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From: amigo@iwlc6.UUCP (John Hobson)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: Thomas Aquinas on Reason
Message-ID: <122@iwlc6.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 3-Apr-84 10:32:08 EST
Article-I.D.: iwlc6.122
Posted: Tue Apr  3 10:32:08 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 5-Apr-84 01:26:36 EST
References: <1817@utcsstat.UUCP> <3712@utzoo.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, IL
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>	Aquinas did not say that you cannot arrive at faith by
>	reason. (at least in the Summa, which I just read last
>	week). Rather, he found that Christianity was in profound
>	accord with the logical principles of Aristotle.

First, I hereby award Laura Creighton the Evelyn Woods Speedreading
Prize for 1984 for her achievement in reading Thomas Aquinas' Summa
Theologica in one week.  I have an edition of the Summa, and it
runs to 12 volumes of about 300-400 pages each.

>	However, Aquinas, being no fool, discovered that *after* he
>	had found that Christianity was in profound accord with The
>	Philosopher (Aristotle) he was left with some inconsistencies.
>	His faith said one thing was true and his reason said
>	another. what would this mean? It would mean that either
>	his faith was incorrect, or he had made a slip in his reasoning.
>	...Therefore, Aquinas said that when faith and reason
>	conflict, reason must bow to faith because reason can be flawed.
>
>	I think that he is making a serious mistake here. I think
>	that when reason and faith conflict you should have faith
>	bow to reason.

My reading of what Aquinas said is that, "being no fool," he
realized that neither Aristotle nor he had the last word on reason,
and that human reason, being imperfect ("Now we see as in a mirror,
dimly."  I Corinthians 13:8), is inherently unable to grasp certain
things.  Augustine, in Book 2 of De Trinitate, makes much the same
point.

Aquinas believed that reason is a most wonderful tool, but that it
can only go so far.  There must be other things to back it up. 
This is, in fact, the major complaint against the ancient Greek
scientists; that they did everything using reason, and did no
experiments to check out the results of their reasoning.  In the
case of theology, since, as Laura points out, it is not amenable to
experiment, the "back-up" is faith.

One final note:  at the end of his life, Aquinas underwent a
mystical conversion (something like becoming "born-again"), and
said that all his writings (which included, besides his Summa
Theologica, a work of almost equal length on Christian apologetics,
the Summa Contra Gentiles, and a large body of other books) was
as worthless as if it had been so much straw.

				John Hobson
				AT&T Bell Labs--Naperville, IL
				ihnp4!iwlc6!amigo