USA. 22. College student - graduating 12.2013. Marrying my dream girl 2.15.2014. Using Tumblr as a means of compiling inspiration and processing sensory input.
[Summer] Reading Series #1 - St. Thomas Aquinas by G.K. Chesterton
Hello followers! Does anyone know that I still have this? Major Tom to Ground Control? In any case, I'm going to begin a new series of posts, which will be a catalog of the reading that I've done recently. Could be just some passages that stood out to me, commentary and criticism, or expressions of outright infatuations with a text. I'm doing this for my own personal reasons, and, if I can write anything worth reading, perhaps for the benefit of people interested in any of the subjects, authors and titles that I post about.
So, to get started, I'd like to begin with a really impressive, though fairly brief book:
St. Thomas Aquinas - G.K. Chesterton
G.K. Chesterton's unique take on writing a biography of St. Thomas Aquinas. "Character sketch" is probably a much more appropriate term for how this book reads. If someone is hoping to use this book as a resource for assembling a timeline for the life of Aquinas, then they will be hard-pressed for detailed accounts of the events in his life. This is a follow-up to Chesterton's Saint Francis of Assisi, the other of two in the unfortunately shortly pursued writings on the lives of the saints. I haven't had a chance to read that, but it is certainly on my radar.
Chesterton focuses on the unique and prolific contributions of Aquinas in terms of shaping and reforming the Christian intellect. All scholars are deeply indebted to the work that Aquinas accomplished in his life, which is summed up in many circles, with varying tones, as "the Baptism of Aristotle". Thomas Aquinas defended the validity of reason in the realm of matters of faith, and insisted on the harmony between the Christian faith and the ever-expanding realm of empirical scientific discovery. Others, such as the Manicheans, sought to dodge and dissolve conflicts by claiming a division between matters of spiritual realities and scientific (i.e. sensory) observation, Aquinas rebuked them with a bellow that only the great Dumb Ox could issue.
While the Islamic scholars were well acquainted with the work of Aristotle at the time, Christian scholars had been reluctant to invoke his writings in their own defenses, given its gentile origin. Aquinas, blessed with right reason (recto ratio) at the right time, was able to employ Aristotle's insights when applicable in order to illuminate through the intellect matters of faith which can be rightly and properly understood through the mechanism of the human intellect. Confident that a good argument with properly defined premises and a well-supported conclusion could resolve any issue that plagued mankind, Aquinas went on to write treatise after treatise, for the Gentiles (Contra Gentiles) the Greeks (Contra Errores Graecorum) and many more.
So what does a monastic Scholastic scholar, albeit a classic one, and a saint even, have to do with the 21st century and its questions? I believe it would do a great good for the realm of interreligious (and even a-religious) dialogue, in my opinion, to have a renaissance of sound logical discourse, with the writings of Aquinas as a road map out of the maze of modern fallacies. Far too many minds have been tainted by misplaced pluralistic sentiments ("All religions basically say the same things") or taken out of the conversation entirely by hang-ups on the limits of human knowledge, rather than an enthusiasm for growth in knowledge and critical discernment ("Even if there is a God / any truth, what makes you think we can know Him / it?") or by a confusion of physical size with metaphysical importance ("The universe is so big, there's no way that a being as minuscule as I could be of any concern to any kind of higher power / intelligence.") Skepticism as well, a means to knowledge, has been mistakenly seen as a worldview in itself. It is a means to an end, not an end in itself. These all come from a place of humility, and that's a good place to start. But just because you've found a nice place to begin a journey, doesn't at all justify forgoing that voyage entirely. Aquinas knew the human intellect well, perhaps more thoroughly than any other person, and anticipated the errors which lead to these missteps and roadblocks. It's up to us to be honest with ourselves, move past emotional biases, and humbly place our worldviews under the microscope that the writings of Aquinas provide us.
Most of his writings are available as free .pdfs, so if an enthusiasm should develop, it shouldn't be too difficult to have near universal participation in such a renaissance in this day and age.
In conclusion, this is a great read, and on the shorter side for Chesterton, so I must recommend it wholeheartedly. There are so many wonderful moments with extremely broad applications, and such witty retorts to common objections on nearly every page, (my favorite, I quote at the end of this review) that I can't imagine anyone reading it and failing be deeply impressed.
In short, it was what is technically called a Development in doctrine. But there seems to be a queer ignorance, not only about the technical, but the natural meaning of the word Development. The critics of Catholic theology seem to suppose that it is not so much an evolution as an evasion; that it is at best an adaptation. They fancy that its very success is the success of surrender. But that is not the natural meaning of the word Development. When we talk of a child being well-developed, we mean that he has grown bigger and stronger with his own strength; not that he is padded with borrowed pillows or walks on stilts to make him look taller. When we say that a puppy develops into a dog, we do not mean that his growth is a gradual compromise with a cat; we mean that he becomes more doggy and not less.
Further reading:
Faith and Reason - Bl. John Paul II
Orthodoxy - G.K. Chesteron
Future Posts:
Justification - N.T. Wright
No Man Knows My History - Fawn M. Brodie
The Law - Frederick Bastiat
Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling - John Taylor Gatto
Michael Ian Black: “You said you wanted to listen to funk rock, I’m saying we listen to funk rock.”
David Wain: “Okay, fine. Tonight we’ll try listening to funk rock.”
Michael & Michael: “Agreed.”
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