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Aquinas, Contemplation, and Theology
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
Abstract
Jonathan Lear's account of Aristotle and the human person as a systematic understander can shed light on how Thomas Aquinas sees the passage from contemplation of worldly things to the contemplation of the divine essence. In grasping the essences of mundane particulars, the systematic understander ‘spiritualizes’ them, and simultaneously comes to grasp both self and God. This account of contemplation can further help illuminate Aquinas's understanding of the nature of the theological task as an exercise of systematic understanding of the particulars from which the scriptural narrative of signs and examples is constructed. Finally, the theologian's own path as a systematic understander is retraced for his or her students in sharing the fruits of contemplation through teaching.
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- Copyright © 2021 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 Summa contra Gentiles 3.63.
2 Lear, Jonathan, Aristotle: The Desire to Understand (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 117.Google Scholar
3 Lear, p. 121.
4 Lear, p. 297.
5 Lear, p. 131.
6 Lear, p. 298. As he puts it elsewhere, ‘essence as such remains a potentiality to be comprehended’ (p. 307).
7 Lear, p. 298.
8 Lear, p. 307-8. In Lear's reckoning, therefore, Aristotle is an ‘objective idealist.’ He argues that one of the deep continuities in the history of philosophy is the question of the relationship of the world to the mind, and how the intelligibility of world might be understood to be constituted by mind. The differences are in where world-constituting mind is, as it were, ‘located.’ For Aristotle (and, I would argue, in a somewhat different way, Thomas), it is the divine mind; for Kant it is the individual mind. Lear goes on to note that post-Kantian philosophy can be read as a history of dissatisfaction with the Kantian location of mind: ‘one of the central responses to Kant's philosophy has been an attempt to relocate the mind to which objects are conforming. Hegel tried to locate mind in the Idea or the Absolute; the later Wittgenstein tried to locate it in the activities and customs of a community—what he called a form of life’ (p. 309).
9 Lear, p. 298.
10 Lear, pp. 302-3.
11 The notion that we no longer desire God in the beatific vision seems counter-intuitive to many readers, who might prefer the view of another medieval Dominican theologian, Catherine of Siena, to whom God said concerning beatified souls, ‘They desire me forever, and forever they possess me, so their desire is not in vain. They are hungry yet satisfied, satisfied yet hungry’ (The Dialogue ch. 41). It should be noted that Thomas gives a somewhat different account of beatitude and desire in the Summa contra Gentiles: ‘Nothing that is contemplated with wonder [cum admiratione] can be tiresome, since as long as the thing remains in wonder it continues to stimulate desire. But the divine substance is always viewed with wonder by any created intellect, since no created intellect comprehends it. So, it is impossible for an intellectual substance to become tired of this vision’ (bk. 3 ch. 62 n. 9). This account would seem to bring Thomas's view closer to that of Catherine.
12 Anscombe, G. E. M. and Geach, P. T., Three Philosophers (Oxford: Basil Blackwell & Mott Ltd., 1961), p. 112.Google Scholar
13 See Summa theologiae 1.87.1, 3.
14 Super Io. prol. n. 2.
15 Summa theologiae 2-2.180.1.
16 Summa theologiae 2-2.180.7.
17 Both Lear and Thomas think that Aristotle's God is not quite so self-enclosed as is often claimed. See Lear, pp. 302-303, and Aquinas, Sententia Metaphysicae bk.12 lec. 11 nn. 2614-16.
18 Lear, p. 303.
19 My thanks to Dr. Zena Hitz for posing a question to me, after a public presentation of some of this material, that prompted the reflections in the remainder of this section.
20 Summa theologiae 1.12.12.
21 Expositio in Symbolum Apostolorum, sermon 1.
22 Summa theologiae 1.1.1.
23 Summa theologiae 1.1.12.
24 Summa theologiae 1.1.4.
25 Summa theologiae 1.1.2 arg. 2.
26 Scriptum super Sententiarum bk. 1 prol. a. 5.
27 Summa theologiae 1.1.7 ad 1.
28 Summa theologiae 2-2.82.3 ad 2.
29 Homily 26 in Gregory the Great, Forty Gospel Homilies, Hurst, Dom David, trans. (Spencer, MA: Cistercian Publications, 1990), p. 207.Google Scholar
30 Super Io. ch. 21 lec. 6 nn. 2562, 2564.
31 See Summa theologiae 1.1.10. See also my essay, ‘God as Author: Thinking Through a Metaphor,’ Modern Theology 31: 4 (October 2015), pp. 573- 585.Google Scholar
32 Tocco, See Guillaume de, Ystoria sancti Thome de Aquino, Claire le Brun-Gouanvic ed. (Toronto: Pntifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1996),Google Scholar cap. 34. My thanks to the anonymous reader for New Blackfriars who pressed the issue of the disanalogy between narratives and substances, as well as the question of the truthfulness of the narrative in question.
33 Sententia libri Ethicorum bk. 10 lec. 10 n. 2092.
34 Summa theologiae 2-2.180.3.
35 Summa theologiae 2-2.180.6.
36 Quodlibet 4.9.3.
37 Lear, p. 316.
38 English translation from We Give You Thanks and Praise: The Ambrosian Eucharistic Prefaces, Griffiths, Alan, trans. (Sheed & Ward, 2000), p. 173.Google Scholar