Download PDF | Brian Davies - Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Contra Gentiles_ A Guide and Commentary-Oxford University Press (2016).
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Preface
thomas aquinas’s summa Contra Gentiles stands out among his many writings. It is not a report of a disputed question over which he presided; nor is it a commentary on a text. It is not a short treatise on a single topic; and it does not range over Christian beliefs in the manner of the more famous Summa Theologiae. Its main conclusions cohere with what we find in Aquinas’s commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard (1100–1160) and with much that he argues for in his Summa Theologiae.
However, even a glance at these two works will leave readers recognizing that the Summa Contra Gentiles is seriously different from either of them. It does not come with “questions” and “articles.” Indeed, it resembles a contemporary book since it consists of chapters and flows along in a way that the Sentences commentary and the Summa Theologiae do not. And it reads as produced by someone keen to argue for a number of theses while ignoring certain medieval conventions for discussing them. It comes across as a text in which Aquinas is trying to explain his views on what people can know about God and divine revelation. You might even say that it comes across as a work in which he contributes to philosophy of religion and theology in ways that contemporary philosophers and theologians can appreciate.
In this book I present an overview of the Summa Contra Gentiles for students and teachers of theology and philosophy, and anyone with an interest in Aquinas. This volume can therefore be regarded as a sequel to my Thomas Aquinas’s “Summa Theologiae”: A Guide and Commentary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).1 Like that book, this one aims to be introductory, if also comprehensive, and it does not presume that its reader is already familiar with medieval thinking. I begin by trying to situate the Summa Contra Gentiles historically; so I present a brief account of Aquinas’s life and writings. I also consider the questions “When did he draft the Summa Contra Gentiles?” “Why did he do so?” and “What kind of work is it?” I then move systematically through its four books while following their arguments in detail. In doing so, my primary aim is expository. I strive chiefly to explain what Aquinas is saying. But I also spend a lot of time commenting on what he has to say.
The Summa Contra Gentiles has been far less studied and written about than the Summa Theologiae. But it is a remarkable work, and it provides us with access to Aquinas’s mind on certain topics in a way that the Summa Theologiae does not. That is largely because it discusses the question “What can people deduce philosophically concerning God?” in more detail than does the Summa Theologiae. I might add that, as is not the case with the Summa Theologiae, a considerable amount of the Summa Contra Gentiles comes to us in Aquinas’s own handwriting and with signs of much editing by him. It is a work that we know him to have significantly brooded on and revised before letting go.
I am assuming that most readers of this book will need to rely on translations of Aquinas’s writings. The best available English edition of the Summa Contra Gentiles is the five-volume one published by the University of Notre Dame Press in 1975.2 So I quote from this, though often with many emendations.3 When referencing my quotations, I employ the abbreviation “ND” followed by the volume number, page reference, and paragraph number.4 I sometimes cite works of Aquinas other than the Summa Contra Gentiles. When doing so, I refer to easily accessible and reliable translations.5 In what follows I abbreviate “Summa Contra Gentiles” as SCG. Translations from the Bible come from the New Revised Standard Version. I should add that I have tried to avoid gender-specific reference to God. In some instances, however, I have used “he”/“his” simply to avoid awkwardness in wording. Aquinas himself did not have to strive to write with an eye on inclusive language since Latin is inclusive in a way English is not. For advice on earlier versions of what follows, or on parts of it, I am, with the usual disclaimer, much indebted to Christopher Arroyo, James Claffey, Samuel Kampa, David Kovacs, Paul Kucharski, Turner Nevitt, Michael Torre, and Zita Toth, who created the appendix. For her work as in-house editor, I am also grateful to Cynthia Read at Oxford University Press. I am also grateful to Gwen Colvin of Oxford University Press.
The Summa Contra Gentiles and Its Context it is possible to make some sense of texts without knowing much about their authors. It is also possible to benefit from reading them without knowing when and why they were written. Yet properly to appreciate what texts have to offer requires that one does know something about their authors, when they wrote, and their intentions in writing. In this chapter, therefore, I turn to the Summa Contra Gentiles (SCG) by first offering a short account of the life and works of Aquinas. I then briefly characterize his thinking in general while going on to discuss when the SCG was written and why Aquinas embarked on it.
