St. Thomas Aquinas

207 Pages·1982·28.558 MB·English

by  Ralph McInerny

THOMAS AQUINAS
ST.
By RALPH McINERNY
University of Notre Dame
UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME PRESS
NOTRE DAME LONDON
University ofNotre Dame Press edition 1982
Reprinted by arrangement with Twayne Publishers
Copyright © 1977 by G, K. Hall & Co.
Library ofCongress Catalogingin Publication Data
Mclnerny, Ralph M.
St. Thomas Aquinas.
Reprint ed. originally published: Boston:
Twayne, cl977.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Thomas, Aquinas, Saint, 1225P-1274. I. Title.
II. Title: Saint Thomas Aquinas.
B765.T54M244 1982 230'.2'0924 81-16293
ISBN 0-268-01707-7 (pbk.) AACR2
Manufactured in the United States ofAmerica
Filiabus filiisque meis:
Cathy, Mary, Anne,
David, Beth and Dan
11
Contents
Preface 9
Chronology 1
1. Works and Days 13
I. Youth and First Studies 13
II. Paris: 1252-1259 16
III. Italy: 1259-1268 21
IV. Paris: 1269-1272 23
V. Italy: 1272-1274 25
2. Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle 30
I. Aristotle Goes West 30
II. The Eternity ofthe World 34
III. The Nature ofMan 38
A. The Structure ofPhysical Objects 39
B. The Structure ofMan 42
1. Cognition and the Cosmos 43
2. Intellect and Survival After Death 46
3. Resurrection ofthe Body 49
IV. Man as Moral Agent 50
A. Man and Nature 5
B. FreeWill 53
C. The Teleology of Human Acts 55
D. Theoretical and Practical Thinking 60
E. Nature Law 63
F. Moral Science 68
G. The Practical Syllogism 70
3. Thomas Aquinas and Boethius 75
I. The Kinds ofSpeculative Science 77
A. Boethius and Platonism 78
B. The Object ofSpeculation 79
1. Intuition 80
2. Scientific Knowing 80
3. Modes ofDefining 83
4. Degrees ofAbstraction? 86
CONTENTS
C. Abstraction, Separatism, and Metaphysics 87
1. Two Mental Acts 88
2. Two Kinds ofAbstraction 89
3. The Controversy 91
II. Essence and Existence 94
A. The Boethian Axiom 94
B. Separation and the Real Distinction 97
III. Omnipotence, Omniscience, and Free Will 99
A. The Divine Omnipotence 100
B. The Divine Omniscience 102
4. Thomas Aquinas and Platonism 105
I. The Platonism ofthe Fathers 105
A. Saint Augustine (345-430) 107
B. Pseudo-Dionysius 109
II. The Problem of Universals 110
III. Illumination and Abstraction * 115
IV. Essential and Participated Perfection 118
V. Magis Amicus Veritas 125
5. The Tasks ofTheology 127
I. Ontology orTheology? 128
II. Analogous Terms 134
III. Analogy and the Subject ofMetaphysics 138
IV. The Two Theologies 140
V. Faith and Theology 145
A. Some Mental Acts 146
B. Two Kinds of Belief 149
C. Preambles of Faith 152
1. Criteria for Preambles 155
2. Why Reveal the Knowable? 156
3. AcceptingWhat Cannot Be Understood 157
4. The God of the Philosophers 158
5. Preambles and Mysteries of Faith 162
6. Proofs of Faith? 162
VI. Proving that God Exists 163
VII.Concluding 167
6. Envoi 170
Notes and References 173
Selected Bibliography 183
Index 191
About the Author
Ralph Mclnerny was born in Minneapolis and was educated
at the St. Paul Seminary, the University of Minnesota and
Laval University. He has been a member of the Department
of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame since 1955. He
was a Fulbright Research Scholar at the University of Louvain
in 1959-1960. A past president of the American Catholic Philo-
sophical Association, he is Associate Editor of The Netv
Scholasticism. Among his publications are The Logic of Analogy,
Studies in Analogy, A History of Western Philosophy, Volume 1,
From the Beginnings to Plotinus, Volume 2, From Augustine to
Ockham, and Thomism in an Age of Renewal.

