St Thomas Aquinas, Byzantine Theologian?

By the hand of Nicholas Markell

Along with a number of recent and contemporary Dominican theologians, I find myself becoming increasingly hostile to the "balkanization" of theology (as Romanus Cessario OP puts it) wedging apart the various branches of theology (e.g. moral theology, ascetical theology, etc.) which, in turn, perpetuates the pastorally (and clerically!) disastrous 'divorce' between theology and spirituality.  For all of the merits of Fr Tanqueray's otherwise enormously useful book The Spiritual Life, the mere fact that there are topics divided between that book and his Dogmatic Theology leaves us with the impression that personal holiness and doctrinal acumen are not necessarily mutually inclusive when, in fact, it must be.

One is reminded, therefore, of St Maximus the Confessor's aphorism that a prayer-less theologian is "a demon's theologian."

As it so happens, todays' Second Reading in the Office of Matins in the revised breviary gives us the opening paragraphs of St Anselm of Canterbury's Proslogion, in which he asks God for grace to undertake his meditation:

Teach me to seek You, and reveal Yourself to me as I seek, because I can neither seek you if You do not teach me how, nor find You unless You reveal Yourself.  Let me seek You in desiring You; let me desire You in seeking You; let me find You in loving You; let me love you in finding You (Advent, Week I, Friday, UK edition).

The "Father of Scholasticism" (though there are other legitimate contenders for this title) here conveys an attitude of supplication at the beginning of a theological task, a habit one finds in nearly all of the masters of the monastic and cathedral schools, and one that persisted somewhat until the High Middle Ages.  It is precisely this attitude that stands behind the seeming intransigence of St Bernard of Clairvaux in his blistering attacks upon the "Schoolmen."  I have, in my collection (somewhere!) a book by a monastic theologian who begins his treatise by telling, in no uncertain terms, how presumptuous the Scholastic theologians of his day are precisely because they approach the things of God merely with the intellect than with the heart.

Recent scholarship has demolished the stereotype of St Thomas Aquinas as a dry logician who made his mark in philosophical theology.  Jean-Pierre Torrell OP, in both his Thomas Aquinas:  Spiritual Master and Christ and Spirituality in Thomas Aquinas easily and ably consigns to the flames the myth of the Angelic Doctor as a wooden university lecturer and demonstrates, rather, a priest of deep contemplative prayer and silence.  One need only consult Fr Martin Grabmann's The Interior Life of St Thomas Aquinas to catch a glimpse of Aquinas' profound relationship with God.

Vladimir Lossky, in several of his works, routinely criticises the "intellectualism" of Catholic theology and, to a certain extent, he has a point.  In several of his writings, then-Father Ratzinger similarly expressed his distaste for "Thomism," only to prefer the more contemplative approach of St Bonaventure.  I think it is fair to say that, in both cases, what Lossky and Ratzinger really had in mind was not Thomism so much as it was "Manualism" or the style of post-seventeenth century theology which, as Yves Congar OP observes in his History of Theology, marked the beginning of a long "decline" in the theological enterprise, with no small thanks to Descartes and Wolff.

At the heart of all this, I would suggest, is what John Zizioulas describes as the radically different methods of theological epistemology versus theological gnosiology.  It would seem that both the Vetus Latina and St Jerome's revision tended to conflate both ἐπιστήμη and γνῶσις in the singular Latin scientia since there is no satisfactory Latin cognate or translation for the latter Greek term.

Whether or not St Thomas was aware of these two Greek words, his method nonetheless preserves the distinction on at least two counts:  In his frequent use of the expression "...by knowledge and by love" and the adoption of theosis in his theological project.

"By Knowledge and By Love"

In the first place, as we all know so well, the Order of Preachers is a contemplative Order, where theologizing was done primarily in contemplation and preaching is simply an overflow of this contemplation.  The role of study, though St Dominic innovated in giving dispensations to the obligation of the Choral Office, is subordinate to contemplative prayer, not the other way around.

I was shocked, in fact, when a Dominican friar pointed out to me recently that up to 1968, the Order retained a very "monastic" flavour and showed me, as proof, a picture-book from the early twentieth century, of a Dominican convent which I could not tell if it was really a Cistercian monastery!  Less well-known is the work of Blessed Hyacinth-Marie Cormier OP, the 76th Master-General, who laboured to restore the monastic character of an otherwise mendicant Order.  (After all, Raymond Bonniwell OP insisted that Dominicans are, at heart, canons regular.)

All of this is simply to underscore the contemplative milieu wherein St Thomas Aquinas theologized.  The anecdote of his nightlong vigil asking the Lord about a certain, difficult passage from the prophet Isaiah is paradigmatic of his theological method or, rather, habit.

