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:
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.
Brilliant analysis Donald.
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”.