1.1 Aquinas’s Life Thomas Aquinas entered the world as a member of a wealthy and aristocratic family.1 But he died as one among a group of people committed to poverty.2 He was born around 1224–1226. He was dead by the end of 1274.3 His birthplace was the castle of Roccasecca in southern Italy, which was his family’s home. His death occurred at the Cistercian Abbey of Fossanova, not far from Rome. His remains are now in the church of the Jacobins in Toulouse, France. He was canonized as a saint by Pope John XXII in 1325; his feast day is celebrated by the Catholic Church on January 28, though before the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) it was celebrated on March 4.4 At the age of five or six, Aquinas was sent to study at the Benedictine Abbey of Monte Cassino, whose abbot was one of his relatives. Here he was instructed in grammar and writing. He was also introduced to biblical texts and to the works of Christian theologians such as St. Augustine of Hippo (354–430). But military conflict between the Emperor Frederick II (1194–1250) and Pope Gregory IX (d. 1241) led to Aquinas leaving Monte Cassino so as to continue his education at the University of Naples, founded by Frederick II in 1224 as a training place for potentially useful civil servants. This university, however, had a wide-ranging curriculum that included philosophy and theology.5
While studying in Naples, Aquinas became acquainted with the Order of Preachers, better known as the Dominicans, founded by St. Dominic Guzman (1170–1221). The Dominicans were an order of friars, and they had only a few men working in Naples when Aquinas got to know them. But he took the Dominican habit in 1242 or 1243. His family was not happy with this decision and detained him under house arrest for some time, though they eventually released him to go his own way. To begin with, Aquinas lived among Dominicans in Paris, which at that time, along with Bologna and Oxford, was home to one of the major medieval universities. Here, he might have had some connection with the university’s Faculty of Arts, and he was almost certainly working under the direction of St. Albert the Great (Albertus Magnus), at that time one of the most prominent and influential of Dominican scholars.6 Aquinas continued to work under Albert’s direction when Albert moved to Cologne in 1248 so as to establish a house of studies there. While at Cologne, Aquinas acted as Albert’s secretary. He may also have started commenting on the Bible. Also in Cologne, Aquinas probably wrote his De Principiis Naturae (On the Principles of Nature), a short text that discusses themes developed early in Aristotle’s Physics. 7 In 1251 or 1252 Aquinas returned to the University of Paris to begin work as a teacher. Initially, he delivered lectures commenting on biblical books. He then lectured and commented on the Sentences of Peter Lombard (c. 1096– 1160).8 In 1256 he became a Master of Theology, a post he relinquished around 1259. Writings of Aquinas that derive from this period of his life include a commentary on Lombard’s Sentences (Commentum in Libros Sententiarum Petri Lombardi), a commentary on the De Trinitate (On the Trinity) by Boethius (c. 480–524) (Super Boethium De Trinitate), and On Being and Essence (De Ente et Essentia). At this stage in his career Aquinas also began to write his Summa Contra Gentiles. Aquinas’s function as a Master of Theology was to lecture on the Bible, to preach, and to preside over academic debates referred to as “Disputed Questions.”9 Around the time when he became a Master of Theology, however, Aquinas was also drawn into an acrimonious argument that had arisen between teachers at the University of Paris who were members of the Dominican and Franciscan orders of friars and those who, though clerics, were not Dominicans or Franciscans. In 1256 Aquinas defended the friars in Contra Impugnantes Dei Cultum et Religionem (Against Opponents of the Worship of God and Religion). In later years he followed up this defense in two other works. In 1261 or thereabouts, Aquinas moved to Orvieto in Italy in order to teach Dominican friars in their priory there.10 Dominican legislation of the day required that Dominican priories had in residence a “conventual lector” whose job was to ensure that friars continued with studies regardless of their age or experience; and it was as the Orvieto priory’s conventual lector that Aquinas became a member of that house. In 1265, however, he was assigned to set up a Dominican institute of studies at the priory of Santa Sabina in Rome. It was at this time that he began to write his monumental Summa Theologiae, on which he was still working at the time of his death.11 In 1268 Aquinas returned to Paris as a Master of Theology, and his duties were the same as they had previously been. In 1272, however, he was directed to found a Dominican study house in Naples and to teach at the university there. But his health was evidently failing around this time. He stopped writing from the end of September 1273, and he died in 1274. His death occurred while he was making his way to France in order to attend the Second Council of Lyons so as to advise concerning disagreements between Greek and Latin Christians. He was already fairly ill by the time he set out for the council. On his way to it he became increasingly sick and was taken to the Abbey of Fossanova, where he died on March 7.
