Reading Thomas for Pleasure and Profit
August 5, 2010
Having just agreed to write a short introductory text on the life and thought of Thomas Aquinas for a Protestant audience, I have spent the last few days pulling various primary and secondary texts off my shelves to refresh my memory of the great man. I used to teach an Honours course on his life and thought many years ago at the University of Nottingham, and found him both a fascinating and stimulating thinker.
Returning to him so many years on, I am struck again at what a theological resource he is, and that for a variety of reasons:
1. His development of the topical ordering of theology represents a definite advance on the Sentences of Peter Lombard and, in many ways, set the gold standard for subsequent Western systematic theologies.
2. While his two Summae are strongly theological/philosophical, they are underpinned both by biblical exegesis and by a thorough grounding in the ecumenical creeds. Indeed, I believe Thomas was the first Western theologian of the Middle Ages to make extensive use of the canons of the ecumenical councils; and, as a medieval teacher, he had to exegete, teach, and preach his way through more scripture before he was deemed qualified as a teacher than any Protestant minister of whom I am aware (including myself), despite the fact that we are the ones who are supposedly committed to scripture alone and the Bible's centrality to life and faith.
3. His constructive theological work (particularly Summa Theologiae Part One) lays the groundwork for much of what is later incorporated into Reformed understandings of God. This is also done with a fine pastoral touch (as in his handling of the question, `If God knows the future, why should we pray?')
4. As a theologian operating at a time of significant philosophical upheaval (the arrival in the Latin West of Aristotle's metaphysical treatises) and theological/cultural challenge (the influence of Islamic culture in the south of Spain and Islamic science and philosophy everywhere -- even on Aquinas's own back doorstep in Paris), he is a great example of a great mind wrestling with great issues. Given the philosophical disturbances of our own times, and, indeed, the pressing importance of both cultural and intellectual engagement with Islam, there is surely something to be learned from seeing how Thomas did it all those years ago.
Of course, there are other areas where Protestants will have fundamental disagreements -- authority, sacraments, justification, Mary, ecclesiology -- but this should not blind us to his strengths; nor should we ignore these parts of his work. Reading a great theologian is always productive, and often no more so than at those points of disagreement where our own thinking is made necessarily sharper and clearer.
Returning to him so many years on, I am struck again at what a theological resource he is, and that for a variety of reasons:
1. His development of the topical ordering of theology represents a definite advance on the Sentences of Peter Lombard and, in many ways, set the gold standard for subsequent Western systematic theologies.
2. While his two Summae are strongly theological/philosophical, they are underpinned both by biblical exegesis and by a thorough grounding in the ecumenical creeds. Indeed, I believe Thomas was the first Western theologian of the Middle Ages to make extensive use of the canons of the ecumenical councils; and, as a medieval teacher, he had to exegete, teach, and preach his way through more scripture before he was deemed qualified as a teacher than any Protestant minister of whom I am aware (including myself), despite the fact that we are the ones who are supposedly committed to scripture alone and the Bible's centrality to life and faith.
3. His constructive theological work (particularly Summa Theologiae Part One) lays the groundwork for much of what is later incorporated into Reformed understandings of God. This is also done with a fine pastoral touch (as in his handling of the question, `If God knows the future, why should we pray?')
4. As a theologian operating at a time of significant philosophical upheaval (the arrival in the Latin West of Aristotle's metaphysical treatises) and theological/cultural challenge (the influence of Islamic culture in the south of Spain and Islamic science and philosophy everywhere -- even on Aquinas's own back doorstep in Paris), he is a great example of a great mind wrestling with great issues. Given the philosophical disturbances of our own times, and, indeed, the pressing importance of both cultural and intellectual engagement with Islam, there is surely something to be learned from seeing how Thomas did it all those years ago.
Of course, there are other areas where Protestants will have fundamental disagreements -- authority, sacraments, justification, Mary, ecclesiology -- but this should not blind us to his strengths; nor should we ignore these parts of his work. Reading a great theologian is always productive, and often no more so than at those points of disagreement where our own thinking is made necessarily sharper and clearer.
