Editor’s Note: 2024 marks the 800th anniversary of the birth of Thomas Aquinas. This essay begins a special series marking the occasion.
I had a philosophy professor when I was an undergraduate in the early 1980s who had previously taught at a Jesuit University. He was not Roman Catholic, but knew that I was, so he once commented to me that what struck (and amused) him about the philosophy faculty at his former institution was that everyone was what he called a “hyphenated Thomist.” Whatever their philosophical proclivities, faculty members’ self-descriptions always seemed to include the term Thomist. Someone who studied Kant would be a “Transcendental-Thomist” and someone who studied Husserl would be a “Phenomenological-Thomist” and someone who studied Heidegger would be an “Existential-Thomist.” Looking back, I now see his observation as evidence of the peculiar role that Thomas Aquinas has played in Roman Catholic theology and philosophy across centuries, and the hydra-headed beast that goes under the name Thomism.
Thomas Aquinas (1224-74) was widely admired as a teacher during his life, particularly within his own Dominican order. His superiors allowed him the freedom while teaching in Rome to develop a new theological curriculum, which would become the Summa theologiae, and then sent him back to Paris for an unprecedented second teaching stint at the university so that he might present the Dominican side of the argument in the controversy over the new mendicant orders (i.e., the Dominican and Franciscans). He was also admired by many of the arts faculty at Paris (i.e., the undergraduate faculty) who were, like Thomas, deeply influenced by the rediscovery of Aristotle and who requested from the Dominicans copies of Thomas’s writings after he died.
But it was by no means clear when Thomas died in 1274 that there would develop anything called Thomism, and some of Thomas’s views were widely seen as having been condemned in 1279 by Stephen Tempier, Bishop of Paris. He also came in for harsh criticism from theologians and Church authorities, particularly Franciscans (including John Pecham, a theologian who became Archbishop of Canterbury), but also from members of Thomas’s order (e.g., Robert Kilwardby, Pecham’s predecessor as archbishop, and Durandus of St. Pourçain, who was a theologian in the papal curia).
Different aspects of Thomas’s thought were criticized by different people in the later Middle Ages, but the overall tenor of the criticisms was that Thomas had perhaps gone too far in his use of Aristotle’s natural philosophy and metaphysics and that certain Christian doctrines were thus imperiled.
Ironically, it was this criticism of Thomas that went a long way to forming a nascent Thomism. For the most part, the Dominicans rallied to his defense. When the Franciscans issued a Correctorium fratris Thomae (“A Correction of Brother Thomas”) in 1278, which criticized 118 points taken from a range of Thomas’s writings, the Dominicans fired back with Correctoria corrutorii fratris Thomae (“Corrections of the Corruption of Brother Thomas”), which saw Thomas as having been misunderstood by his critics, and for the most part simply presented Thomas’s words or summaries of them that were seen to answer the criticisms. The need to defend Thomas led to his works being studied intensely by the Dominicans. And since academics love nothing more than controversy, non-Dominicans soon joined in, attacking or defending or, in some cases, critically appropriating his thought.
This theatre of controversy included such luminaries as Giles of Rome, Henry of Ghent, Godfrey of Fontaines, and, a generation later, John Duns Scotus. We might say that at this stage Thomism was not really a body of philosophical or theological doctrines, but simply that collection of thinkers, largely but not exclusively Dominican, who sought to defend Thomas’s various positions that had come under attack. Most importantly, in the latter Middle Ages, Thomas in no sense represented any sort of “official” position of the Catholic Church on theological matters.
The development of Thomas’s philosophical and theological authority was something of a slow burn. The Protestant Reformation had a role to play in advancing that authority. The criticisms of the Reformers pressed Rome to clarify and unify certain theological positions. Thomas, who as early as 1317 had been referred to as Doctor Communis or “Universal Teacher,” seemed a good starting point for such unity. Also, one of Luther’s most theologically adept critics was the Dominican Friar Tommaso de Vio, also known as Cajetan, among whose many achievements was a detailed commentary on Thomas’s Summa theologiae. Cajetan’s status as both a Thomist and an opponent of Luther helped bolster the notion that Thomas and Thomism were a kind of bulwark against Protestantism.
Still, Thomas remained one theologian among many. Despite Pope Pius V having numbered him among the Doctors of the Church in 1567, and the (probably legendary) story that the Summa was placed alongside the Bible on the altar of St. Peter’s during the Council of Trent, the Council was quite careful not to favor one legitimate Catholic school of thought over another. To choose a minor example, in speaking of transubstantiation, the general term species was used to speak of the outward appearances of the bread and wine, rather than the more Aristotelian term accident, sometimes associated with Thomas.
Likewise in maintaining the sacrificial nature of the Mass, Trent avoided endorsing any view of how this sacrifice was effected, including Thomas’s view that the “double consecration” of the bread and wine was a figure of the separation of Christ’s body and blood at the crucifixion. The desire at Trent was to encompass as many theological parties as possible — Albertists and Scotists and even Ockhamists — within a unified articulation of Catholic teaching.