1.2 Aquinas’s Writings I have mentioned some of Aquinas’s writings while sketching his biography. At this point, however, I should say something about them as a whole and something about Aquinas’s thinking in general.12 An important point to note is that Aquinas wrote voluminously and in works with different structures and purposes. We have from him short philosophical treatises, like De Principiis Naturae and De Ente et Essentia. But Aquinas liked to write commentaries on various texts. So we derive a number of biblical commentaries from him: on Isaiah, Jeremiah, Job, Psalms, Matthew, John, and several letters of St. Paul.13 Then, there are a number of commentaries on works by Aristotle, such as the Sententia Libri De Anima (on Aristotle’s De Anima [On the Soul]), the Sententia Super Physicam (on Aristotle’s Physics), the Expositio Libri Perihermeneias (on Aristotle’s On Interpretation), the Expositio Libri Posteriorum (on Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics), the Sententia Libri Ethicorum (on the Nicomachean Ethics), and the Sententia Super Metaphysicam (on Aristotle’s Metaphysics). Aquinas also wrote more than one commentary on Boethius and a commentary on Pseudo-Dionysius’s The Divine Names. 14 He also commented on the Liber de Causis (The Book of Causes).15 And he produced a number of Disputed Questions. He wrote his De Veritate during his first teaching period in Paris, but he went on to edit a number of other Disputed Questions, including De Potentia (On the Power of God), De Anima, and De Malo (On Evil). In addition to all of this we have what Jean-Pierre Torrell calls “theological syntheses.”16 These include Aquinas’s commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, the Summa Theologiae, and (so I would say, though Torrell does not), the Compendium Theologiae (Compendium of Theology).17 Aquinas’s theological syntheses also include the Summa Contra Gentiles. Aquinas produced more than the foregoing works, but you will get a sense of the range of his writing interests from what I have been saying.18 They are those of someone concerned to engage in both philosophy and theology. Some have argued that Aquinas was not really a philosopher since his thinking is always theological, and this position is defensible for a number of reasons. Aquinas never formally taught philosophy and never describes himself as a philosopher. He would have understood the word “philosopher” to signify a pagan thinker, not a Christian, and certainly not someone functioning as a Master of Theology or a teacher of Dominicans. Again, almost all of Aquinas’s writings are heavily influenced by the Bible, from which he frequently quotes while also making numerous respectful allusions to classical Christian theologians such as Augustine of Hippo, St. Gregory the Great (540–604), and St. Jerome (347–420). Aquinas often refers to “the articles of faith,” which he takes to derive from biblical teaching and to amount to the content of Christian documents such as the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed.19 And it is the articles of faith that Aquinas is constantly trying to clarify and reflect on in many of his writings, including the SCG. So there can be no doubt that Aquinas was primarily a theologian. He takes himself to be chiefly concerned with Christian faith. In this connection, I should emphasize that Aquinas does not believe that Christian faith can be derived from purely philosophical reasoning or that it has to be. He consistently denies that the articles of faith can be philosophically proved to be true. Again, in his study of Boethius’s De Trinitate he roundly declares: “Someone may err by making reason precede faith when it comes to matters of faith rather than making faith precede reason, as when someone is willing to believe only what that person is able to discover by reason. It should in fact be just the other way around.”20 On the other hand, though, Aquinas writes a lot of what most contemporary philosophers would recognize as philosophy, even if they disagree with it. In his commentaries on Aristotle, he aims to elucidate and reflect on the work of a highly influential philosopher. Again, he spends a lot of time dealing with traditional philosophical questions such as “What are human beings?” “Can reason unaided by revelation demonstrate that God exists?” “Can we take language used to talk about God as making sense?” “What are the basic constituents of things in the spatiotemporal world?” and “Can we give people reasons for acting virtuously?” Aquinas evidently believes that he has true answers to some of these questions even before he proceeds to discuss them, answers to be found in the teachings of some distinguished Christian thinkers. Yet Aquinas also believes that he can go a long way to defending these answers without invoking the articles of