The classic lyricist of our time, Slim Shady, once wrote, "guess who's back, back again, shady's back, celebrate." Well we're back with new thoughts, new writings, and new blogging. My confessions for my laziness to you, the non-existent reader who follows my blog. I thought with the new demands of my schedule I should give the blogging a rest so I could focus on my studies. I was wrong. My side-studies are of tremendous benefit to my overall intellectual health. So with that said, we're back. Many thanks to my friend Yoony Doh, who recently starting a beer blog which I'm attempting to write some stuff for. Yani, you got my brain working again! Over the next couple of days I want to explore Thomas Aquinas and the doctrine of God...namely the apologetic treatment versus the theological exploration of God in Aquinas' works. Without further adieu....
What does it mean for St. Thomas Aquinas to “prove” the existence of God? What is his goal in doing so? And does he do this as a theologian, a philosopher, or both? Thomas opens all of his major works with the question of the existence of God and attempts to demonstrate that He does exist. For the philosopher, this question is one of demonstrating His essence through philosophical truth and reasoning. For the theologian, the question is one of demonstrating his essence by naming that God. In taking on this question, Thomas must forge these two fields into one distinct treatment of the question of the existence of God; and whereas he succeeds in many places throughout his works in walking this line, he falls shorts on this one fundamental issue. Thomas’s inability to wear both the hat of an Aristotelian philosopher and a Christian theologian demonstrates the two schools’ incompatibility concerning the existence of God.
A Catholic saint and Doctor of the Faith, Thomas wears the theology-hat quite fittingly. However, his writings were considered both by his contemporaries as well as today as premiere philosophy from the period. And though the two positions were often viewed as “hand-maidens” in the Middle Ages, when Thomas sets out in his works to provide a “proof” for the existence of God and whom exactly He is, it must be determined whether he is doing so as a philosopher writing theological philosophy or as a theologian writing philosophical theology.
I would argue that Thomas cannot separate himself from the theological realm. First, he is writing a work entitled, Summa Theologica, or a summary of theology. The title in itself expresses the focus of the work and what it is intended to provide. Further, it must be also admitted that as a bishop and Christian, Thomas cannot philosophize about a deity without knowing whom he is ultimately describing. Thomas knows what deity he is describing and what qualities God already possesses before the pages of the Summa are ever written out. Thomas is a Christian who knows that his works will be read, criticized, and will impact the Catholic world. With these attributes in mind, we must view Thomas’s endeavor to write the Summa Theologica and the Summa Contra Gentiles as a Christian, theological text employing ancient philosophy to clarify and expound what Thomas already believes to be true.
Why then employ ancient, pagan philosophy though, if Thomas is writing primarily as a theologian for Catholic benefit? Judeo-Christian philosophy was a well established tradition by the thirteenth-century featuring figures from St. Augustine to Moses Maimonides. Thomas choose to not to expand on this tradition, however, and instead resurrects Aristotle. Thomistic-scholar Anton C. Pegis argues, “What he (Thomas) intended to do was to insist on the fact that though philosophy can exist at any time only on the condition of being original; yet some philosophical doctrines began by being original with Aristotle.” Thomas found what he believed to be profound wisdom and truths in Aristotle that would contribute to theology, rather than take away as he felt Platonism had done with many of the early Christian fathers such as Augustine. Anton Pegis writes:
Where the Platonic method in philosophy threatened to leave man in a void of
abstractions, the Aristotelian critique of Plato had the basic merit of saving the
reality of the world from Platonic abstractionism.
We come to see, therefore, Thomas’s proofs of God as philosophical expounding on theology. In his opening chapter of the Shorter Summa, Thomas writes that his goal in demonstrating a proof of God is to establish and inspire faith. He believes that the employment of Greek philosophical truths will inspire faith in God and His existence, further demonstrating his position as a philosophical theologian.
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