St. Thomas Aquinas
Background: From the 5th century to the 8th century the main issue confronting western thought was not the struggle of one school against another but the way survival of traditional values and ideas in the aftermath of material and spiritual devastation at an unprecedented scale. But by the end of the 9th century, physical recovery and consolidation had been attained to a considerable extent, and a more independent and typically medieval trend began to emerge: scholasticism. The triumph of Aristotelianism in the 13th century was the work of many men and universities but, above all, it was due to the influence of St. Thomas Aquinas.
To be born, the Church needed Plato (through St. Augustine). To last, it needed Aristotle (through Aquinas).
“Faith and knowledge are not opposing but supplementary modes of understanding God and the world. There is no need to reconcile conflict where there is no conflict.”
“Faith is not contrary to reason but above reason. Articles of faith cannot be intellectually proved; they have to be accepted by an act of will.”
“What man can therefore believe, he cannot know; and what he can know, he cannot believe.”
If theological truth cannot be proved by philosophy, neither can it be disproved. Where it seems to arise, St. Thomas categorically states that faith is higher than knowledge in the hierarchy of truth, and that something must be wrong with philosophy if it seems to contradict revelation because: philosophy is only relatively certain whereas theology is absolutely certain in as must as it is based on divine authority.
“Philosophy is the handmaiden of Theology.”
“The purpose of the state is to promote the good life through virtuous living but it doesn’t stop there; it falls one step short of a higher end – the enjoyment of God.”
“The possession of God can be attained only by divine power. Human government is unable to guide men toward this end. The ministry of the kingdom of God is not in the hands of earthly kings, but of priests – and above all – ‘the chief priest, the successor of St. Peter, the Vicar of Christ, the Roman Pontiff’, to whom all kings are subject as to Christ himself.”
St. Thomas preferred monarchy unequivocally unlike Aristotle (who hesitated on the grounds that one man who is morally and intellectually superior was unlikely to be found) but sought to delimit the monarch’s power so that it would not degenerate into tyranny.
“Revolutionary resistance to minor tyranny, if successful, is likely to lead to even worse tyranny because the leader of the victorious revolution (fearing to suffer from another what he did to his predecessor) oppresses the subjects with an even more grievous slavery.”
St. Thomas is perhaps the first writer on the problem of revolution who understands its inner dynamic which cannot be halted at will once it is set in motion. He feared that revolution is nearly always a higher prince than the evil it seeks to remedy.
The greatest contribution of the Middle Ages to the stone of civilization is the concept of the supremacy of the law based on the custom of the community.
It was Leo XIII who issued the Encyclical Aeterni Patris on 1879 which mandated that the doctrines of St. Thomas Aquinas, “the preeminent guardian and glory of the Catholic Church,” be henceforth be taught in all academia and schools.
