The Theology of Thomas Aquinas

Chapter One: Quod Scit Una Uetula: Aquinas on the Nature of Theology

  One Quod Scit Una Uetula Aquinas on the Nature of Theology  .  During the season of Lent, perhaps as late as , Thomas Aquinas gave a series of instructional sermons on the Apostles’ Creed in his Neapolitan vernacular.1 We have them only in later Latin summaries by his secretary, Reginald of Piperno, but the simplicity and directness of Aquinas’ address to the faithful gathered for Lenten Vespers still comes through. He begins by observing the radical difference Christian faith makes in human life, including human knowing. Even the humblest believer in Christ knows more about God and how to lead a good life than the most profound philosopher was able to know without faith in Christ. Despite all of their effort, none of the philosophers before the coming of Christ was able to know as much about God, and about what is necessary for life, as one old woman [uetula] knows by faith after Christ’s coming. Hence it is said: “The earth is full of the knowledge of God” [Isaiah :].2 Not only soteriologically and morally, but epistemically, Christ’s advent is the decisive event in human history. The faith it calls forth makes unlettered Neapolitan crones wiser in the ways of God than Plato and Aristotle.   Bruce D. Marshall This may seem remarkable, since we do not “see” what we believe, but simply cling to it by faith on the authority of God, who instructs us in Christ about what we ought to hold true. Aquinas firmly insists, however, that believing what we cannot see would only be a mistake if we could see everything—if we “could know perfectly all things visible and invisible.” But of course we cannot . In fact, in its present state “our knowledge is so weak that no philosopher has been able completely to investigate the nature of a single fly.” Therefore the genuinely foolish course is the philosopher’s unwillingness, rare in a uetula, “to believe anything about God save what a human being is able to know by his own resources [per se].” God subdues this epistemic pride, as Job teaches: “God is great, and conquers our knowledge” ( Job :).3 Indeed, even in the most ordinary worldly matters we cannot get along without holding countless beliefs on the authority of others. This may happen because we want to learn some science or art, and have to assume that the person teaching it to us knows more about it than we do. But the weakness of our intellect goes deeper than this. Even on a seemingly obvious matter like who our own father is, we have no choice but to believe the testimony of others. On this important issue, as with so many others, we have no way to transform our believing into seeing. Aquinas finds nothing wrong in this. We could not survive unless we were willing to accept the weakness of our intellect and act accordingly . “If a human being were willing to believe only what she knew with certainty, she could not live in this world. How can one person live without believing another?” When it comes to God, where the weakness of our intellect is most telling and our need for instruction most profound, the epistemic lesson is unmistakable: “No one ought to doubt concerning the faith, but ought to believe what belongs to faith more certainly than she believes what she sees, because human vision can be deceived, but God’s knowledge is never mistaken.”4 Thomists past and present would probably be puzzled at the inclusion of Aquinas’ praise of the uetula in an account of his idea of theology. Every faithful Catholic, including the old woman chattering to her crucifix (in Newman’s phrase, kindly meant), of course has some important items of knowledge which, in the nature of the case, are unavailable to human beings who knew nothing of Christ’s advent: that the one God is three distinct persons, that Jesus Christ is God, incarnate for the world’s salvation, and so forth. But for many interpreters of Aquinas this has little to do with his conception of theology. For Aquinas theology , after all, is a science, of which the uetula knows nothing. Theology is knowledge of a quite particular kind, for which the model is provided, in Aquinas’ view, by just those Greek philosophers who lacked the items of Christian knowledge that the old woman has. More than that...