Chesterton on Aquinas

I've been enjoying G.K. Chesterton's biography of Thomas Aquinas in preparation for a class on Calvin and Aquinas. It is not only a biography, but also an introduction to the philosophy of Aquinas. There are an endless amount of quotable passages from this biographical sketch of one of the Church’s greatest theologians by one of it’s greatest defenders of Orthodoxy. Chesterton has a knack for boiling down the essentials truths of very difficult concepts into pithy one liners. Here is a bit of lengthy passage on Aquinas’ understanding (and subsequently, Chesterton’s own understanding) on the role of apologetics:

If there is one sentence that could be carved in marble, as representing the calmest and most enduring rationality of his unique intelligence, it is a sentence which came pouring out with all the rest of this molten lava. If there is one phrase that stands before history as typical of Thomas Aquinas, it is that phrase about his own argument: “It is not based on documents of faith, but on the reasons and statements of the philosophers themselves.” Would that all Orthodox doctors in deliberation were as reasonable as Aquinas in anger! Would that all Christian apologists would remember that maxim; and write it up in large letters on the wall, before they nail any theses there. At the top of his fury, Thomas Aquinas understands, what so many defenders of orthodoxy will not understand. It is no good to tell an atheist that he is an atheist; or to charge a denier of immorality with the infamy of denying it; or to imagine that one can force an opponent to admit he is wrong, by proving that he is wrong on somebody else’s principles, but not on his own. After the great example of St. Thomas, the principle stands, or ought always to have stood established; that we must either not argue with a man at all, or we must argue on his grounds and not ours. We may do other things instead of arguing, according to our views of what actions are morally permissible; but if we argue we must argue “on the reasons and statements of the philosophers themselves.”

I would love a little bit more of an explanation of these “other things” that we may do instead of arguing. My assumption is that Chesterton is talking about a robust declaration of the revealed truth of the Gospel message as distinct from reasoning with people on their own terms through the discipline of philosophy to remove obstacles to belief. If this is the case, than I can think of no better way to express the role of the philosophical endeavor in the life of the Christian.

Sufjan Stevens on Total Depravity

Sometimes the deepest theological concepts are not grasped through rigorous study or deep thought. Often, truths about God, his world, and our place in it are best communicated not through the scholar's pen, but rather through the creation of the artist. It is no wonder that in the middle ages, along with the accomplishments of scholastic philosophy and theology, the medieval cathedrals used the beauty of stained glass to communicate the events of redemptive history to the uneducated masses.

While the Church does not retain a monopoly on the arts in our modern age as it has in ages past, there are still plenty of artists who are using their creative abilities to glorify God and to reveal the beauty inherent in our fallen world. One such artists that I have been enjoying recently is singer/songwritter Sufjan Stevens. Stevens' music is not explicitly "Christian" (i.e. you won't find his albums in your local Christian bookstore or see him on a CCM label). He weaves commentary on faith in with themes of family, suffering, and loss. I have been soaking myself in his music over the past couple of days and I am overcome with the beauty of his music and themes.

In the song John Wayne Gacy, Jr. from his latest studio album, Illinois, Stevens deals with the theme of human sinfulness. The song chronicles the childhood of the famous serial killer from Chicago who was convicted of raping and murdering 33 boys and young men, many of whose bodies were found under the crawl space in his home. After singing of his broken family and the apparent normality of Gacy's life and the horrors of his crimes, Stevens ends the song with some self reflection:

And in my best behavior
I am really just like him
Look beneath the floor boards
For the secrets I have hid

These few words combined with a Stevens' beautiful, yet mournful melody do more to express the depths of human rebellion against God than any systematic theology ever could. Once the final chord is struck, there is no escaping the truth that the most horrific of atrocities that men commit are no worse than the sin that lies deeply rooted in each one of us. Through the beauty of a song, Sufjan Stevens is able to present us with our sin and make us crave ever more deeply the presence of our Savior than any scholar could hope to.

Huizinga and Oasis on the Hope of Heaven

Every age yearns for a more beautiful world. The deeper the desperation and the depression about the confusing present, the more intense that yearning.