Preface
In this book, I have aspired to write an introduction to the
thought of a man who for some seven hundred years has been
a major influence in philosophy and theology. I say aspired,
because, far from being an easy thing, something one might
do at odd moments and with but half one's mind engaged,
writing an introduction is a difficult thing. The reader will
detect, I trust, a note of anguished sincerity in that remark.
I wanted to make the thought of Thomas Aquinas attractive,
but attractive for the right reasons. So I have at least suggested
the structure of the arguments he uses to arrive at his positions.
I wanted the book to be comprehensive, yet I hoped to avoid
thinness. Most important, I have tried to present Thomas in
such a way that my reader would quickly leave me and go to
the works of Aquinas himself.
Perhaps no book could have accomplished all this. The struc-
ture I have used is at once natural and unusual. The reader
will swiftly see how reliant Thomas was on his predecessors;
many of his works are commentaries on earlier ones. Why not
present the thought of Thomas in close connection with its
major sources? This method seemed a good idea and presented
no insuperable difficulties as I put it into effect. The Table of
Contents will convince the reader that I have managed to cover
a wide range of topics without grievous overlapping. Of course,
my eye has been mainly on what Thomas made of his sources
rather than on the sources themselves. Nonetheless, my pro-
cedure should enable the reader to appreciate both Thomas's
continuity with earlier thought and his creative independence
of it.
The translations in the text are all mine. This is not because
of any negative judgment on the translations that are listed in
the Bibliography. The truth is, I do not have any opinion at
all about the vast majority of those translations-except to wish
that they were not necessary. Thomas's Latin is the least
*ST. fHOMAS AQUINAS
difficult thing about reading him and anyone with the slightest
gift for languages could learn to read the Summa theologiae,
say, in short order. In any case, in drafting these chapters, I
have turned Thomas into English whenever I wanted to quote
him. I might have replaced these with the more careful trans-
lations of others before sending the book to the printer, but I
decided against this for several reasons. First, there is a same-
ness of style in the quotations now, and of course I do not
regard sameness as a literary achievement. Second, I deliberately
rendered Thomas loosely, in the interests of accuracy, dreading
that fidelity to the text which can turn it into a dead letter.
I have taken no distorting liberties, and perhaps I overstate
my looseness and underestimate the dullness of the English I
have made Thomas speak. Finally, it was a great practical
advantage to have done my own translating. I was saved the
enormous bother of requesting permission to use the translations
of others.
Over the more than two decades of my academic career,
during which I have been a constant reader of Aquinas, I have
watched his philosophical stock rise and fall and now see it
begin to rise again. Once he was a household word in Catholic
universities and colleges; then he became almost an unknown
figure. But elsewhere he was read closely and learned from.
Perhaps the two events are not unconnected. These minor
fluctuations give no true indication of the continuing surge of
his influence. The year 1974 marked the seven hundredth
anniversary of the death of Thomas Aquinas. The global char-
acter of the commemorations was overwhelming. There were
countless meetings, conventions, symposia held in his honor.
An international meeting held in Rome and Naples in April
1974 brought delegates from the ends of the earth. Special
issues of learned journals were devoted to the thought of Thomas.
I had hoped to finish this book in time for it to appear during
that anniversary year. That was not to be. Perhaps it can play
some small part in the beginning of the next seven hundred
years of Thomas's historical influence.
Ralph McInerny
University of Notre Dame
Chronology
1216 Order of Preachers confirmed by Pope Honorius III.
1217 Dominicans arrive in Paris.
1224/5 Thomas born at Rocca Secca.
1230/1 Thomas becomes a Benedictine oblate at Monte Cassino.
1239 Thomas studies at Naples.
1244 Thomas joins Dominicans and is held captive by his
family for a year.
1245- Thomas at Dominican convent of St. Jacques in Paris.
1248
1248- Thomas studies under Albert the Great in Cologne.
1252
1250/1 Thomas is ordained priest.
1252- Thomas studies theology at Paris.
1256
1256- Thomas teaches theology at Paris. Writes expositions
1259 of Boethius's On the Trinity and De hebdomadibus.
1259- Thomas in Naples and Orvieto. Completes Summa
1265 Against the Gentiles. Writes Part One of Summa
theologiae.
1265- Thomas at Santa Sabina in Rome, then in Viterbo.
1268 Writing commentaries on Aristotle.
1269- Thomas again teaches theology at Paris. Writes against
1272 the Latin Averroists; completes Part Two of Summa
theologiae.
1272 Thomas assigned to Naples. Writes first ninety questions
of Part Three of Summa theologiae.
1274 March 7: Thomas dies at Fossanova.
1277 March 7: Thomas condemned at Paris.
1323 Thomas is canonized.
1325 Paris condemnation revoked.