Full Title: “Quod Scit Una Uetula: Aquinas on the Nature of Theology.” In The Theology of Thomas Aquinas (eds. Rik van Nieuwenhove and Joseph Wawrykow; South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005). (click here to purchase the book).
Here are my summary notes:
1. Sacra Doctrina is SOTERIOLOGICAL.
“It was necessary for human salvation that certain matters which exceed human reason be known to [us] by divine revelation,” and, correlatively, “received through faith” (Aquinas, STh q.1 a.1; and ad. 1)
- “Aquinas often gives multiple reasons in support of the positions he takes, but here he relies on only one. We need [Catholic theology, or] sacra doctrina because our salvation depends on it. The goal of life for which God has made us-the enjoyment of God himself, seen face to face-is wholly beyond our power to attain” (3) and beyond our reason to grasp & orient our lives towards this final end of life with the Triune God.
“The Christian faith,” which clings to that body of saving doctrine we receive from God, “consists above all [principaliter] in the confession of the Holy Trinity, and it glories especially in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Aquinas, De Rat. Fid, ch. 1 (Leonine Edition 40 B [1967), 57, lin.15-17).
- For Aquinas, this saving knowledge of Jesus Christ is, indeed, “the consummation of the whole enterprise of theology” (STh III, prol). “Thus sacra doctrina always has a soteriological purpose. Even at its most recondite-and “holy teaching” in Aquinas’ hands can become a highly intricate affair-theology always serves the practical aim of helping human beings attain their ultimate destiny. Aquinas’ point is that the saving aim of sacra doctrina, God seen and contemplated by human beings, gives the whole of this teaching its basic character” (5).
2: Sacra Doctrina is SCIENTIFIC.
SD is a science in the Aristotelian idea of science (Posterior Analytics), insofar as it is a lower “subalternate” science (like engineering) which relies on 1st principles delivered to it by a higher science (like physics).
- SD‘s 1st principles (“the articles of faith” – that is, truths about God and God’s saving works, which God himself makes known in divine revelation (“the articles of faith” in the Creeds express the heart of Scripture, which forms the basis for SD)) proceed from principles known by the light of a higher science, namely that of God and the blessed. “Hence, just as music credits principles taught (tradita) to it by arithmetic, so holy teaching credits principles revealed by God” (STh q.1, a.2c). Therefore, just as engineers trust the premises of which they presume physicists have a more rigorous knowledge, theologians trust the premises of which they presume God & the blessed have a more rigorous knowledge.
“A human being is much more certain about what he hears from God, who cannot be deceived, than about what he sees by his own reason, because his reason can be deceived” (STh II-ll-4-8 ad 2).
- “So even if we could demonstrate by unaided reason that Christian teaching is revealed by God [say by miracles], we could NOT use this conclusion about the status of faith’s articles to warrant the belief that they must be true. Far from giving faith adequate rational grounds, this would eliminate faith’s own certainty, since it seeks to establish that which cannot be false on the basis of that which might be” (12).
3: Sacra Doctrina is SAPIENTIAL.
Sacra doctrina is not only science but wisdom… and not just any wisdom but the greatest wisdom.
- To have science (scientia) is to understand effects in light of their causes. To have wisdom (sapientia) goes further. It understands effects (in entire areas of nature or human practice) in light of their ultimate causes. Therefore, Sacra doctrina is the greatest wisdom because we know God, the ultimate cause, in the highest possible way available to humans in this life: “Among all the wisdom available to human beings this teaching is the greatest, not just in one area, but without qualification” (STh q.1, a.6).
Faith is necessary
- For Aquinas, at least when it comes to beliefs about God, consistency with the articles of faith is not enough to secure their truth, even when these beliefs are warranted by self-evident premises. For claims about God to be true, the person who makes them actually has to believe the articles of faith. Therefore, non-Christians who say they believe in God but not in Christ & the Trinity… do NOT really believe that God exists (because they deny the 1st principles). Because God is supremely simple, unless we know what he has told us about himself, we do not know him at all (based on Aristotle’s theory of simple or incomposite entities = simple entities are such that we have to know all their properties at once; we either know all of them or none of them).
“Assenting to the articles [the 1st principles], Christian faith cleaves for his own sake to the triune God as first truth, and so is in a position to [order and] judge every claim to truth in light of the source and measure of all truth” (13).
