, the original sin that has come into all of us, does not deny the fact that we have these instincts as God's creatures towards certain virtues, certain ethical principles that seem to be shared by everybody. And Aquinas goes on, these are attainable to a greater or lesser extent by anyone, just by nature. Now, Aquinas doesn't deal with the question, which later Protestants will deal with, as to whether or not the spirit is at work in all of humanity itself in a non-salvific way. In other words, he doesn't go so much into the instrumentation as to what drives people to embrace these virtues. He just simply says they're part of nature. And the four virtues that he says are part of nature are temperance, fortitude, wisdom, and justice. Now, the first two, of course, are not words we often use in modern English, temperance and fortitude. You might say that temperance is restraint or a certain amount of discipline when it comes to the ordering of our life. I think a good analogy here is when you just scan the myriad of business books about how to have the right principles to be a business leader or this type of thing. A lot of them are not written by Christians or from even a religious or philosophical worldview. They're just sort of common standards, how to live as a boss or a CEO, this type of thing, how to be a leader, and how to embrace a self-sacrificial approach to leadership. That's really what temperance is here for Aquinas. It's the idea that you don't simply become gluttonous and power-mongering, that we have an appreciation in our natural selves for people who are self-sacrificial. Fortitude is more like bravery, you might say, in the modern world. Of course, bravery historically has always meant really people that are standing up against fierce opposition, more specifically when it comes to the potential for the loss of life. But fortitude here, again, is that kind of inner energy, the way people can kind of gird their loins up to really go after something. They can discipline themselves in their eating, in their exercise, in their habits, in their practices, all types of different things. And again, you just have to look over the blogs at the wide variety of different things where people are encouraging this type of lifestyle. And again, they may not have any type of religious or philosophical worldview attached to it. Wisdom is pretty obvious. It's the seeking after truth, knowledge. As I always say, you don't have to be a Christian to be smart. You don't have to be a Christian to have certain wise principles that people can embrace in a generic sense. The last one is probably the most important one, really, when you look at Aquinas's influence over the centuries. Aquinas does say that all humanity, all of the image of God, has within them a desire for justice. Christians are not the only ones who want to see an end to tyranny, see an end to bloodshed, see an end to the sex trafficking industry, these types of things. There are plenty of people from all different worldviews and all different religious perspectives or unreligious perspective or irreligious perspectives, I guess, depending on the person, who want to see an end to injustice in the world. This is a natural reality of who we are. No one, Aquinas says, instinctively, naturally desires injustice in this world. Anyone who has kids can vouch for that, particularly when you have multiple kids. It doesn't take much to realize that kids in particular are very expressive, let's say, at the injustices as to what their sibling has done to them. Well, what's going on here? Well, the natural capacity of all humanity, built within our DNA code, you might say, metaphorically, is a desire for justice. So then, when you pull the lens back, Aquinas has done something pretty extraordinary here. He has carved out a way for Christians, you might say, in the modern world in particular, and this is not the world that Aquinas is necessarily dealing with, but just in terms of applying this, what he's saying here is the common ground we have with all of the people of this world. There's not so much a common ground based off of our worldview, or our perspective on this life, or our understanding of Christ. Rather, we seek these things. We can have common ground with anybody when it comes to these natural realities, these natural virtuous and ethical realities and principles, because we embrace the idea that everyone is in God's image. Again, let me give you an example. The Civil Rights Movement. There were all kinds of folks that were involved with the Civil Rights Movement in the early to middle decades of the 20th century who did not have overtly Christian or religious principles for doing so. Now, obviously, there were a number that did. Martin Luther King Jr. is just the greatest example of this. Of course, he's a pastor, and there are all types of images and pictures of civil rights marches where you see nuns and priests and pastors and all types of different people who are Christian marching for the ending of segregation and for the recovery of civil rights in America. Well, a natural question based off of what Aquinas has said here is, could Christians march with those who are non-Christian in a demonstration to end segregation? Well, to apply Aquinas, it's reasonable to assume that he would say, yeah, absolutely. Just because someone else doesn't share your worldview, and you have a perspective, of course, that is shaping how you approach injustice in this world, doesn't mean that you don't also realize that there is common ground based on the fact that we're all built in God's image, and these instincts, you might say, become part and parcel to who we all are. In some ways, you might say, in the modern world, finding common ground here might actually be an entree to discuss the things of the scriptures. But they don't have to only be that, Aquinas says. There are natural, ethical, virtuous practices that are part of, to use a latter-reformed perspective on this, common grace. They're part of the reality of God's creation and God's image. Well, Aquinas doesn't just stop there. He moves on to the other side, and he says, there are, of course, supernatural, grace-inspired virtues that are things that Christians believe are part and parcel of what it means to have embraced the gospel. And for Aquinas, these virtues are faith, hope, and love. Faith, hope, and love. Aquinas says these are the core virtues that come into the Christian through the operation of the Spirit and through the Christian life. These are the things that when Paul is encouraging his readers to seek the fruit of the Spirit or to end separation within the body of Christ or these types of things, these three virtues, Aquinas says, are part and parcel of what God brings into us when he frees us and gives us eyes to see and ears to hear. Now, we should nuance this just a bit because, unfortunately, in modern English, a lot of these words are overwrought and overbearing, frankly, in the way they're used today. A number of people, if they heard a Christian say that only