faith as premises in his arguments. As I will show, Aquinas maintains that “there is a twofold mode of truth in what we profess about God.” Some of this “exceeds all the ability of the human reason,” but “there are some truths which the natural reason also is able to reach.”21 So, Aquinas holds that reason without revelation can arrive at truth about God, and he thinks the same when it comes to certain truths concerning what is not divine.22 In this sense, Aquinas is perfectly prepared to engage in philosophy, considered as a matter of rational evaluation and argument not presupposing the truth of any theological doctrine. And never more so than in the SCG. This is obviously the work of a Christian theologian. But it is the work of one anxious to think philosophically about some key religious beliefs, especially ones about the existence and nature of God. Aquinas begins the SCG by quoting Proverbs 8:7, and biblical quotations are plentiful as the SCG proceeds, though their number increases in book 4. Yet three of the SCG’s four books consist of arguments that Aquinas offers for conclusions concerning God that he takes to be defensible without invoking the authority of the Bible, great as he takes this to be. So, three of the SCG’s four books amount to an extended essay in what is often called “natural theology.” I take natural theology to be any attempt to reason about the existence and nature of God without dependence on purportedly divine revelation.23 Natural theology is a philosophical enterprise. Without employing theological premises, it seeks to show that we have good reason to believe that God exists and that something can truly be said when it comes to what God is. And much of the SCG offers natural theology on this understanding of it. So, as Norman Kretzmann nicely puts it, in books 1–3 of the SCG Aquinas presents “theology from the bottom up.”24 Book 4 finds Aquinas explicitly drawing on “the articles of faith” as he adds to the contents of SCG 1–3. Be that as it may, however, the bulk of the SCG is a sustained essay in natural theology. I am told that the great twentieth-century theologian Karl Barth (1886– 1968) was asked in 1962 to summarize what he said in his many writings. He is said to have replied: “Jesus loves me, that I know, for the Bible tells me so.” This story might be apocryphal, though it fits in with the drift of Barth’s theology. The point I want to stress now, however, is that, though Aquinas is in agreement with Barth when it comes to the importance of revelation, he thinks, as Barth did not, that philosophy can be quite a useful aid to theologians.25 This fact is very evident from the text of the SCG.
1.3 When and Why Did Aquinas Write the Summa Contra Gentiles? There has been much scholarly debate concerning the dating and purpose of many of Aquinas’s writings, or writings attributed to him.26 And such debate continues when it comes to the SCG. But we do have a critical edition of this work produced by the Leonine Commission, so we at least know that Aquinas wrote it.27 The Leonine Commission consists of a group of scholars deputed to produce the best possible editions of Aquinas’s writings, ones that most accurately reflect what he actually wrote. It was founded in 1879 under the influence of Pope Leo XIII. When thinking of the work of the Leonine Commission, we have to remember that Aquinas did not write using a computer. Indeed, he lived before the invention of the printing press, at a time when literary works still had to be copied by hand and circulated in manuscript form. And manuscripts of Aquinas’s writings that survive sometimes differ from each other even when it comes to a single work such as the SCG. Indeed, some of his “writings” survive in reports of what he said rather than in texts drafted by him and subsequently copied. In short, there are serious problems when it comes to getting as close as we can to what Aquinas wrote in what is authentically attributable to him.28 Hence the need for the Leonine Commission. Textual matters aside, however, there remains the question “When did Aquinas write the SCG?” Largely due to the labors of René-Antoine Gauthier, we can be fairly sure as to how to answer this question.29 We can reasonably conclude that Aquinas began the SCG when he first taught in Paris, that he continued work on it in Italy, having moved there from Paris, and that he had finished writing it around 1265–1267. Gauthier notes that much of SCG 1, in manuscripts of it that come from Aquinas’s hand, are written on the same parchment and with the same ink as Aquinas’s commentary on Boethius’s De Trinitate. This fact allows us to date the beginning of the SCG to some time prior to June 1259, when Aquinas, together with St. Albert, was present at a Dominican General Chapter at Valenciennes. However, the parchment and ink change at a certain point, suggesting that Aquinas had then left Paris for Italy. Also worth noting is that quotations from Aristotle at a certain stage in the SCG rely on translations that were not available in Paris in the 1250s but were available in Italy around 1260–1265, suggesting that SCG 3,85 was not written before 1263–1264.3