These are the words of Dutch historian Johan Huizinga as quoted by John Bolt in his book A Free Church, A Holy Nation: Abraham Kuyper's American Public Theology. Not only are they words that most people would be able to affirm from their own experience, but they also speak of a inborn, creational longing for closer communion with God that is very much in line with Kuyper's creational theology. We have a combination of wonderful and exciting experiences on this earth despite our sinful condition, as well as more devastating experiences that show us how deeply that sin really affects us. These two factors come together to make us long for the future glory of standing in the presence of God and also escaping from the present corruption.

While this is a natural desire, and one that works as a necessary and proper motivation for anyone with a revelation of Christ, it seems that there are certain pitfalls that must be avoided. The use of the neo-calvinistic "structure/direction" distinction will be helpful here. Since looking forward to and anticipating the day when we will be in full communion with the Lord is obviously a good creational structure (most would argue that even pre-fall Adam and Eve looked forward to an increasing fellowship with God than the one that they initially had in the garden) we must be careful that the direction of this desire does not become misguided. As Huizinga states, the more "confusing the present, the more intense that yearning." Every age presents it's own set of tragedies and hardships, and a serious mistake in developing our desire for a more beautiful and restored earth would be to focus too exclusively on the difficulties of our own time and place. This sort of thing can often be heard coming from secular thinkers who would seek to set up their own man made paradise. In doing so, they attempt to alleviate the very real problems of ethic wars and racism with talk of multiculturalism one-world governments. In doing this, an earnest desire to see the injustices of the world set right becomes a misguided attempt to set up an alternative kingdom. It seems that a correction of this misdirection would come through a purposed examination of what the implications of a revelation of Christ are for issues such as ethnic cleansing and racism. It will only be this Christ centered longing for a more beautiful world that will truly bear fruit.

One of the things that helped to punctuate this quotation from Huizinga for me was a sort of providential music selection. Just moments after reading the quote, I heard the voice of Noel Gallagher of my favorite band, Oasis, drifting in from the next room. In lyrics from the song "Some Might Say," Noel expresses this very longing of oppressed and downtrodden people for a celestial home:

Some might say they don't believe in heaven
Go and tell it to the man who lives in hell

He Has Done All Things Well

And they were astonished beyond measure, saying, "He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak."
-Mark 7:37

He truly has done ALL things well. He lived the life of perfect obedience which we failed to do, He died the perfect death which we could never think of doing, and He established the assurance of our salvation with his perfect resurrection. As we are shown the miracles of his healing and restoring power in the gospel accounts, let us remember that these are not simply trivial displays of power. Rather, in his ministry of healing and restoration to the blind, the deaf, and the mute, Christ was showing us the way in which He works in the world at large. That which is broken will be made right. Those who have turned from God will be turned back and restored to Him. A world which once fully displayed His glory in a perfect way will be made to do so once more. May we all recall the healing and restorative power that Christ has displayed and will continue to make known in our own experiences, and thank Him that he has done it well.

Gilead

In my previous post I looked at some words from Kuyper that expressed the goodness of creation as well as it's potential (perhaps hope is the better word) in Christ. As a pastor, theologian, statesman, journalist, teacher and, more generally, an active participant in culture, Kuyper expresses in a very clear manner the implications of a good creation order for Christians who are attempting to work out the will of God for the earth in it's fallen condition.

Recently, in reading the novel Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, I stumbled across a beautiful and moving literary expression of this same concept. Robinson's novel is written as an aging, Congregationalist minister's letter to his young son just before he dies. Robinson expresses here, as well as in many other wonderful passages throughout the novel, the beauty that is to be found in this present life, while looking forward with anticipation to the joys of an eternity spent before the face of God:

I can't believe that, when we have all been changed and put on incorruptibility, we will forget our fantastic condition of mortality and impermanence, the great bright dream of procreating and perishing that meant the whole world to us. In eternity this world will be Troy, I believe, and all that has passed here will be the epic of the universe, the ballad they sing in the streets. Because I don't imagine any reality putting this one in the shade entirely, and I think piety forbids me to try.

In this wonderful expression of truth, Robinson masterfully shows the tension between the beauty and sanctity of our everyday lives and the great anticipation that we should have of the glory that is to be revealed. While she is not a theologian (at least not formally) Robinson communicates through her fiction a practicality and wisdom regarding theological truth. I've no doubt that John Calvin, who is quoted by the old minister frequently, would be proud to see his work employed in such a unique way. Calvin's classic, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, was originally intended, not as a theological textbook, but as a guide for working class Christians to guide them through the complexities of the faith. Robinson has managed to take those words and show just how practical, comforting, and beautiful they can be, even to the inhabitants of a little Midwestern town called Gilead.

