Vigils Reading – St Thomas Aquinas

THE ATTITUDE OF ST THOMAS

AQUINAS BEFORE THE TRUTH

By Josef Pieper

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In considering the teaching of St Thomas, we should not understand it

merely as the material substance of an explicitly formulated set of doctrines.

Much too rarely does one remember that the substance of the content [of his

writings] has its origin in a very special attitude of St Thomas, human as well as

intellectual, not only in the sense that this attitude colors the work with its

particular emphasis, but also in the sense that without this special human

attitude, what has been written might never have been written at all.

Should we therefore not consider this attitude, this temper of mind –

though Thomas himself never expressly formulated it – as part and parcel of the

spirit of the ratio of the Universal Doctor of Christendom – the bold intrepidity

which impelled and enabled the young mendicant friar at the University of Paris

to “re-cognize” the truth of the Aristotelian worldview, to re-integrate it as an

essential part into the intellectual heritage of the Christian West, undaunted by

the opposition of the defenders of traditional doctrine. And should we not see in

the personal “style” of this bold recognition of truth and reality likewise an

element of “timeliness,” in the sense of an exemplary attitude?…

In times such as these it is imperative to call to mind the qualities which

make Thomas what he was: the all-inclusive, fearless strength of his

affirmation, his generous acceptance of the whole of reality, the trustful

magnanimity of his thought. And we find occasion, also, to remember: The

formal and theoretical justification for this attitude is found precisely in

Thomas’s doctrine of the infinitely many-sided truth of things. Truth cannot be

exhausted by any (human) knowledge; it remains therefore always open to new

formulation.

On the other hand, what we call here the “Thomist attitude” would have to

include, in order to remain true to its master, the resolution not to relinquish a

single particle of the heritage of truth; for it is the hallmark of the “modernity” of

Albert and Thomas that both refused to disrupt and abandon, for the sake of new

ideas, the realm of tradition. They relinquished neither the Bible nor Augustine

(nor, consequently, Plato) for the sake of Aristotle. The new territory which awaits

conquest today…is of virtually immeasurable scope… Thomas Aquinas might

attain to a new timeliness, both affirmative and corrective.