- Human reason is feeble, and can be mistaken; God’s knowing cannot. Therefore the faith which relies connaturally on God’s own knowledge imparted through scripture and creed (“the articles of faith”) is, despite its lack of self-evidence, more certain than any science which relies on reason’s grasp of principia per se nota. This confirms the epistemic primacy of faith’s articles over even the most obvious of reason’s certainties: “The believer assents more firmly to those things which belong to faith than even to the first principles of reason” (I Sent. q.1 art.3 sol.3) (17). Therefore, primacy in decisions about truth belongs ultimately to them. If a statement is logically inconsistent with the articles of faith, it is FALSE. No statement – including any we may regard as observationally, historically, scientifically, or philosophically justified – can definitively be established as true without being tested for its agreement with the contents of Christian teaching.
Theology & Philosophy
- Theology can USE philosophy: To be sure, not out of any inherent need (the way engineering uses physics), but as a pragmatic means to its own pedagogical ends. Of these Aquinas lists 3 (De Trin. q.2 a.3c): (1) To show that philosophical arguments contrary to the articles of faith are not compelling; (2) To develop demonstrative arguments for those aspects of the faith which can be supported in this way ( the so-called “preambles” to the articles); (3) To clarify and explain what the faith teaches, not because the content of the faith is inherently obscure, but because in the current feeble state of our intellect what lies within the scope of philosophy is more obvious to us than what is epistemically primary and most certain. Thus sacra doctrina “does not accept anything from other sciences as from its superiors, but uses them as inferiors and handmaids” (STh 1.1.5 ad 2).
- Theology can JUDGE philosophy: “According to Aquinas… we can only be sure that philosophy’s results will fit into a Christian view of the world if Christian teaching has the epistemic right to judge, and if need be to reject, even the most thoroughly certified philosophical claim” (23). For Aquinas, philosophy has “about the same autonomy with respect to theology as stonecutting has with respect to architecture (in Aquinas’ terms, philosophy is autonomous not simpliciter, but secundum quid). Stonecutting has its own goals and methods, which the architect is normally willing to leave to the mason. But if the architect’s well-designed edifice crumbles because the stones would not bear the load, he rightly judges that the mason, whatever his protests that the stones were flawless, needs to produce a different result. The architect may, indeed, help him figure out how. In the relationship between faith and reason, grace, modern Thomists often observe, does not destroy nature but perfects it. As Aquinas immediately goes on to say, however, this does not justify the unfettered autonomy of philosophy, but rather eliminates it: “therefore it is necessary that natural reason be subservient to faith” (STh I.1.8 ad 2) (24).
4: Sacra Doctrina and “the Old Woman.”
“Despite all of their effort, none of the philosophers before the coming of Christ was able to know as much about God, and about what is necessary for life, as one old woman [uetula] knows by faith after Christ’s coming. Hence it is said: “The earth is full cf the knowledge of God” [Isaiah 11:9]” (Aquinas, Collationes Credo in Deum I (ed. Ayo, 20).
- Although the “old woman” might know nothing of theology as a science, the “old woman” is wiser in the ways of God than Plato and Aristotle because theology is also wisdom. How so? Christ, Truth itself, has come to this old woman and instructed her in secret. He has given her experiential knowledge so that she can hold fast to what He says. Christ has also given the “old woman” the gift of His own Spirit, Love itself, in Baptism. The Spirit has kindled in her the fire of His love (maybe without her knowing it) and given her the gift of wisdom, a wisdom which comes not first from learning, but from “suffering divine things” (patiens divina) (STh l.43.5 ad 2). As a result, she can assent to “the articles of faith” not from intellectual rigour but from a prior intimacy with God, a “connaturality,” as Aquinas puts it. She spontaneously recognizes in “the articles of faith” the God of whose goodness and love she already enjoys a taste” (14). Christ’s advent is the decisive event in human history ot only soteriologically and morally, but epistemically! (1)
“Sacra doctrina is like an impression of God’s own scientia” in us (STh q.1 a.3 ad.2)
- All the labours of theological learning, argument, and study (“theological wisdom”- painfully acquired wisdom) are but a partial and incomplete attempt to catch up to the wisdom that the old woman possesses as a free gift from God (“mystical wisdom” – the gift of wisdom from the Holy Spirit received in Baptism). The old woman has already “suffering divine things” and can judge rightly, not by taking thought, but by a “spontaneous inclination.” She might not know a lot. But she does know the aim of life. And she can judge rightly about everything necessary for the attainment of that end. The theological master simply strives to make explicit, to recapture in modo cognitionis, what the faithful heart of any old woman already knows… In the end, it seems, we believe the teaching of scripture and creed not because reason gives us compelling grounds to do so, still less because we merely wish that it were true, but because we have already suffered the things of which it speaks. For this reason, faith’s assent to what God teaches amounts to a “certain participation in … and assimilation to God’s own knowledge, in that by the faith infused in us we cling to the first truth for its own sake” (De Trin. q.2 a.2c).
Prodigal Catholic 
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