also worth noting is that Aquinas refers to the SCG in works that can be dated to soon after 1265. Bearing in mind such facts, Gauthier, with whom I would not dream of trying to quarrel, concludes that Aquinas had completed and revised the SCG by the autumn of 1265, just before, or around, the time that, he started to write the Summa Theologiae. But why did Aquinas embark on his first summa, the Summa Contra Gentiles?31 When it comes to this question, answers are harder to provide than ones we might offer when it comes to the dating of the SCG. It has often been said that Aquinas wrote the SCG as a manual or textbook to be used by Dominican missionaries working in Spain, in which Islam was then a force to be reckoned with by Christians. It has also been claimed that he did so at the request of Raymund of Peñ afort, who was Master General of the Dominican Order from 1238 to 1240. This tradition of thinking concerning the SCG derives from the Chronicle of the King of Aragon, James I written by a Dominican called Peter Marsilio, who finished his work around 1314. Peter says that Raymund was anxious to convert infidels and that he asked Aquinas, considered as a scholar of great renown, to write what turned out to be the SCG. There are, however, reasons for doubting the historical accuracy of this account. It is not that nothing can be said in its favor. For one thing, the SCG is evidently an apologetic work since it defends a series of Christian beliefs from criticism, or potential criticism, and since its earliest and best attested title is Liber de Veritate Catholicae Fidei contra Errores Infidelium (A Book on the Truth of the Catholic Faith against the Errors of Unbelievers).32 Again, Raymund of Peñ afort worked in Spain, where the influence of Islam was considerable, and from the middle of the thirteenth century Dominicans had a definite interest in missionary work among Muslims. In 1255, for example, the Dominican Master General, Humbert of Romans (c. 1194–1277), called, with considerable success, for Dominicans to volunteer for foreign missions. In some of his writings he stressed the need for there always to be Dominican treatises against the errors of unbelievers. So we might suppose that Aquinas could have written the SCG with some kind of missionary aim in mind, or as a work to aid Dominican missionaries in some way. Yet the SCG does not seem to be especially targeting Islam. Insofar as it criticizes various ideas, these are ones coming from many people, including ancient philosophers, Jewish thinkers, and Christians whom Aquinas took to have fallen into heresy. I doubt that anyone reading the SCG today with no prompting as to its purpose would speedily say “This is obviously a treatise against Islam.” It just does not read like such a work. It refers to Islamic teaching from time to time. But we have reason to believe that Aquinas was not very well informed about Islamic thinking, though he was familiar with the writings of some famous Islamic philosophers such as Avicenna (Ibn Sı̄ nā , c. 980–1037) and Averroes (Ibn Rushd, 1126–1198).33 We should also note that Peter Marsilio does not specify that the SCG was written as a tract against Islam. Peter speaks only of “pagans” or “unbelievers” (infidelium), which is highly ambiguous since he could here be thinking of any people who are not orthodox Christians. Also to be noted is the fact that Aquinas did not dedicate the SCG to Raymund of Peñ afort. Had he written the work at Raymund’s request, one would expect him to have done so given the custom of the time, one to which he conformed in a number of his writings.34 Even more significant than this fact, however, is one concerning chronology. Aquinas had completed the first fifty chapters of SCG 1 by autumn of 1259, which suggests that he had begun to work on them possibly as early as 1257. By this time in his career, however, Aquinas was not the renowned scholar he is said to be by Peter Marsilio. He had barely finished his commentary on the Sentences and had not yet published his De Veritate. As Gauthier observes, far from having been struck by the reputation of Aquinas, Raymund of Peñ afort had probably never even heard of him when he started to work on the SCG.35 Again, therefore, what was Aquinas trying to do in writing the SCG? Perhaps the best way to discern a correct answer to this question is to read what he says in SCG 1,1–9, in which he provides what reads like an extended preface to the work, one that makes little reference to Muslims or to missionary matters.
