Friday, March 29, AD 2024 3:05am

Saint Thomas Aquinas Our Contemporary

Not everyone who is enlightened by an angel knows that he is enlightened by him.

Saint Thomas Aquinas

 

 

Today is the feast day of the Angelic Doctor.  There is a timeless quality about his writings that takes him from the period in which he lived, the Thirteenth Century, and makes him a contemporary of each succeeding generation.  For example, we have this observation of Saint Thomas on the founder of Islam:

 

The point is clear in the case of Muhammad. He seduced the people by promises of carnal pleasure to which the concupiscence of the flesh goads us. His teaching also contained precepts that were in conformity with his promises, and he gave free rein to carnal pleasure. In all this, as is not unexpected, he was obeyed by carnal men. As for proofs of the truth of his doctrine, he brought forward only such as could be grasped by the natural ability of anyone with a very modest wisdom. Indeed, the truths that he taught he mingled with many fables and with doctrines of the greatest falsity. He did not bring forth any signs produced in a supernatural way, which alone fittingly gives witness to divine inspiration; for a visible action that can be only divine reveals an invisibly inspired teacher of truth. On the contrary, Muhammad said that he was sent in the power of his arms—which are signs not lacking even to robbers and tyrants. What is more, no wise men, men trained in things divine and human, believed in him from the beginning, Those who believed in him were brutal men and desert wanderers, utterly ignorant of all divine teaching, through whose numbers Muhammad forced others to become his followers by the violence of his arms. Nor do divine pronouncements on the part of preceding prophets offer him any witness. On the contrary, he perverts almost all the testimonies of the Old and New Testaments by making them into fabrications of his own, as can be. seen by anyone who examines his law. It was, therefore, a shrewd decision on his part to forbid his followers to read the Old and New Testaments, lest these books convict him of falsity. It is thus clear that those who place any faith in his words believe foolishly.

Summa Contra Gentiles, I, 6.4

Saint Thomas, in his insistence that faith and reason were in accord, laid the intellectual framework for our modern world.  Most of our problems today stem from the great mistaken belief among the powers that be in the West that religious faith can be replaced by the secular faith of leftism, and that reason can be made to bow before this new faith.  That this new dispensation is working poorly would have surprised the Angelic Doctor not at all.  However, he would have been serenely confident that true faith and true reason would ultimately prevail.  May we embrace his optimism, faith and reason.

 

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DonL
DonL
Thursday, January 28, AD 2016 6:43am

Brilliant analysis Donald.

William P. Walsh
William P. Walsh
Monday, February 1, AD 2016 9:42am

Saint Thomas correctly describes Muhammad and the history of Islam. How would he describe modern leftism? Perhaps he might identify it as the ultimate heresy which declares, “Non Serviam”.

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