Happy Feast of St. Thomas Aquinas!

I know it’s been some time since last I published here. Things have been hectic, but I still feel called to use this website as a potential opportunity to spread the Good News of the Catholic faith to ever larger audiences.

And what better way to get back into the swing of things than with a brief meditation on the spiritual significance of St. Thomas Aquinas, by far one of the most influential Catholic theologians of the Medieval Catholic tradition, whose feast day we celebrate today.

St. Thomas Aquinas, like most Medieval theologians, lived at a time when most of the groundwork of traditional Catholic theology had already been set. Those texts that the Church would come to see as constituting the Canon of Scripture had already been written, and there was a little over 1,000 years of theological writings from the Church Fathers and their immediate successors. The great theologians of the Middle Ages, particularly those who worked in an academic setting, saw it as incumbent upon themselves to take all of the Biblical, Patristic and Magisterial sources of Catholic theology and bring them together into a singular system, that is, to write texts (some of which covered only specific areas of Church teaching, others covering the full range of topics that constitute Catholic theology) and state and examine that overarching theological stance that comes into view when one examines the entirety of Scripture, the Church Fathers, and the Magisterium of the Church. During this same period, there was a revival of interest in Ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, something solidified by the rediscovery of many Ancient texts that had been lost due to the political turbulence surrounding the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. Many Medieval theologians thus sought to make use of concepts, categories and methods of argumentation refined by these ancient philosophers in order to create an intellectually robust defense of the Christian faith.

Medieval scholasticism, St. Thomas Aquinas being one of its most widely read representatives, thus had a reputation for taking a very intellectual, academic approach to theology. This is an approach at least implicit to St. Thomas’s treatment of the nature of theology: in the Summa Theologiae I, Q. 1, A. 2, Aquinas asserts that theology is a science, that is, an area of study rooted in the systematic analysis of a specific topic, in this case theology being the science of God and of the truths of the Catholic faith. Aquinas nuances this claim by asserting that theology is akin to a subordinate science. In the Medieval view of education, a “higher science” was an area of study that contained within itself its own first principles of analysis, whereas a “subordinate science” was a science that derived its first principles from another area of study. Mathematics, for instance, is a higher science (it doesn’t derive its first principles from any source outside of itself); music or art, insofar as they rely, in part, on mathematical principles (such as the laws of perspective or the ability to articulate musical timing or rhythm in quantifiable terms), are subordinate sciences, insofar as they derive their first principles from an area of study outside of themselves. Insofar as theology, in part, is based on principles derived from supernatural revelation - truths which, in turn, surpass the capacity of the human mind to discern by its own power alone - it derives its first principles from truths that are not, in an immanent sense, obvious or self-evident. Therefore, theology is akin to a subordinate science. Nonetheless, this does not undermine the fundamentally scientific nature of theology. Natural theology (that part of theology based on moral and spiritual truths knowable through reason) includes the attempt to construct arguments in favor of the existence of God, and as well as the attempt to discern the Perfections of God. Revealed theology (that part of reality based upon those spiritual and moral truths knowable only through faith) centers mainly on the explication and interpretation of those truths contained in Scripture and Tradition and taught by the Church. In either instance, theology retains a specifically scientific nature.

Even though many people appreciate the approach of St. Thomas Aquinas for apologetical reasons (through his in-depth intellectual analysis of the faith, the apologist already has spelled out for him, in advance, a series of robust arguments in defense of the Catholic faith, or Christianity more generally), one critique often levelled against St. Thomas, and the Scholastics more generally, is that their desire to philosophically analyze and explicate every part of the Christian faith creates a one-dimensional approach to theology, making it more a matter of the mind than the heart. The faith becomes more about study and debate than about a lived encounter with our God and Savior.

I believe that such an evaluation of St. Thomas is itself rooted in an overly-simplistic analysis of the Angelic Doctor’s broader theological agenda. It is for this reason that St. Thomas Aquinas is held in such high regard: he, in a manner paralleled by very few theologians, saints or Doctors of the Church, bridges that gap between the mind and the heart. In the Summa Theologiae I-II, Q. 109, A. 1, St. Thomas argues that faith is the assent of the mind to certain moral and spiritual truths that transcend the capacity of the human mind to discern by its own power. For Aquinas, knowledge is the result of the mind comprehending a specific truth, and therefore moving from potency to act. Because the object of faith is a type of spiritual knowledge that goes beyond what the mind, by its own power, can comprehend, the assent of faith is the result of the grace of God illumining or enlightening the mind in a manner that goes beyond the manner in which it is illumined or enlightened by the senses or reason. Most people end here, seeing what Aquinas says as merely an explanation of the epistemic mechanics of faith. Nonetheless, such a view overlooks the reality that faith is not merely an assent to certain truth claims; rather, it is an assent of the mind as a result of the elevation of the human mind, the transformation of the human mind, God taking the human mind beyond its normal limitations.