1.4 Aquinas Explains Himself Aquinas begins the SCG by talking about “the office of the wise man.” “They are to be called wise,” he says, “who order things rightly and govern them well” (SCG 1,1).36 He adds that “the rule of government and order for all things directed to an end must be taken from the end.” So, he argues, “a thing is best disposed when it is fittingly ordered to its end.” But what if there is a universal end for all things? In that case, the “absolutely wise person,” as opposed to someone wise in some particular art or skill, will be concerned with “the end of the universe, which is also the origin of the universe.”37 Here Aquinas is thinking of God as “the first principle whereby all things are.” Yet, Aquinas quickly adds, thinking about God not only involves the truly wise person meditating on God. It also “belongs to that person to refute the opposing falsehood.” Hence, in SCG 1,2 Aquinas observes that “in the name of divine Mercy, I have the confidence to embark on the work of a wise person,” which is “the task of making known, as far as my limited powers will allow, the truth that the Catholic faith professes, and of setting aside the errors that are opposed to it.”38 Aquinas’s focus in the SCG, therefore, is on truth and error concerning God in general. Indeed, as he continues with SCG 1,2 he makes this quite clear by referring to different kinds of people subscribing to what he takes to be error concerning divine things. More specifically, he mentions those censored by “ancient doctors of the Church” in their criticisms of “Gentiles”—by which Aquinas means people who are neither Jewish nor Christian. He also refers to (1) heretics (by which he means people who claim to be Christian but do not adhere to orthodox Christian belief), and (2) Muslims and Jews (whom he takes to be religious but non-Christian in their beliefs). He also mentions “pagans,” presumably referring to anyone who is not a Christian, a heretical Christian, a Muslim, or a Jew. But how does Aquinas think that he is able to refute all of these classes of people? When it comes to Jewish people and Christian heretics, Aquinas notes that “the wise person” can at least appeal to biblical texts. So, “against the Jews we are able to argue by means of the Old Testament, while against heretics we are able to argue by means of the New Testament.”39 Yet Aquinas adds that Muslims and pagans “accept neither the one nor the other,” which leaves him concluding with three sentences that effectively indicate the basic line of thought behind the SCG: We must, therefore, have recourse to the natural reason, to which all people are forced to give their assent. However, it is true, in divine matters, that the natural reason has its failings. Now while we are investigating some given truth, we shall also show what errors are set aside by it; and we shall likewise show how the truth that we come to know by demonstration is in accord with the Christian religion.40 By “natural reason” here Aquinas means what we might call “philosophical insight” or “philosophy” or just “reason.” He is referring to what we can figure out on our own by trying to think well and clearly and without recourse to anything that we might take to be divine revelation. More specifically, however, he is thinking of reason as able to demonstrate certain truths. As I will show, Aquinas distinguishes between different kinds of demonstration. Following Aristotle, however, he always takes a demonstration to be an argument that proceeds from evidently true premises while entailing a conclusion that cannot be denied given that the premises are accepted. In the passage just quoted, therefore, Aquinas is saying that he is going to try to demonstrate certain things about God, while adding that he will also be arguing that what he has demonstrated accords with orthodox Christian teaching, this, in turn, being what Aquinas takes to be found in the Bible, in creeds such as the Apostles’ Creed or the Nicene Creed, and in the teachings of church councils prior to his time. In that case, however, what does Aquinas have in mind when he says that “in divine matters the natural reason has its failings”? Here Aquinas is anticipating a conclusion for which he argues later in the SCG and elsewhere in his writings. We can express the conclusion as “Articles of Christian faith cannot be demonstrated.” At this point I should again note that Aquinas frequently refers to what he calls “the articles of faith.” He takes these to be the uniquely Christian teachings: that God is Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), that Christ was divine, and that people shall be raised from the dead. Aquinas does not take “God exists” to be an article of faith since he knows very well that there are Jews and Muslims who accept much that he does when it comes to the existence and nature of God. Aquinas thinks that