Kuyper on Creation

In reading Abraham Kuyper's Lectures on Calvinism, I have been impressed not only by the amazing depth of insight which he brings to the topic of worldview, but also the poetic style of his communication. Here is a wonderful quote from the lecture on Calvinism and Religion which displays both elements. He is addressing the dualistic nature of the Anabaptist outlook and providing a basis for the ever important "structure/direction" distinction that must be employed when dealing the goodness of creation and the subsequent effects of the fall:

It is not true that there are two worlds, a bad one and a good, which are fitted into each other. It is one and the same person whom God created perfect and who afterwards fell, and became a sinner - and it is this same "ego" of the old sinner who is born again, and who enters into eternal life. So, also, it is one and the same world which once exhibited all the glory of Paradise, which was afterwards smitten with the curse, and which, since the Fall, is upheld by common grace; which has now been redeemed and saved by Christ, in its center, and which shall pass through the horror of the judgment into the state of glory. For this very reason the Calvinist cannot shut himself up in his church and abandon the world to its fate.

Not only does this view of the creation order make the most sense when looking around at the beauty and goodness that is so evident in all aspect of life on this earth despite of the marring effects of our sin, which are also so evident, but it contains such a glorious promise. It tells us that the potential that we see - the potential that we see in others, that we see in ourselves, as well as the possibilities for the things we can do in this earth - will not not always go unfilled. There will be a day when all is put right; we won't have to start from scratch, and our labors in the here and now won't be fruitless. And what's most astounding is that this wonderful day on which we will clearly see the fulfillment of these amazing promises will also be the day on which we see Christ face to face.

Aquinas, Calvin, and Contemporary Protestant Thought

My summer reading to this point has been incredibly rich, and it has only been made more so by Arvin Vos' Aquinas, Calvin, and Contemporary Protestant Thought. Vos is a Reformed Christian who teaches philosophy at Western Kentucky University. In his book, Vos contends that the traditional Protestant rejection of the thought of Thomas Aquinas is unwarranted, and that it is based not on serious scholarship, but rather on common mistaken suppositions about Aquinas' thought. Vos undertakes the task of showing that Aquinas and Calvin are actually in agreement over the way in which they understand the nature of faith and the distinction between nature and grace.

Among other things, Vos attempts to show 1) that Aquinas is not an evidentialist, claiming that the assent of faith should only be given if sufficient evidence can be presented for the belief, but rather, he holds to a fideistic view of faith that is akin to Calvin 2) that Aquinas' "preambles to faith" including his proofs for God are not propositions which must be fully comprehended to reach faith, as some have claimed, but rather they are a body of truths which can be laid hold of by faith 3) that the Protestant rejection of Aquinas' natural theology, based on the objection that he uses reason as a foundation upon which to build a superstructure of faith, is unfounded, instead showing that he clearly considered the knowledge imparted by faith to the most certain with reason serving as a handmaiden, and 4) that Aquinas' distinction between nature and grace does not lead to a dualism with nature emerging as an independent, self-sufficient order, but rather he clearly shows grace to be preeminent over nature.

Not only does Vos lay out clear and compelling arguments to show that the standard Protestant rejection of Aquinas is unwarranted, but I was particularly compelled by the way in which he approached the comparison between the two great theologians. He notes the radically different approaches by the two men, pointing out that Aquinas, as a product of the medieval schools, was educated in logic, metaphysics, and natural philosophy, while Calvin, receiving a humanist education which excluded all such subjects, would have studied literature. This accounts for the rigorous logic displayed in the Summa Theologiae compared to the literary insight of Calvin's biblical commentaries. These styles of learning were very much influenced by the differing times and cultures in which the two lived. Vos warns the reader to be careful in making the distinction between style and substance:

To sum up, there was more involved in the sixteenth century Reformation than just a powerful religious renewal of a corrupt church. Calvin and others were also reacting against the Medievals' approach to the ancients, their curriculum, and their use of philosophy. We will do well to distinguish these cultural differences from religious differences and divest ourselves of the naive assumption that a true Christian faith can be found only in the tradition with which we are familiar. We can only benefit by becoming more open to learning from both.