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.
posted by Andrew Stout | 12:42 AM
2 Comments:
Yes, Andrew, it could be encouraging to learn that both Aquinas and his Roman Catholic disciple, Chesterton, might argue from the premise of biblical presuppositionalist apologetics -- maybe "other things" -- versus human reason or evidentialism alone.
I don't believe that there is much if any evidence, however, for the former thesis; namely, as expressed by the Reformers, in the apologetics of either man. Of course, G.K. Chesterton, the 20th century author, poet and polemicist would never claim to represent all of the wisdom and revelation of Aquinas, the giant 13th-century theologian.
Would this distinction be fair, especially relating to philosophy: that both reflected the common (Enlightenment?) humanist
synthesis of Greco-Roman reason and ethics with selected Biblical truth, as opposed to the covenantal exclusivity of sola fide, sola gracie, sola scriptura in Christian/Reformed orthodoxy?
The most important question: Where do we stand? Both theologies can't be right, although many philosophers and their followers would propose otherwise.
Are you familiar with the conflicting views on this question by Gordon Clark and Cornelius Van Til, neither of whom was Roman Catholic? Both were Presbyterian scholars of high note, as you probably know. If one sides with the latter, the apologetics of both Aquinas and Chesterton must be rejected, totally ... conviction by the Holy Spirit; no neutrality.
I suggest, in closing, that if we understand the fundamentals of these different worldviews, both Aquinas and Chesterton can be stimulating and useful reading. But I wouldn't get hooked on any "other things" that we might imagine they believed but didn't broadcast.
There is a strange thing relating to that: It seems sometimes that we can say, "If you truely want to follow your beliefs, you must follow Jesus" and I think that is possible. It's strange because it causes their beliefs to be logically inconsistant, but opens up a way for them to come into Gods truth. It wold be great to be able to prove that believing that God does not exist is a contradiction in terms, although the best I can do at the moment is prove that postmoden pluralism is. But beyond that it would be even better to cause it to collapse when confronted with Jesus, which perhaps we will soon be able to do, by the grace of God.
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