the truth of “God exists” is what the articles of faith take for granted or presuppose, and he holds that one can demonstrate that God exists. Yet he consistently denies that one can demonstrate the truth of the articles of faith. Why? Because he does not think that we have premises known by us to be evidently true that guarantee their truth. Take, for example, the doctrine of the Trinity. As I will show, Aquinas’s view is that this doctrine cannot be philosophically demonstrated since, while reason can prove that there is something that is divine, it cannot prove this something is a trinity of persons all of whom, according to orthodox Christian teaching, are equally divine. Again, consider the claim that Christ was divine. Aquinas typically denies that this can be philosophically demonstrated since nothing that we can know about the life of Christ can be used so as to construct an argument along the lines (1) Christ was evidently A,B,C; (2) anything A,B,C is divine (3); therefore Christ was divine. Aquinas’s view is that what we can know about Christ based on empirically based testimony is only going to give us knowledge of what a particular human being said and did. You might suppose that the miracles of Jesus establish his divinity without question. To this supposition, however, Aquinas usually says something like “The miracles of Jesus might show us that Jesus was graced by God, but they do not demonstrate that Jesus was God incarnate.” Aquinas clearly has high standards when it comes to demonstration. As I have said, he thinks that we have a demonstration when we have evidently true premises leading inevitably to a certain conclusion. So where does this leave him as playing the part of the wise person in the SCG? It leads him to recognize that, while the articles of faith do not admit of demonstration, reason, without presupposing the truth of Christian revelation, can lead us to demonstrate much about the existence and nature of God. So we find that the first three books of the SCG are entirely devoted to a defense of this thesis. Then, in the fourth book, Aquinas argues that the articles of Christian faith do not present us with what is unreasonable to believe even though these articles cannot themselves be demonstrated to be true. I take all of this to mean that Aquinas must have written the SCG so as (1) to reflect at length concerning what reason can tell us about God, (2) to note ways in which what reason tells us about God harmonizes with what revelation teaches, and (3) to defend the articles of faith against charges of irrationality. Whether or not he had missionaries and their aims in mind, this seems to have been what he was most intent on when drafting and correcting the SCG.41 As I have said, in The Metaphysics of Theism, Norman Kretzmann refers to “theology from the bottom up.” Correspondingly, he also talks about “theology from the top down.”42 By “theology from the top down” Kretzmann means “reflecting on God in the light of divine revelation.” By “theology from the bottom up” he means “reflecting on God without recourse to revelation.” And, although Aquinas is clearly writing as a Christian from the start of SCG, he might, I think, have been willing to accept Kretzmann’s distinction. I suspect that he might have been happy to describe SCG 1–3 as “theology from the bottom up” and SCG 4 as “theology from the top down.” Be that as it may, however, SCG 1–3 certainly amounts to a long treatise on natural theology, albeit that it comes from someone who clearly believes in God and is happy to cite biblical texts and various Christian authorities as he continues about his business. Natural theology has been seriously criticized both by philosophers and by a number of theologians. Philosophers who attack it, or examples of it, tend to do so because they do not find certain philosophical arguments concerning the existence and nature of God to be plausible. Theologians hostile to natural theology are usually against it because they think it impious to hold God against the bar of human reasoning or because they think that to do so is somehow to act in opposition to the teaching of the Bible.43 Be that as it may, however, Aquinas is very much in favor of natural theology and thinks that he can provide a good and substantial amount of it. And the SCG is, perhaps, the work in which he most displays his interest in and talents for natural theology. It is a presiding thesis of Aquinas that truth cannot contradict truth. In the SCG he shows himself to uphold this thesis in the way in which he tries to apply reason even while accepting that there is such a thing as divine revelation. Before he gets seriously down to business in his efforts on this front, however, Aquinas has some more things to say in SCG 1,1–9. In fact, he argues for three theses while going on to explain the SCG’s order and manner of proceeding.
