Perhaps Thomas Aquinas' greatest historical contribution to theology was his attempt to reconcile reason and theological dogma, to find authenticity and value in reason within the Christian faith.
Aquinas was born into great wealth (and probably the aristocracy), but refused to take on the life of ease which he would have enjoyed, his scholastic aptitude and inquisitive intellect taking precedence having matured through his early years of education at the monastery of Monte Cassino under the tutelage of his uncle, the abbott. His family actually seized and confined him for a year, at the age of nineteen, hoping to dissuade him from his intellectual preoccupations, urging him to taking up a respectable life fitting his social position. He escaped to Paris and the tutelage of Albertus Magnus, who also guided his later departure to Cologne. Magnus greatly shaped the views which he would later systematize, though Aquinas disagreed in many ways with some of his teacher's ideas.
Thomas Aquinas as Philosopher and Theologian
Aquinas made extensive use of Aristotelian philosophy, eventually producing a synthesis with Christian theological dogma through its aid. Unlike Augustine and many other founders of the Christian faith, he rejected Neoplatonic metaphysics and Plato's idea of a reality of pure forms and eternal ideas. We would consider his essentially Aristotelian view almost pre-scientific: he believed in the reality of acquiring knowledge through the data that the senses perceive, rather than a more dualistic conception which held matter as somehow fallen and evil.
This isn't to say that he believed in the reality of the world of the senses -- quite the contrary. But he maintained that the data of the senses cannot be in fundamental conflict with faith or reason. He held that reason and - through it - knowledge, were authentic modes of revelation and connection to God. Even if (for Aquinas) faith must be placed above them, it was for him a faith of suprarational, transcendent status. Aquinas believed that the Will of God, not his Reason nor Mind, had initiated the creation. God thus was the sustainer of the created beings, and had originally created that-which-is from that-which-is-not.
The idea that the reality of God required a denial of reason would have been abhorrent to him.
He in fact rejected these theological ideas, among others:
- the self-evidence of God,
- that God was incomprehensible to man,
- that humans were incapable of recognizing the qualities of God
- Jesus Christ as the necessary occurence, not a choice by God, for the salvation of the human race.
(For Aquinas, implying such a necessity would remove the absolute freedom which belonged to deity. Thus the manifestation of Christ was a method of salvation freely chosen by God, not an obligation or requirement.)
He believed that the attributes of God could be known by man through the combination of reason and faith. To Aquinas, nature and reason were dual modes of divine revelation necessary and complementary to proper faith.
The nature of the creature was to be ascertained through the data of the senses and reason. But he asserts that man has a spiritual and supernatural aspect as well, which alone is capable of that contemplation in which the spiritual man's happiness rests and to which man, in this life, could never attain in fullness, and which was beyond his unaided intellect. It was the province of faith, but faith did not bring it about any more than intellect - it could occur only as an outpouring of divine goodness, through an act of the Divine Will.
This bestowal of grace could be effected through the sacraments, which themselves derived their power from the passion of Christ. It resulted in a "new birth" by the creative act of God.
Summary
Needless to say, Aquinas upset many of the popular theological dogmas prevalent before him. His Summa Theologiae remained unfinished by the time of his death, but his ideas passed into the official theology of the church, providing Christianity with a genuine intellectual foundation. Aquinas' work strongly influenced the philosophical climate of Western Europe and gave reason a legitimate place in Christian theology.
sources:
- Latourette, Stephen. A History of Christianity, Volume I: Beginnings to 1500. Harper-Collins, 1956,1975, pp. 509-514
- http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/a/aquinas.htm