In terms of "theological gnosiology," however, I am inclined to think that the Angelic Doctor's antiphonal "by knowledge and by love" captures just this.  In his commentary on Isaiah, for example, he distinguishes between the "intellectual gifts" and the "affective gifts" among the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit:  Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel, and Knowledge on one hand, and Fortitude, Piety, and Fear of the Lord on the other.  In appropriating the intellectual gifts to the Son's begetting and the affective gifts to the Holy Spirit's procession, he strongly implies (remember, Super Isaiam is a tightly concise set of lecture notes) that these Seven Gifts conjoin us to the divine Persons and, thus, enables us to theologize.  If 1 Corinthians chapters 1 and 2 tell us anything, it's that theology is less for "smart" people and more for spiritual people, that is, people imbued with the Holy Spirit.  (I hope at least one seminarian is reading this.)

These intellectual and affective gifts correspond to St Thomas' perennial insistence that Christians adhere to God "by knowledge and by love," that is to say, by an intimacy whereby we are divinized by knowing God as a friend and loving him accordingly.  This is why, here and there, he says that a simple layperson at prayer "knows" God more than a learned theologian who has little time for prayer.

The Eastern Fathers

Ave Maria University recently published a magnificent tome, Thomas Aquinas and the Greek Fathers, in which a host of  Aquinas specialists deftly disabuse us of the image of St Thomas as an aloof thinker who was more interested in rationally "proving" dogmas but, in fact, was the first Western theologian to make serious use of the Eastern Fathers.  His Christology, for example, makes heavy use of St John Damascene and St Maximus the Confessor, and demonstrates a keen awareness of the early Ecumenical Councils.

What is more is that St Thomas, more than any other Latin theologian, retrieved the quintessentially "Byzantine" doctrine of theosis or "divinization."  Though he only uses the term 'divinization'/'deification' occasionally, the substance of the doctrine is everywhere in St Thomas' writings.  For example, in asking whether the Incarnation was necessary for the "restoration" of the human race, St Thomas gave five reasons, the fifth of which:

...with regard to the full participation of the Divinity, which is the true bliss of man and end of human life; and this is bestowed upon us by Christ's humanity; for Augustine says in a sermon (xiii de Temp.): "God was made man, that man might be made God" (S.th., 3a, q. 1, art. 2, resp.).

In fact, 2 Peter 2:14 has become for St Thomas the go-to reference for the "Byzantine" doctrine of divinization or theosis.  In his treatise on grace, for example, he writes:

Now the gift of grace surpasses every capability of created nature, since it is nothing short of a partaking of the Divine Nature, which exceeds every other nature. And thus it is impossible that any creature should cause grace. For it is as necessary that God alone should deify, bestowing a partaking of the Divine Nature by a participated likeness, as it is impossible that anything save fire should enkindle (S.th., 1a2ae, q. 112, art. 1, resp.).

Though the originator of the expression "God became man in order that man might become God" appears to be St Irenaeus of Lyons and frequently retrieved by Pope Leo the Great--both Latin Fathers--it is clear that Aquinas' familiarity with the doctrine owes to his familiarity with Damascene and  Maximus the Confessor.

Far from being an 'element' in Thomistic theology, it is, in fact, at the very heart of how he lays out the Summa theologiae, from the "invisible mission of the divine Persons" (S.th. 1a, q. 43, art. 3), through his treatise on sanctifying grace (1a2ae, q. 110, art. 3, 4; q. 112, art. 1; q. 114, art. 3), he explains the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit whereby anointed Christians are made to be "divine" by participation (1a2ae, q. 68) with an explanation of each gift in turn throughout the Secunda secundae until, finally, he reaches the Incarnation whereby the God-Man empowers women and men to become God by participation (3a, q. 1, art. 2) of which the divinization of Christ's soul by grace is the supreme pattern of Christians' (3a, q. 7, art. 1, ad 1; q. 22, art. 1).  Clearly, St Thomas retrieved a quintessentially "Byzantine Christian" theme for his Latin theological synthesis.

This ought to call into question the all-too-frequent pastoral (mis-) praxis of telling Christians that they need only to "stay forgiven" rather than to grow in grace and participation in the Divine Nature.

Nor can we forget that St Thomas inherited from his master, St Albert the Great, a deep familiarity with the writings of Dionysius the pseudo-Areopagite, by which his theological synthesis incorporated the apophatiicsm that is distinctive of Byzantine theology.  Moreover, when Lossky speaks of sophia as the balance between epistemology and gnosiology in theology, it is clear that, as a result of his apophaticism, "...This doctrine is wisdom above all human wisdom; not merely in any one order, but absolutely."  As such, the superlatives of God's attributes (or better, of the "Divine Names") are known by experience and not merely ratiocination:

The first manner of judging divine things belongs to that wisdom which is set down among the gifts of the Holy Spirit: The spiritual man judgeth all things (1 Cor 2:15). And Dionysius says (Div. Nom. ii): Hierotheus is taught not by mere learning, but by experience of divine things (S.th., 1a, q. 1, art. 6; ad 3).

Intimacy with God is better had, St Thomas routinely indicates, by the long detour of the via negativa than the shortcut of the via positiva giving a superficial cognition about God characteristic of post-Cartesian theology, because God's utter unknowability invites us to unrelentingly and endlessly stretch ourselves towards him in friendship.