Thus, St. Thomas, like most Christian theologians, was firmly planted in the notion that the spiritual life is possible only because of a transformation or renewal of human nature, previously corrupted by the effects of sin. And the core of this spiritual transformation is a participation in the Divine Life. Thus, in his seventh lecture on John 6 (part of his larger set of commentaries on the Gospel according to St. John), St. Thomas writes, commenting on the words of John 6:54, “For just as material food is so necessary for bodily life that without it you cannot exist…so spiritual food is necessary for the spiritual life that without it the spiritual life cannot be sustained.” This spiritual food is Jesus Himself, Who, as the God-man, serves as the bridge between humanity and God, the Source of all life. Thus, when Our Lord says in John 6:55, “Whoever eats My Flesh and Drinks My Blood has eternal life,” St. Thomas interprets these words in the following manner: “For this spiritual food is similar to material food in the fact that without it there can be no spiritual life, just as there cannot be bodily life without bodily food. But this food is more than the other, because it produces in the one who receives it an unending life, which material food does not do; for not all who eat material food continue to live.” This is the case because food-based analogy used with reference to the reception of grace or union with Jesus more generally, and with regard to the Sacraments or especially the Blessed Sacrament in particular breaks down in that both bring about life, but in opposite ways: whereas material food is absorbed into the body, and thus assimilates into or is conformed to the human body, spiritual food conforms us to our object. In Aquinas’s words, “…[O]ne eats His Flesh and Drinks His Blood in a spiritual way if he is united to Him through faith and love, so that one is transformed into Him and becomes His member: for this Food is not changed into the one who eats it, but It turns the one who takes it into Itself…”

Both the purpose and the means of fulfilling the spiritual life is for Jesus to dwell in our souls, thereby uniting us and conforming us to Himself. The purpose of the spiritual life is not merely to believe in or trust in God, or have as systematic an understanding of the nature of revealed truth as possible, but rather to let these truths wash over us, to let them permeate every part of who we are, so as to facilitate deeper union with Our Lord, which brings about spiritual transformation and the elevation of human nature beyond not only its current sinful state but beyond the natural order into deeper union with God. Aquinas thus writes, explaining the rational of the Incarnation: “A double capability may be remarked in human nature: one, in respect of the order of natural power, and this is always fulfilled by God, who apportions each things according to its natural capability; the other in respect of the order of Divine Power, which all creatures implicitly obey…But God does not fulfill capabilities, otherwise God could do only what He has done in creatures, and this false, as stated above. But there is no reason why human nature should not have been raised to something greater after sin.” (Summa Theologiae III, Q. 1, A. 3, ad 3) There are two sets of capabilities that created beings have: that directed at those ends that creatures are capable of achieving by their own power, as determined by their nature as created by God, and that directed at those ends that creatures are capable of achieving by a special outpouring of Divine Power. God always moves every creature to act in the first manner; yet, in special cases, God acts in the latter way. This is what happens un God’s Plan of salvation: God, by His Grace, not only purifies human nature of the effects of sin, so that it is restored to the exact parameters that it was created in, those exact parameters that it existed in prior to the Fall, but is elevated to something beyond its normal limits, to attain an end greater than anything found in the created realm, namely deeper union with God. Thus, Aquinas can define the goal of the operation of grace in the following manner: : “...[G]race is nothing else than a participated likeness of the Divine Nature, according to 2 Peter 1:4, ‘He hath given us most great and precious promises; that we may be partakers of the Divine Nature.’” (Summa Theologiae III, Q. 62, A. 1, respondeo)

Through grace, we are united to God, and the culmination of that union established between God and His creatures on earth is the participation in the Life of God in the next, and it is this eternal participation in the Life of God that constitutes eternal life. Yet, in order for this grace to be fruitful, there needs to be a certain receptiveness to this grace. Thus, Aquinas writes in his sixth lecture on John 6, commenting on the words of John 6:47, “‘Whoever believes in Me,’ with a faith made living by love, which not only perfects the intellect but the affections as well (for we do not tend to the things we believe unless we love them), ‘has eternal life.’” We have eternal life only if we place our faith in Jesus; yet, true faith is that faith which is united to love, for true faith includes not only believing in what God has revealed, but striving towards it, which is an expression of love. True faith includes love, and is an authentic, living faith only insofar as it includes or is united to love.

True faith is not only a perfection of the intellect; it is also a perfection of will. It is that which draws us not only into a deeper knowledge or intellectual penetration into the Mysteries of the Faith, but to see their inherent beauty and goodness, and therefore be drawn into deeper union with them. Thus, for St. Thomas Aquinas, like with all the Doctors of the Church, spiritual wisdom is at the core of their teachings and way of life; yet, spiritual wisdom is not only a knowledge of God, but rather true spiritual wisdom encompasses both knowledge as well as love of God. It is for this reason that the first reading for the Feast of St. Thomas Aquinas included the following words, taken from the Book of Wisdom, chapter 7: “Beyond health and comeliness I loved her, and I chose to have her rather than the light, because the splendor of her never yields to sleep.”