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“Exemplified by St. Thomas Aquinas”: But How?
Richard Schenk OP
The second sentence of DSPT’s brief mission statement already singles
out the Dominican Thomas Aquinas (†1274): “Inspired by the Dominican
practice of disciplined inquiry and learned preaching, the School draws its
students into the rich tradition of classical philosophy and Catholic theology,
especially as exemplified by St. Thomas Aquinas, and from this tradition engages
contemporary scholarship and culture in mutual enrichment.”
The DSPT is a collegium of scholars and students, working in distinct
but interrelated philosophical and theological disciplines, and it is neither
necessary nor desirable that every discipline see its work exemplified by Thomas
to the same degree. How this exemplarity is embraced will differ, therefore,
first of all from discipline to discipline. It would be futile for the Church
historian or the pastoral theologian to look towards Thomas’ work and
methods with the same expectations as the metaphysician or the moral theologian.
But even within the systematic branches of philosophical and theological thought,
the faculty members will differ somewhat in their approach to and interest
in Thomas Aquinas. In the mission statement, Thomas is but one example of the
rich traditions brought to bear on the resources and challenges of our times,
albeit he is also the only figure who had to be singled out as exemplary; Thomas
is the leading example of the traditions that the school seeks to retrieve.
Perhaps, despite all personal and discipline-related variations among teachers
at the DSPT, there is a characteristic commonality among the approaches to
Thomas at the DSPT that one might be able to describe as something of an emerging “Berkeley
school of Thomistic studies”. But that is not, in any case, my topic
here. Rather, here I want to speak only for myself, describing how my own work
relates to the corpus of writings left to us by Thomas Aquinas.
Let me begin by recalling an insightful remark by H.-G. Gadamer in his much-debated
work on Truth and Method (1960): “In ways that are largely overlooked,
forgetting belongs to the relation between retaining and remembering. Forgetting
means not merely loss and privation, but, as F. Nietzsche stressed, it is a
necessary condition for the life of our mind. It is only by forgetting that
our mind receives the possibility of a thorough-going renewal, the ability
to see things anew with a fresh look, so that what was old and familiar now
blends with what is newly seen into a multidimensional unity” (Wahrheit
und Methode, Mohr, Tuebingen 1960, here according to 4th edition, 1975,
pg. 13, with reference to Nietzsche’s 1874 Unzeitgemaesse Betrachtungen and
their second section, “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life”).
In order to say what I hope to recall of St. Thomas, let me begin by saying
what I first try to – partially – forget. Though it might seem
at first an unlikely strategy for recognizing the importance of Thomas or using
his works to draw us into the rich tradition, my work tries to – partially – forget
Thomas as “Doctor communis”. The initial if partial forgetfulness
that I seek has to do with (1) a recent systematic use of Doctor communis;
(2) a recent historicizing use of Doctor communis; and (3) a missed
opportunity for relating our times and those of Thomas Aquinas.
(1) Prior to the Second Vatican Council, the Doctor communis had
become such a standard and expectation of Catholic commonality that the most
disparate ideas of contemporary Catholic systematicians called themselves Thomism.
From transcendental theology’s attempt to retrieve a loosely Hegelian
refutation of the Kantian doubts about Enlightenment reason to realist existentialism’s
attempts to intensify the doubts about that same Enlightenment reason, it all
was packaged under the label “Thomism”. Despite the inflationary
use of “Thomism” that marked this attempt to squeeze new answers
into the common framework of the Doctor communis, the form remained
too restrictive for all the matter that was being forced into it. The inevitable
reaction had also begun: for the sake of a broader access to rich traditions
and novel problems, the call went forth to “raze the bastions”.
Hans Urs von Balthasar recalled his reaction to the scholasticism of the day: "I
could have lashed out with the fury of Samson. I felt like tearing down, with
Samson's strength, the whole temple and burying myself beneath the rubble".
The reaction, while understandable in many ways, and not confined by any means
to this one theologian, led to the widespread loss to Catholic thought of many
of its richest traditions, buried under the rubble of reaction by many a would-be
Samson: riches that today could be unearthed and brought into a new light by
renewed methods of Thomistic research. My interest in studying Thomas is not
an interest in making Thomas again to be the least common denominator of future
Catholic thought. In bakers’ terms: I would prefer that Thomas be seen
by a renewed Catholic theology more as a leaven and less as a dough pan.
