Editor’s Note: This essay continues our series of essays marking the 800th anniversary of the birth of Thomas Aquinas.
The 800th centenary of St. Thomas Aquinas’s birth has been marked by global gatherings and conferences celebrating the long-lasting theological and philosophical significance of the Doctor Communis. This influence is not limited to Roman Catholic theology. Aquinas’s influence has been deeply significant for much of Anglican theological development. To take just a few examples, his thought served as a resource both for the ecclesiology and legal theory of the judicious Anglican Richard Hooker (and, through Hooker, Aquinas dramatically influenced John Locke), as well the economic theory that grounds Anglican social ethics in the work of Archbishop William Temple.
As part of this conversation on Covenant, I would like to speak from my discipline, ethics and political theology. Other essays in this series trace the history of Thomism, Aquinas and the virtues, Richard Hooker’s appropriation of Aquinas, and still other topics. For my part, though, I want to draw on Thomas to help us think about our political discourse — and specifically how we speak and, perhaps more important, how we respond to speech. This, then, is a fairly narrow foray into how Aquinas can teach us ways to respond to a culture of unhealthy and even toxic speech, especially in our political discourse.
In a world in which our political conversations and dialogue have become characterized by a culture of putdowns and verbal attacks, Thomas Aquinas describes an alternative mode of response to “defamation.” Put simply, Aquinas rejects the commodification of reputation and the corollary view that the conservation of one’s reputation is necessary at all costs for the pursuit of personal power and status. Instead, in his understanding, one should hope to preserve one’s reputation not just for honor, but to restore community. In other words, as community is divided by defamatory speech, community can also be restored by the proper response of speech.
As with Christ’s summary of the Law, Aquinas is alert to the way that the Ten Commandments are concerned with the preservation of community; the second table of the law is about love of neighbor. But what does that mean for speech that divides neighbor from neighbor? The relevant commandment is the injunction against bearing false witness, which dishonors another person. But more precision may be needed here. A helpful approach is digging into how Aquinas defines two specific vices: reviling and backbiting. In his best-known work, the Summa Theologiae (about which other writers in this series will say more), Aquinas provides criteria for how the Christian should respond to defamation, harsh words, and slander — and the key is how we understand reviling and backbiting.
Aquinas describes reviling as “the dishonoring of the person” in a public way. Reviling grows morally worse by degree of severity, as more people are made aware of it (II-II 72 a. 1 obj. 1). Whereas reviling is distinguished by its public character, backbiting is defined as spreading false rumors about a person in secret — behind the person’s back.
But is this simply a matter of lying? As Aquinas proceeds in Summa II-II, other moral concerns begin to emerge. Backbiting and reviling are also vices opposed to justice because they are acts of stealing. They both take away, by visible force or stealth, something of value from someone else, namely reputation. (Q 73 a 1). Because reviling is done publicly, it takes away a person’s honor, that is, his standing in the public sphere. Alternatively, because backbiting is done in secret, it does not necessarily take away a person’s honor, his public status. Backbiting, though, injures his good name and his reputation among those who hear from the backbiter (Q 73 a 1). Thus Aquinas describes reviling as analogous to robbery: the forcible seizure of someone’s goods by “a certain violence and coercion” (II-II 66 a8). Backbiting, done in secret, is analogous to theft (Q 73 a 1).
The analogy has its limits. Aquinas argues that stealing someone’s reputation is in fact more dangerous to the person than theft or robbery. Therefore, it requires a different type of response. However, this response is characterized not by a response of provocation or reciprocal aggression. Rather, the Christian should respond to backbiting “with moderation, that is, as a duty of charity” and with special care not to simply react “through lust for one’s own honor” (II-II 73 a 3 obj 2).
Aquinas believes there is a time in which it is appropriate for the reviled person to engage in self-defense. But what is the standard by which one can determine a response? Aquinas looks to the New Law given by Christ in its most explicit and clear statement in the Sermon on the Mount: “turn the other cheek … if necessary” (Matt. 5:39; II-II 72 a 3). While this statement describes a posture, Aquinas writes that the same standard “applies to the reviling words that are said against us” (II-II 72 a 3). This is not a universal call to passivity. Based on Christ’s example, there may be occasions when a response is appropriate. During Jesus’ trial, when he was hit by a soldier, Jesus challenged him: “Why strikest thou me?” (John 18:23; II-II 72 a 3).
Given our Lord’s example, Aquinas assumes that patience may at some point be exhausted. He gives two reasons that might motivate a person to defend herself against reviling, but neither of these reasons are for the protection of the person’s reputation or physical gain. Aquinas comes back to the issue of preserving community. The first reason he gives is “for the good of the reviler; namely, that his daring may be checked, and that he may not repeat the attempt” (II-II 72 a 3). In other words, we must ask, can challenging the reviler confront her with her sins of anger and vengeance and restore her to community? Second, reviling should be challenged for “the good of many who would be prevented from progressing in virtue on account of our being reviled” (72 a 3). Put differently, does the reviling take away from the reviled person’s opportunity of being an exemplar and distract other people from pursuing the good?
Unlike reviling, backbiting does not offer the opportunity for self-defense, since by definition backbiting goes on behind one’s back (Q 73 a 4 ad 1). However, if the victim of backbiting hears about it through gossip, Aquinas assumes that the victim will walk through the same moral calculus for reviling to challenge the backbiter for the good of the community. In discussing reviling, he provides a very strong description of the obligation to defend others. In fact, he argues that preventing another from being reviled springs even more clearly from a duty of charity than protecting oneself. For those who hear backbiting, the mandate is much stronger to the defense of the other: “rather we should nonetheless withstand backbiters, just as those who rob or oppress others, even though the oppressed and the robbed may gain merit by patience” (73 a 4). There is no excuse for not stopping a backbiter, and in fact it may be a moral imperative not to allow that type of behavior to continue.
Aquinas has more to say on this subject in his Commentary on Matthew, and here he reflects not only on endurance and patience, but what the response to reviling and backbiting ought to be from Christian leaders. In the Beatitudes, Jesus’ last blessing in Matthew 5 pertains to “patiently enduring evil” (446). Aquinas believes Christ taught that his followers should expect to endure these kinds of mistreatments, precisely reviling and backbiting. Drawing on Augustine, Aquinas writes that when Jesus said “they will revile you” and “speak all that is evil against you,” he meant reviling and backbiting. While in the Summa Aquinas outlines a response aimed at the restoration of community, in his Commentary on Matthew he expands on the special call for Christians, especially Christian leaders, to endure suffering by turning the other cheek, even from reviling and backbiting. In other words, Christian leaders should know that reviling and backbiting are coming, but be prepared also to turn the other cheek.
If we step back from Aquinas’s careful and minute reflection, we see that in his moral analysis, he stresses care for others over the promotion of our personal reputations. Aquinas acknowledges the importance of a good reputation to a person; it’s not inconsequential. Notwithstanding, one preserves one’s reputation against the reviler only at the point that it serves to protect others from either falling into sin or impedes others from growing in virtue. Simply put, for Thomas Aquinas, the response to reviling and backbiting, phenomena painfully common in our culture, especially our political discourse, should be aimed at preserving community.
As we mark his 800th birthday, I submit that it is this kind of deliberate, analytical, and biblically informed reflection on real and enduring concerns in the Christian life that has made Thomas Aquinas, a 13th-century mendicant and professor of theology, enduringly relevant for so many centuries.