The first thesis is that even though reason cannot demonstrate the articles of faith, it does not follow that those who assent to them are being foolish (SCG 1,6). The second is that truths that reason can discern do not conflict with any articles of faith (SCG 1,7). The third is that reason can seek to get a grip on some truths about God even though God exceeds the range of human reasoning in a serious way (SCG 1,8). As I have noted, Aquinas does not take the articles of Christian faith to be demonstrable. Yet he does not think that those who accept them are being unreasonable or foolish. For one thing, he argues, the articles of faith are revealed by God, who knows everything. Then again, he observes, while the articles of faith may not be strictly demonstrable, there are “fitting arguments” for their truth.44 In this connection, for example, Aquinas notes that even uneducated people can be filled with great wisdom concerning divine things and, in being so, appear to fulfill Old Testament prophecy. Such wisdom, Aquinas holds, is not to be found among the adherents of non-Christian religions.45 When it comes to the claim that truths established by reason do not conflict with the articles of faith, Aquinas argues that “only the false is opposed to the true,”46 and that what reason demonstrates to be true cannot conflict with truths divinely revealed by God. He also maintains (1) that our ability to know things by reason comes from God and cannot, therefore, be at odds with what God has revealed, and (2) that revelation cannot conflict with what we can know by reason since this would entail that God is hindering us from knowing truth, which is an impossible supposition. So, Aquinas concludes SCG 1,7 by writing: Whatever arguments are brought forward against the doctrines of faith are conclusions incorrectly derived from the first and self-evident principles imbedded in nature. Such conclusions do not have the force of demonstration; they are arguments that are either probable or sophistical. And so, there exists the possibility to answer them.47 The main point that Aquinas is making here is that what reason can demonstrate cannot conflict with truths that God has revealed and cannot be proved to do so. One might, of course, wonder what might be said against claims to the effect that this or that article of faith can be shown to be false. Yet, as I will show, Aquinas goes on in the SCG to indicate how he thinks about this matter with respect to specific arguments against particular articles of faith. At this point in the SCG, however, he is basically laying down some general principles to which he will adhere as he continues. He is, so to speak, showing his hand, but not his full hand. And that is what he is doing again in SCG 1,8, in which he briefly says that we can profitably reason about God even though we cannot demonstrate the truths of the articles of faith so as to arrive at a comprehensive understanding of God. How we can profitably reason about God while not attempting to demonstrate the truth of the articles of faith will turn out to be the major topic of SCG 1–3, which brings us to SCG 1,9 in which Aquinas talks about his order and manner of procedure in the SCG. As we might expect, he repeats some of what he has already said in SCG 1,1–8. Specifically he makes the following points: (1) The wise person should be concerned with what can be known of God by reason and by revelation; (2) The wise person should consider what can be known of God by reason unaided by revelation and should also be concerned to refute objections to truths about God known by reason and objections to truths about God revealed by God. When it comes to what can be known of God by reason, Aquinas is thinking of what can be demonstrated concerning God. When it comes to what is true of God insofar as God has revealed it, Aquinas says that, since this cannot be demonstrated to be true, “our intention should not be to convince our adversaries by arguments; it should be to answer their arguments against the truth; for, as we have shown, natural reason cannot be contrary to the truths of faith.”48 So: This, then, is the manner of procedure we intend to follow. We shall first seek to make known that truth which faith professes and reason investigates. This we shall do by bringing forth both demonstrative and probable arguments. ...Then, in order to follow a development from the more manifest to the less manifest, we shall proceed to make known that truth which surpasses reason, answering the objections of its adversaries and setting forth the truth of faith by probable arguments and by authorities, to the best of our ability.49 In short, Aquinas tells us that his intention in writing the SCG is to provide an extended essay in natural theology (which will occupy him through books 1–3) and then to offer defenses of the articles of faith (which will occupy him in book 4). And that, I think, is all that we can confidently refer to when it comes to the question “Why did Aquinas write the SCG?” I have tried to indicate why the “missionary manual” account of the SCG is to be distrusted. But Aquinas’s own account of his purposes seems fairly clear and indicates that he thought of the SCG as a technical and somewhat apologetic work designed to offer a series of demonstrations concerning the existence and nature of God while concluding with reflections on reason and the articles of faith. The bulk of the SCG is an extended essay on natural theology and is, in Kretzmann’s phrase, concerned with “theology from the bottom up.” Its concluding book is much concerned with objections to articles of faith based on various grounds to which Aquinas responds with no intention of demonstrating that these articles are true. Yet what kind of approach does Aquinas take to demonstration when it comes to the existence and nature of God? He starts to explain himself on this matter in SCG 1,10–14, to which I now turn.
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