And so it stayed trapped in his mind, separate from any object -- for Kant insisted on the gulf between faith and reason. If one had to accept certain truths on the authority of the one revealing them -- Kant wanted no part in it. According to Kant, one should accept only that which can be reasoned. According to Aquinas, it is not unreasonable to accept that which is revealed.
In a sense, many of us today are Kantian rather than Thomistic. We are Hamlet figures, forever trapped in doubt. What Aquinas allows us to do is put away doubt. He allows us -- in fact, implores us, to act. He is now to us like the ghost of Hamlet's father -- reappearing to urge his son to action. Still, Hamlet delays. What happens to Hamlet -- what happens to all of us -- has much to do with what Rosen alludes to in Examined Life. Hamlet cannot believe, cannot act, cannot love. "Doubt truth to be a liar," he says to Ophelia, "but never doubt I love." The brutal irony is that he has already spread his doubt to his love -- and she in turn loses her mind and her life.
Aquinas is not for such an end. His work may have come up short -- as he himself confesses -- but, as Browning says, one's reach should extend one's grasp, or else what's a heaven for? Thus, Aquinas, who is much in the same vein, states that
The things of sense…retain in themselves some trace of imitation of God…yet so imperfect is this trace that it proves wholly insufficient to declare the substance of God Himself….Still it is useful for the human mind to exercise itself in such reasonings, however feeble, provided there be no presumptuous hope of perfect comprehension or demonstration. With this view the authority of Hilary agrees, who says (De Trinitate, ii, 10), speaking of such truth: "In this belief start, run, persist; and though I know that you will not reach the goal, still I shall congratulate...
But intrude not into that sanctuary, and plunge not into the mystery of infinite truth; entertain no presumptuous hope of comprehending the height of intelligence, but understand that it is incomprehensible."
With this warning in mind, Aquinas the scholastic who reconciled faith and reason, encourages us to pursue with our intellects the concept of God. Yet, at the same time, he warns us not to grow presumptuous in our quest. God is a mystery, Who cannot be conceived simply. However, He is something that can be pursued with our reason.
Bibliography
Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Contra Gentiles. London: Burns and Oates, 1905.
Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologica. UK: Fathers of the English Dominican
Province, 1920.
McInerny, Ralph, ed. Thomas Aquinas: Selected Writings. England: Penguin, 1998.
Rosen, Stanley, ed. The Examined Life: Readings from Western Philosophers from Plato to Kant. New York: Random House, 2000.
Ralph McInerny, ed., Thomas Aquinas: Selected Writings (UK: Penguin, 1998), 244.
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica (UK: Fathers of the English Dominican Province, 1920), Q.2,A.2.
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica (UK: Fathers of the English Dominican Province, 1920), Q.2,A.2
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica (UK: Fathers of the English Dominican Province, 1920), Q.2,A.3.
Ralph McInerny, ed., Thomas Aquinas: Selected Writings (UK: Penguin, 1998), 243.
Stanley Rosen, ed. The Examined Life: Readings from Western Philosophers from Plato to Kant (NY: Random House, 2000), 111.
Stanley Rosen, ed. The Examined Life: Readings from Western Philosophers from Plato to Kant (NY: Random House, 2000), 113.
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles (London: Burns and Oates, 1905), 1.8.