The False Dichotomization of de Deo uno and de Deo Trino

Eastern Orthodox theologians often criticise "Roman Catholic theology" for beginning its treatise on God with "the one God" and then moving to "the Triune God" (with Lossky and Dumitru Stăniloae being the loudest critics) since Orthodoxy prefers to look at the unity of the divine Essence only after looking at the plurality of hypostases.  Manualist theology, it is true, does prefer to treat of de Deo uno  prior to de De Trino, but this is a uniquely Manualist/Baroque tendency often 'read into' the "treatise on God" in the Summa theologiae.

There are three problems with the Baroque approach:  (1) It too easily bridges natural theology and revealed theology or reason and Revelation; (2) it conflates ideas of God-as-one and the nature of the Divine Essence; (3) it mistakes God for an "object" of theology rather than its "Subject."

Regarding the first and second points, Jean-Pierre Torrell OP explains:

...we should note that one frequently hears the first section ([1a] qq. 2-26) referred to as "Saint Thomas's [sic] treatise on God" and it has often been used to create a theodicy, a philosophical treatise on God.  This is not in keeping with the intentions of the author.  He is writing a Summa of theology and the God about whom he speaks has nothing in common with that spoken of by the deist philosophers but is instead the living God of the Bible, who has revealed himself in salvation history.  Knowledge of him is not attained until he has been understood as a trinity of persons.  This is why the Summa's treatise on God ends with the question of the plurality of Persons in the Trinity, what distinguishes them and what is proper  to each of them.  The break between the two section serves only a pedagogical function; it should not be understood as a separation (St Thomas Aquinas, vol.1:  The Person and the Work, 21)

Torrell, it seems, shows that the Orthodox criticism of Catholic theology (or, rather, Baroque theology) is not entirely without merit.

Going back to what we said earlier about the "balkanization" of theoology between dogmatics and spirituality, I have become convinced that theological method errs profoundly when God is treated as "object" rather than as Subject.  At S.th., q. 1, art. 7, whereas the Blackfriars' translation reads "God is the object of this [= sacra doctrina] science," the Latin text has «Deus est subiectum huius scientiae».  The difference between subjectus and objectus is that the former has the sense of 'throwing under' whereas the latter has the sense of 'throwing-towards.'  At one level, it is tempting to conflate the two, thinking that "subject" has more to do with subject-matter like "my favourite subject in school is math."  Though we don't have time to explore St Thomas' word-choice here, suffice it to say that he clearly understands this "subject" to be the Subject with whom we enjoy a personal relationship by the theological virtue of faith:

But in sacred science, all things are treated of under [sub] the aspect of God: either because they are God Himself or because they refer to God as their beginning and end.  Hence it follows that God is in very truth the object subject [subjectum] of this science.  This is clear also from the principles of this science, namely, the articles of faith, for faith is about God. The object subject [subjectum] of the principles and of the whole science must be the same, since the whole science is contained virtually in its principles.

Notice a twofold distinction of the "subject" of theology:  First, the revealed God, and second, the "articles of faith" derived from the principles of God whose revelation has been received in faith.  The fundamental presupposition here is faith, that is to say, a relationship rather than an object we think about.  Hence in the Secunda secundae, theological faith is treated first of all, with its corresponding gifts of Understanding and Knowledge, both of which enable the believer to grasp what has been divinely revealed and to have a right judgment about what is to be believed.  And since the Seven Gifts work as a cluster, one cannot drive a wedge between the intellect which beholds the God of Jesus Christ from the will that submits to him in hope and love and, in turn, rightly order the passions in the sensitive soul according to God's purposes.  Though the synthesis that is the Summa theologiae unfolds with a snail's pace, the totality of the work excludes that kind of theologizing that leaves God dissected on the examination table, so to speak, and mistakes what's "interesting" about God as "faith" in him.  And that, precisely, is the constant danger of the theologian.

The little book by Marie-Dominique Chenu OP, Aquinas and His Role in Theology, highlights exactly this:  St Thomas theologized as a contemplative, not a child prodigy.  And may God forbid that child prodigies should grow up to be theologians.

(To be fair, and pace Lossky and Zizioulas, et al., treating of God's Essence while approaching God's tri-unity is not a Roman innovation; one sees it, for example, in St Gregory of Nyssa's Great Catechetical Oration and Damascene's On the Orthodox Faith.)

Conclusion

Lossky's sometimes cutting remarks about Catholic theology must be understood as, rather, critiques of that kind of theologizing likewise criticised by Chenu and Congar.

I shall have more to say about St Thomas Aquinas' "theological gnosiology" in another post.  Our cursory look at the Angelic Doctor's understanding of the Christian life as one of clinging to God "by knowledge and by love" shows that it must be, above all, about a personal relationship which so transforms the believer that she is made a "participant in the Divine Nature" and relates to God as revealed by the Incarnate Word precisely as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Of course, to speak of St Thomas Aquinas as a "Byzantine theologian" would be an anachronism and an overstatement.  But the point still stands:  He often has more in common with Byzantine Christian theology than neo-scholasticism, and may have found a more kindred spirit in Lossky or Zizioulas than Cardinal Ottaviani.