(2) The poorly historicizing method that I want to forget is the sense that,
if one knows the Doctor communis, one knows what is common in medieval
and patristic thought; and vice versa. In order to recover the Thomas
that can help us access those traditions which could enrich our future, it
is imperative to use the tools of recent medievistic research in order also
to see what in Thomas’ writings was uncommon in the medieval world. Forgotten
be the days when a doctoral thesis could be proposed as an ahistorical commentary
on a single article from the Summa theologiae (even one as interesting
as imagination’s role in cognition), with little attempt to situate the
article in the context of Thomas’ own development or to ask about the
possible novelty of Thomas’ thought in his own day. True, a thinker can “own” received
and not just “original” material, but he will own it more the more
he has received it into a new context. Even the criticisms directed against
Thomas by his contemporaries sharpen our sense of what in his own time was
considered new about his thought. Historical research of this kind diminishes
the danger of presenting as Thomistic accepted positions that were either quite
common or even positions criticized by the historical Thomas Aquinas. Thus
my teaching has included the “Medieval Seminar” with topics offered
such as the "retractationes" of Thomas Aquinas (where Thomas changed
his mind); the reception of Thomas Aquinas in the first fifty years after his
death, including the so-called correctories controversy; medieval controversies
on the problem of Law and Gospel; Thomas on Judaism and non-Christian religions;
the debates on realism and idealism in antiquity and the middle ages, early
Thomistic epistemology in its insular (Thomas Sutton) versus its continental
(Hervaeus Natalis) variations; and the commentary by Thomas Aquinas on the Gospel
of John. To know a thinker historically demands that we know what the
alternatives were. The forgetting of the Doctor communis here is deliberately
partial: it is that often distinctive thought of Thomas that proved to be such
a capable conduit of the older and wider traditions. We cannot quite forget,
as we research Thomas’ unique place in the development of medieval thought,
that these uncommon thoughts would make Thomas the Doctor communis.
And the historical research here, unlike that in many medieval studies programs,
is guided from the start by the expectation that this historical research
will be of help in answering systematic questions.
(3) All historical investigations are guided by prior expectations of what
might be found in historical material and how it might help us to grasp and
develop a problem that is stated in terms foreign to the earlier context. Especially
when we are investigating an historical figure (like Thomas Aquinas) with systematic
intentions, we must always begin by asking for an initial sense of what we
are searching for and why. This provisional answer will do well to forget the
probability of being able to simply lift entire treatises or other large segments
of material in their medieval configuration for mere repetition. Thomas’ contribution
to today’s ecumenical and interreligious questions will often be more in
obliquo than in recto. The attempt to force a choice between
recovering all or nothing of the Doctor communis would mean a lost
opportunity for relating our times to his. It would fail to make our own the
received thought of Thomas by failing to reconfigure it in a new context. Such
a failure to forget some of the prefigurations we receive could only encumber
our “possibility of a thorough-going renewal, the ability to see things
anew with a fresh look”: what has been called “productive non-contemporaneity” (J.B.
Metz), an awareness not so much of identity as of relation, necessary if older
texts are to speak in a new context. What we have most in common with the Doctor
communis will become clear only if we are also attentive to what separates
us from his times. What I am seeking is not a new, allround Defensio doctrinae
Thomae.
Admittedly, the possibility of retrieving much of Thomas’ thought for
the enrichment of our own systematic reflection is not only, not even chiefly,
and also not directly a result of his otherness, his strangeness, or his non-contemporaneity.
