St. Thomas Aquinas: Revelation and Reason
Text of St. Thomas: Historical Context
The life of St. Thomas Aquinas elapses in the thirteenth century and represents a synthesis of the spirit of his time. The Middle Ages, which had spent long centuries assimilating the diverse cultures that had broken into the Roman Empire during the barbarian invasions, is coming to an end. There is, in this period, a flowering of the great cities like Paris and Rome, which had suffered a sharp decline in previous centuries. This makes possible the creation of the first universities. The great religious orders are created, like the Franciscans and Dominicans, to which St. Thomas belongs. In the new universities, competing currents of thought among Franciscans, Dominicans, and the secular clergy fuel much controversy from the viewpoints of philosophy and theology.
Theme
The theme of the text is the need for salvation revelation justified through insufficient reason to know God.
Ideas
- In addition to philosophical matters, human salvation requires a science whose criterion is the divine because God is the end of man, beyond human reason.
- Justification of the thesis that God exceeds the capacity of reason through an argument from authority: the quotes Isaiah 64, 4.
- For man to turn to God, we need to know Him, and this requires disclosure.
- There are truths about God that reason alone can understand, but only after hard work and the risk of errors.
- Since knowledge of God’s salvation depends, it is necessary that these truths were also revealed.
- Conclusions: It is, therefore, necessary that there be a truth revealed in addition to offering rational truth in philosophical matters.
Relationship between Ideas
St. Thomas employs the argument of insufficient reason to justify the necessity of revelation with the truths of faith, and from then on, the second part, in relation to the truths about God that are also accessible to reason. The text ends by stating the conclusion drawn from the two previous sections.
Explanation of Ideas
The basic assumption of the text is the idea, of Aristotelian origin, that man naturally tends toward the good. Since that is identified with St. Thomas taking God as the fullness of being, knowledge of God is the condition of compliance with this trend. According to the Thomistic conception of reason and faith, the scope of knowledge relevant to reason is the natural world, so that the knowledge of God is beyond the scope of what is knowable through the natural light of reason. The knowledge of God, which is necessary for the solution, must necessarily come from a different source of reason. This source is revelation.
However, there are truths that can be indistinct but never simultaneously rational knowledge and faith. These truths are a condition of faith itself and are, therefore, called preambles of faith.
Why did God want there to be truths we can know in two ways? Because it is true that reason can conquer only after much effort and imperfectly. Only some men can know, and as God has wanted to make reason accessible to all men, He also revealed these truths so that all men may know that salvation comes to men easily and safely.