Christians have faith, hope, and love, would simply riot, metaphorically speaking, at the idea that this was something that only Christians embrace. People today talk a lot about having faith or just simply having love, man, or this type of stuff. There's a lot of talk of hope. Well, what Aquinas is talking about here is not the more generic sense of these words, but rather the Holy Spirit-inspired realities of a love that surpasses all knowledge, all experience, that is simply amazing and complex, self-sacrificial, these types of things. No greater love, Christ said, has a man than that he lays down his life for another person. Well, Aquinas will say, that's not a natural instinct. The natural instinct is to be selfish, to maintain your existence, not to sacrifice your life for someone else. But when the gospel comes upon you, suddenly the love of someone else becomes greater than the love of self. And we can say the same things about faith and hope. Yes, there's a sense in which those words are used today to describe more common natural virtues, but what Aquinas is talking about here is biblical faith and biblical hope. Hope from the book of Hebrews, where it says that the Christian hopes for things that are not seen, and a faith that surpasses all knowledge, a faith that is an ultimate loyalty to Christ, even should that come the loss of our life. Aquinas says these things only come by grace. You don't work on your faith, you don't bring in your own love, you didn't give yourself the hope that you have in Christ. These things are inspired by the faith, these things come by grace. And so in this sense, when we're talking about what is Christian love, what is Christian hope, what is Christian faith, Aquinas will say it will only be natural that these things will be odious at times to the world around us. There is a sense in which there can be no common ground on these realities of the Christian life because these things are not shared by everybody. These are the things that are hoped for, these are the things that come to us by the Spirit. These are not things that we work on ourselves. So again, pull the back. Here is Aquinas' ethics, and you can again see the application of the idea that grace perfects nature is on display here in full. What Aquinas is saying is there are natural ethics, there are natural virtues, there is common ground amongst all of humanity, and Christians can embrace that. Then he says there are realities that come only by the gospel, and those things in particular are the essence of the faith. Well okay, so that's one. Let's transition now and talk about how this concept of a grace-perfecting nature brings some ideas home to roost when Aquinas talks about the subject of faith and reason. Essentially what you're going to find in Aquinas is that he more or less embraces the core elements of what Aristotle had to say about the nature of knowledge. Knowledge, Aquinas will say, borrowing from Aristotle, is essentially something that originates in sensory experiences. And we should recall, of course, Plato had this idea of the forms, this idea that there was an abstract reality that our minds somehow tap into. And Aristotle comes along and says, no, we're not going to do that. We're going to talk about how we experience things and how we reason from our experience to our knowledge. Well, Aquinas here simply takes Aristotle more or less full stop. But here again, he applies the concept of grace-perfecting nature to the problem of epistemology or to the question of how do we know what we know. And one of the main areas that Aquinas deals with is on the subject, again, of what can we know about God by nature? And what do we know about God only because the faith has been given to us? Here again, you see the problem of faith and reason rearing its head. What can I argue from my mind alone, from reason alone? And as we've seen, there have been all kinds of arguments about this throughout the Middle Ages. And beyond that, if I can't know everything about God and the faith simply from reason alone, how do I account for supernatural knowledge or the faith that is given to me, the faith that is revealed in the scriptures? Well, again, Aquinas separates and distinguishes between the things that we can know by nature and the things that we can only know by supernatural revelation. Now, it's important to note here, Aquinas is actually a lot more pessimistic about our natural faculties and our ability to reason through doctrines than most people that have gone before him. Aquinas, for example, rejects the ideas of Anselm that, even from within the context of faith, that you can reason to a principle about who God is. He's not the optimist, you might say. He's not fully Aristotelian here. He's not saying that we can simply use our minds and come up with all kinds of different things. Rather, what Aquinas is doing here, again, is he's saying, what do we know by nature? What can our minds actually know on their own? And then secondly, what has to be revealed? And in the end, Aquinas does the exact same move. He says that in the realm of nature, in the realm of the things that we can know through our minds naturally, there are the things that he calls the preambles of the faith. And these are things like the fact that a God exists, that he is all-powerful, that the world is good, that the world itself exists, that it's not simply a figment of our imagination, etc. He says there are all kinds of things that you can understand with your mind's eye through the use of natural reason. However, he says, it requires faith and the grace of revelation, in particular in the scriptures. But of course, Aquinas will embrace the church's authority as well. But he says there has to be a revelation about who God is in his essence, because we can't simply reason to that. We can't reason to the Trinity. We can't reason the idea there has to be an incarnation. We can't reason to the nature of faith, etc. These things have to be given to us. And these things, he says, are the mysteries of the faith. Now, it's important here. In the modern world, the word mystery, particularly in the Christian context, tends to mean the things we just shrug our shoulders and say, I don't know, it's a mystery. I have no idea. It's a mystery. That's a very rare definition of mystery in the context of the church's history. A mystery in the context of what Aquinas is talking about here, going back to the patristic age, are the things that are revealed. They are the innermost realities of who God is. It's his expressed will. It's the things we can't know by nature. They're mysteries because they're not naturally observable in the world around us. These things, Aquinas says, are known by grace, by faith, by revelation. They cannot be reasoned to. And so in the end, Aquinas says that when it comes to the reality of synthesizing faith and nature, if we apply, he says, this reality that grace perfects nature, he believes he has come up with a way to keep these realities separate, but to yet synthesize them into a greater whole.