Daily Lessons from St. Thomas

Aquinas Day By Day

Aquinas’s Topic: Wisdom requires revelation

Scripture: Isaiah 60: 6: Caravans of camels shall fill you, dromedaries from Midian and Ephah; all from Sheba shall come, bearing gold and frankincense, and proclaiming the praises of the Lord.”

Matthew 2: 1, 11. “When Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of King Herod, behold, wise men from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying, ‘Where is the newborn king of the Jews? We saw his star at its rising and have come to do him homage.’ . . . Then they opened their treasures and offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.”

Church calendar: Feast of the Epiphany (medieval style)

Aquinas’s Text: Scriptum in sententiis Bk. 1, prologue, 1.1.

For the medievals, the twelfth and last day of Christmas was the feast of the Epiphany or “manifestation” of the baby Jesus to the magi, the “wise men” who came to came to offer their treasures of gold--a sign of his kingship, frankincense—a sign of his divinity, and myrrh—a sign of his death and resurrection. The magi were indeed wise, for their mastery of astronomy helped them notice the new star in the heavens, which they interpreted as a sign of the “newborn king of the Jews.” Their story introduces one of Aquinas’s favorite themes: discovering wisdom. Aquinas began both his first systematic theological work, the Scriptum in Sententiis, and his last, the Summa theologiae, by noting that philosophy, as important as it is, cannot take humans all the way to true wisdom, which requires revelation, above and beyond human reason.

Art. 1 asks: “Is another doctrine, above and beyond the natural disciplines, necessary for humans?”

Br. Thomas’s “response”:

To understand this question, one must understand that all who perceived things rightly placed the end of human life to be contemplation of God. But contemplation of God has two senses. One kind, which is imperfect, comes about by means of creatures. The Philosopher [Aristotle] placed felicity in this kind of contemplation. But this is the felicity of the wayfarer; and all philosophical thought that proceeds by means of reasoning about about creatures is ordered to this kind of contemplation. There is another kind of contemplation of God, whereby he is seen immediately and in his essence. And this is perfect contemplation, which will be attained in our heavenly homeland, but is possible for a human on the presupposition of faith. Therefore, since things that are for the sake of an end must be proportioned to that end, so far as a human is led by the hand to this contemplation as a wayfarer, this happens not through knowledge taken from creatures but as inspired immediately by divine light. Now this is the teaching of theology.

From this one can draw two conclusions. First, this science [of theology] rules over the other sciences as the principal science. Second, in fealty to it, this science makes use of all the other sciences as its vassals. This is evident in arts ordered one to another, where the end of one falls under the end of another. For example, the end of the pharmacist’s art, which is to prepare medicines, is ordered to the end of medicine, which is health. Therefore, the doctor rules the pharmacist and uses the drugs he produces for his own end. Likewise, since the end of the whole range of philosophy is inferior to the end of theology, and is ordered to it, theology is obliged to rule the other sciences and to use what is taught in them.

Ad hujus evidentiam sciendum est, quod omnes qui recte senserunt posuerunt finem humanae vitae Dei contemplationem. Contemplatio autem Dei est dupliciter. Una per creaturas, quae imperfecta est, ratione jam dicta, in qua contemplatione philosophus, felicitatem contemplativam posuit, quae tamen est felicitas viae; et ad hanc ordinatur tota cognitio philosophica, quae ex rationibus creaturarum procedit. Est alia Dei contemplatio, qua videtur immediate per suam essentiam; et haec perfecta est, quae erit in patria et est homini possibilis secundum fidei suppositionem. Unde oportet ut ea quae sunt ad finem proportionentur fini, quatenus homo manuducatur ad illam contemplationem in statu viae per cognitionem non a creaturis sumptam, sed immediate ex divino lumine inspiratam; et haec est doctrina theologiae.

Ex hoc possumus habere duas conclusiones. Una est, quod ista scientia imperat omnibus aliis scientiis tamquam principalis: alia est, quod ipsa utitur in obsequium sui omnibus aliis scientiis quasi vassallis, sicut patet in omnibus artibus ordinatis, quarum finis unius est sub fine alterius, sicut finis pigmentariae artis, qui est confectio medicinarum, ordinatur ad finem medicinae, qui est sanitas: unde medicus imperat pigmentario et utitur pigmentis ab ipso factis, ad suum finem. Ita, cum finis totius philosophiae sit infra finem theologiae, et ordinatus ad ipsum, theologia debet omnibus aliis scientiis imperare et uti his quae in eis traduntur.