The medieval period knew spirits far more alien to us than Thomas Aquinas,
but they do not therefore provide us with greater resources for meeting the
challenges of our times. In fact, there are in many ways striking parallels
between Thomas and us. After a long period of Augustinian hope for the graced
perfection of human life, there was in Thomas’ times new attention being
paid to Aristotle’s insistence on the animality and very limited transcendence
of human life. At the new imperial University of Naples, the still young Thomas
studied prior to his joining the Dominicans newly accessible Aristotelian texts
on “natural philosophy” and on a very physical anthropology not
yet accessible in the University courses of Northern Europe. The foundational
insight of the young Thomas, the key realization that would carry him through
his short life, seems to have been into the compatibility of Christian faith
and a human finitude more restrictive than anything then known in conventional
Christianity. His program of admitting as much finitude as necessary (sensibility
as the foundation of cognition, passion as the regular medium of freedom, death
as the privation of properly human possibilities with the grace of resurrection
as their restitution), while asserting as much transcendence as is rationally
possible, remained the basis of his thought. In our own age, when the former
self-confidence of Enlightenment reason has long been exposed to the self-doubts
of materialism and historicism, most recently in the guises of structuralism
and deconstructionism, the case for affirming human dignity has again become
more difficult. “The personhood of human beings stands or falls with
their capacity to know the truth” (R. Spaemann), and yet the postmodern
paradigm does not treat kindly claims to universal truth. The advocacy for
human dignity that can argue convincingly for as much universal knowledge and
sovereign freedom as is credible, while admitting as much fragmentation and
servitude as the solidarity in the hardships of our age makes necessary: this
is a program that will find in Thomas resources and recognition – amidst
all the undeniable alienation across the stretch of ages.
Sometimes Thomas’ writings contain observations that stand on their own,
with little need to consider the non-contemporaneity of the context; these
include those frequent insights into human nature that light up the Second
Part of the Summa like so many torches along an outdoor path. So, to choose
just one example, Thomas notes once in an aside that a genuine sense of compassion
can be prevented in two ways: by our never having experienced failure ourselves;
or by our having failed so thoroughly that we have lost all hope for ourselves.
In both cases, we are not able and willing to view the sufferings of others
as our own, which is the core of misericordia. The implications for
the fundamental relation of self and others are not worked out by Thomas, but
someone today, taking into account recent philosophies of alterity, could develop
these comments without all too much reflection on the very different context
of Thomas’ day.
In many places Thomas himself comments on the development of doctrine and
on how the changed times must be considered when trying to understand older
texts. Thomas’ longest “book review”, now entitled Contra
errores Graecorum, begins with historical and hermeneutic reflections
of this kind; and since Thomas’ day, we have developed an even keener
sense of the need he mentions there. Such an ability to read older texts in
light of a changed context applies to our approach to many of Thomas’ own
texts as well, where the non-contemporaneity is often more evident than in
his occasional remarks. Thomas’ comments on religious liberty, for example,
more precisely on not compelling non-Christians to baptism, precisely because
faith must be free, can hardly be embraced today without also recalling the
historical context which prevented Thomas from applying this principle to those
who had lost the Christian faith. An inability to reconsider particular texts
of Thomas outside the tangle and web of the original configurations of his
writings would rob Thomistic research of its critical potential. It would isolate
Thomas’ writings from the very issues that could well use many of his
insights. Productive non-contemporaneity implies that we can distinguish between
what is of potential value for the future and what deserves to remain consigned
to the past.
This hermeneutic is not tied to the idea of inevitable progress; it is only
sometimes the case that our age is in a position of a privileged perspective.