Still, the influence of Thomas, and the tendency to treat him as the philosopher and theologian of the Church, grew beyond the Dominican order. In the 16th century, Ignatius of Loyola adopted the Summa theologiae as the chief theological text of the new Society of Jesus, and in the 17th and 18th centuries the Carmelites at the University of Salamanca produced a massive, multi-author commentary on the Summa. However, many who drew heavily upon the work of Thomas, and perhaps even thought of themselves as Thomists, were in practice quite eclectic in their theological sources. The Jesuit Francisco Suarez (1548–1617), perhaps the most influential theologian of his era, cast many of his works as commentaries on various parts of Thomas’s Summa, but he didn’t hew particularly closely to the text of Thomas, and freely incorporated the thoughts of others, especially Duns Scotus.
In the early modern era, Dominicans tended to be a bit stricter in their adherence to Thomas; indeed, sometimes amid controversy they held more strictly to “Thomist” positions than Thomas did. For example, in arguing with Franciscans over the question of whether Christ would have become incarnate if Adam and Eve had not sinned, some Dominicans turned Thomas’s rather nuanced position — that it is difficult to speak of counterfactual possibilities and thus best to hew closely to revealed truth, which ascribes salvation from sin as the motive of the Incarnation — into a rigid “No.”
The real point at which Thomas became the fixed standard of Roman Catholic thought, and many Catholic philosophers and theologians felt compelled to label themselves as Thomists of some sort, came in 1879 when Pope Leo XIII issued the encyclical Aeterni Patris, which proposed the thought of Thomas as an antidote to the intellectual ills of the modern world. Though Saints Bonaventure and Albert the Great come in for passing mention, the encyclical is an extended encomium to Thomas: “reason, borne on the wings of Thomas to its human height, can scarcely rise higher, while faith could scarcely expect more or stronger aids from reason than those which she has already obtained through Thomas.”
In the wake of the 1879 encyclical, there was even more interest in giving a precise definition to what counted as Thomism. In 1916 the Vatican’s Congregation of Studies approved 24 theses that sought to summarize authentic Thomist teaching, particularly in the realm of metaphysics. The theses revealed a tendency in the use of Thomas’s writings and ideas to focus on philosophical topics, since these seemed most germane to battling the vices of modernity. But this tendency overlooked the theological frame within which all of Thomas’s thinking operated. The 1916 theses also expose how Thomas was reduced to a source of “safe answers,” so to speak, rather than a fount of provocative questions. In this light, one might get the impression that Thomism means Thomas has done all our real thinking for us and the only task left to us is unpacking and applying that body of thought.
Reaction to the dominance of Thomism was inevitable in the 20th century. Thinkers associated with the ressourcement movement, such as Henri de Lubac (1896-1991) and Jean Daniélou (1905-74), while careful to acknowledge Thomas’s importance, turned their attention to the Church Fathers as offering a more existentially vibrant theology that could address modern questions. Others looked to ways to appropriate modern thought, leading to the hyphenated Thomisms (note the plural) that I mentioned earlier. There was a tendency to see Thomas, in his appropriation of Aristotle, as simply an inspiring example of how one ought to embrace new philosophical developments.
The de facto eclipse of Thomas became explicit in the years after the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), leading to what Karl Rahner ruefully called the “strange silence” concerning Thomas among theologians. Thomism, as proposed by Pope Leo XIII in 1879 as an antidote to modernity, came to be seen by many as part of the baggage that the Church must shed to be open to the modern world. In other words, many felt that to open the windows, aggiornamento, we must close Thomas, or at least close how Thomas and his writings had been received and utilized since the 19th century.
The stock of Thomas has risen in the past few decades, however. Invigorated by historical studies that locate him in his social and intellectual context, and thus reinstating him as a participant in an ongoing conversation, Thomas is seen by many younger philosophers and theologians today as a vital resource in their intellectual task: if not as a singular authority, at least as a vital part of the tradition that cannot be ignored, and as one within that tradition who was insightful and innovative in his thinking. Even Thomism as a school of thought, encompassing the centuries of commentary on Thomas, has made a comeback in some quarters. Many contemporary scholars have come to value that body of reflection as a rigorous and vigorous intellectual tradition, and not simply as the sclerotic system that haunted many of its detractors (and delighted some of its supporters).
But it seems to me unlikely that any sort of sharply defined Thomist school is the future of Thomas Aquinas as a philosophical and theological force. The future, rather, lies with those who can plumb the depths of Thomas’s thought without isolating him as uniquely insightful or as having asked and answered all interesting questions.
I have described this approach as “thinking through Thomas,” meaning not only sorting through his views and his arguments to better grasp what he is saying, but also using his thought as a lens — though perhaps not our only lens — through which we might see theological questions to better address them. As long as people are thinking through Thomas in these two ways, something that can be broadly described as Thomism will continue to offer vital resources to the Church.