To choose another example: The late 20th century Catholic criticism of scholasticism
came from two opposite extremes: on the one hand, from the voices of self-assimilation
and far-reaching accommodation to the Western consumerist cultures of the early
1960’s; and, on the other, from voices calling for a Catholic reception
of the Calvinist dialectic between the complete perversion of human nature
and the grace of a radically new and independent start. The first reaction
sought to take its place – or just any seat, if need be – at the
common table of society; the second reaction looked for a private room and
better company. These alternatives are represented today by the relativistic
theory of religions on the one hand and the sporadically absolutistic claims
of “Radical Orthodoxy” on the other. While disagreeing drastically
between themselves, these two movements of accommodation and isolation have
always agreed that the scholastic distinction of grace and nature is to be
rejected. Together, they have managed to popularize the polemical caricature
of the scholastic sense of nature and grace as a two-story apartment with two
self-contained condominiums, a separate and superfluous dwelling of grace just
added on atop an already self-sufficient structure of nature. The polemic was
so successful that textbooks today cite the caricature without any sense of
its intended irony as portraying accurately the fabric of scholastic thought
on grace and nature. The crossfire from these two opposed, anti-scholastic
trenches not only pinned down in the middle any programmatic Thomistic renewal
after the Council; arguably, it has also prevented until today the recovery
of that “diastasis” of grace and nature necessary for the renewal
of Catholic thought as a whole: a discernment necessary if we are to experience
our nature’s many-faceted and continued need for God’s grace and
if we are to take up fruitfully the challenges well-defined by Pope John XXIII
for the Council: the issues of world and unity. No mere quotation of Thomistic
texts can suffice of its own to offer a serious alternative. The reading of
Thomas remarks on nature and grace can no longer be “innocent”:
they must negotiate the new blind that has been erected before the resources of
the past through the double critique of those older texts by the 20th century
discussion. And yet, prepared by serious historical research into the historical
position and choices of Thomas, we can ask about the distinction and relation
of grace and nature that he worked out for the chief anthropological issues
of faith and reason, freedom and compulsion, as well as tragedy and hope. With
that, we can help Catholic thought to address today’s problems of faith
and culture in a new language unknown to our contemporaries who have been reduced
to silence by the recent de facto conflation of nature and grace.
In the 13th century, Thomas spoke to the opposing factions of excessive self-confidence
and self-doubt in his own day. With resources gained in part by the careful
study of his answers, we can speak to this oscillation between presumption
and despair in our own time as well, addressing the personal, cultural, political
and ecclesial deficits of our times.
This hermeneutics of studying Thomas Aquinas with both the historical tools
and the systematic intent described above has guided not only my teaching but
my writing as well. Some examples might help to make my intentions clearer.
Already my doctoral dissertation in Munich in 1989 was the attempt to establish
a trialogue among Thomas Aquinas, Martin Heidegger and Karl Rahner on the chief
anthropological questions: What can I know? What should I do? What may I hope
for? Taken together, what is the human being (by nature and grace)? In order
to establish a more reliable picture of Thomas, it explored the two long, Platonic
traditions known by Thomas, as well as the often critical reception of his
thought by his own immediate successors. Soon afterwards, I began the critical
edition of a previously unprinted work by Robert Kilwardby, the best known
of Thomas’ contemporary critics. I have written on many of Thomas’ earliest
critics and defenders, on his place in the history of reflection on sin and
merit. I have explored some of the changes within Thomas’ own thought,
for example in his attitude toward the First Covenant. Systematically, I have
recalled aspects of Thomas’ thought to address such contemporary themes
as the dignity of the person, the notion of sacrifice and idolatry, the Christian
sense of Judaism and of non-Christian religions, of laughter and of mourning,
temporality and theodicy, wisdom and labor, metaphysics and political discourse,
faith and reason, ecology, Christology and Mariology, notions of truth, falsity,
and unity, ecumenism and variations on the basic idea of vowed religious life
in different Christian confessions and world religions. In all these systematic
reflections, aspects of an historically understood Thomas Aquinas were brought
into conversation with pressing issues of our times. This was roughly the direction
of Thomistic studies recommended with Thomas’ own words by the Dominican
Order’s General Chapter at Providence in 2001: “It is into a studious
and concerned wisdom of this sort that Thomas Aquinas inscribes the Dominican
vocation – contemplari et contemplata aliis tradere (cf. STh
II-II 188, 6 as well as STh I 1, 4; II-II 45, 3 co). Wisdom of this kind tells
us not only of what is eternal, but also of the “...regulae contingentium,
quae humanis actibus subsunt“ (STh
II-II 45, 3 ad 2; vgl. 19, 7). “It belongs to the gift of wisdom not
only to meditate on God but also to direct human actions. Such direction
is concerned first and foremost with the elimination of evils, which contradict
wisdom. That is why fear is called the beginning of wisdom, because fear
moves us to move away from evils. Ultimately, it has to do with the aim of
how everything might be led back to the order justly due it: something which
belongs to the idea of peace” (STh II-II 45, 6 ad 3; cited
here in De vita
intellectuali 106).
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