The holy wrath of St Thomas Aquinas
G.K. Chesterton explains the philosophical error which attracted the wrath of St Thomas.
G.K. Chesterton explains the philosophical error which attracted the wrath of St Thomas.
Editors’ Notes
Benedict XIV observed that when St Thomas was called upon to refute his opponents, he would do so with such discretion and courtesy “that he deserved no less praise for his manner of disagreement than for his assertion of the Catholic truth.”1
The incident narrated by Chesterton in the text below may be the one moment – aside from that in his youth against the courtesan – where the wrath of St Thomas was made visible. But even here, it is unleashed with the great moderation for which he was known.
Siger of Brabant was a thirteenth-century philosopher and theologian who taught at the Sorbonne in Paris. In the 1270s he was prosecuted for heresy by the Archbishop of Paris and appears to have been found guilty. Some say he recanted the errors and was been absolved for them; others that he never appeared at his trial, and fled to Italy. He retreated to Orvieto and was apparently stabbed to death by a mad cleric around 1284. It is not clear whether Siger died well, but in the Paradiso, Dante places him in heaven with St Thomas himself, as we can see in the picture above.2
But whatever happened to Siger of Brabant – in this life or in the next – at least at one point in time, his teaching challenged the integrity of St Thomas’s Aristotelian synthesis.
St Thomas’s teaching has never been needed more than today, when mankind has been seduced by the belief that the empirical sciences alone are the means to acquire objective knowledge of reality. The Angelic Doctor taught that the legitimate use of human reason, and the study of the divine revelation proposed to us by the teaching authority of the Church, will never reach incompatible conclusions. This is taught by Vatican I:
“Even though faith is above reason, there can never be any real disagreement between faith and reason, since it is the same God who reveals the mysteries and infuses faith, and who has endowed the human mind with the light of reason.”3
This is rejected today by all who reject the existence of a supernatural order, or who reject that anything can be known with certainty about this order (the Modernists). However, even in St Thomas’s lifetime, this truth was attacked. In this beautiful passage from his 1933 work, St Thomas Aquinas, G. K. Chesterton paints an awe-inspiring portrait of St Thomas as fearless defender of truth.
St Thomas against Siger of Brabant
G.K. Chesterton
From St Thomas Aquinas (UK link)
Chapter III: The Aristotelian Revolution
The Peril After Triumph
After the hour of triumph came the moment of peril. It is always so with alliances, and especially because Aquinas was fighting on two fronts. His main business was to defend the Faith against the abuse of Aristotle; and he boldly did it by supporting the use of Aristotle. He knew perfectly well that armies of atheists and anarchists were roaring applause in the background at his Aristotelian victory over all he held most dear.
Nevertheless, it was never the existence of atheists, any more than Arabs or Aristotelian pagans, that disturbed the extraordinary controversial composure of Thomas Aquinas. The real peril that followed on the victory he had won for Aristotle was vividly presented in the curious case of Siger of Brabant; and it is well worth study, for anyone who would begin to comprehend the strange history of Christendom. It is marked by one rather queer quality; which has always been the unique note of the Faith, though it is not noticed by its modern enemies, and rarely by its modern friends. It is the fact symbolised in the legend of Antichrist, who was the double of Christ; in the profound proverb that the Devil is the ape of God.
It is the fact that falsehood is never so false as when it is very nearly true. It is when the stab comes near the nerve of truth, that the Christian conscience cries out in pain. And Siger of Brabant, following on some of the Arabian Aristotelians, advanced a theory which most modern newspaper readers would instantly have declared to be the same as the theory of Saint Thomas. That was what finally roused Saint Thomas to his last and most emphatic protest.
He had won his battle for a wider scope of philosophy and science; he had cleared the ground for a general understanding about faith and enquiry; an understanding that has generally been observed among Catholics, and certainly never deserted without disaster. It was the idea that the scientist should go on exploring and experimenting freely, so long as he did not claim an infallibility and finality which it was against his own principles to claim. Meanwhile the Church should go on developing and defining, about supernatural things, so long as she did not claim a right to alter the deposit of faith, which it was against her own principles to claim. And when he had said this, Siger of Brabant got up and said something so horribly like it, and so horribly unlike, that (like the Antichrist) he might have deceived the very elect.
Siger of Brabant and the Two-Truths Theory
Siger of Brabant said this: the Church must be right theologically, but she can be wrong scientifically. There are two truths; the truth of the supernatural world, and the truth of the natural world, which contradicts the supernatural world. While we are being naturalists, we can suppose that Christianity is all nonsense; but then, when we remember that we are Christians, we must admit that Christianity is true even if it is nonsense. In other words, Siger of Brabant split the human head in two, like the blow in an old legend of battle; and declared that a man has two minds, with one of which he must entirely believe and with the other may utterly disbelieve.
To many this would at least seem like a parody of Thomism. As a fact, it was the assassination of Thomism. It was not two ways of finding the same truth; it was an untruthful way of pretending that there are two truths. And it is extraordinarily interesting to note that this is the one occasion when the Dumb Ox really came out like a wild bull. When he stood up to answer Siger of Brabant, he was altogether transfigured, and the very style of his sentences, which is a thing like the tone of a man’s voice, is suddenly altered. He had never been angry with any of the enemies who disagreed with him. But these enemies had attempted the worst treachery: they had made him agree with them.
Those who complain that theologians draw fine distinctions could hardly find a better example of their own folly. In fact, a fine distinction can be a flat contradiction. It was notably so in this case. St. Thomas was willing to allow the one truth to be approached by two paths, precisely because he was sure there was only one truth. Because the Faith was the one truth, nothing discovered in nature could ultimately contradict the Faith. Because the Faith was the one truth, nothing really deduced from the Faith could ultimately contradict the facts. It was in truth a curiously daring confidence in the reality of his religion: and though some may linger to dispute it, it has been justified.
The scientific facts, which were supposed to contradict the Faith in the nineteenth century, are nearly all of them regarded as unscientific fictions in the twentieth century. Even the materialists have fled from materialism; and those who lectured us about determinism in psychology are already talking about indeterminism in matter. But whether his confidence was right or wrong, it was specially and supremely a confidence that there is one truth which cannot contradict itself. And this last group of enemies suddenly sprang up, to tell him they entirely agreed with him in saying that there are two contradictory truths. Truth, in the medieval phrase, carried two faces under one hood; and these double-faced sophists practically dared to suggest that it was the Dominican hood.
Aquinas’ Fierce Response
So, in his last battle and for the first time, he fought as with a battle-axe. There is a ring in the words altogether beyond the almost impersonal patience he maintained in debate with so many enemies.
“Behold our refutation of the error. It is not based on documents of faith, but on the reasons and statements of the philosophers themselves. If then anyone there be who, boastfully taking pride in his supposed wisdom, wishes to challenge what we have written, let him not do it in some corner nor before children who are powerless to decide on such difficult matters. Let him reply openly if he dare. He shall find me then confronting him, and not only my negligible self, but many another whose study is truth. We shall do battle with his errors or bring a cure to his ignorance.” (Emphasis added)
The Dumb Ox is bellowing now; like one at bay and yet terrible and towering over all the baying pack. We have already noted why, in this one quarrel with Siger of Brabant, Thomas Aquinas let loose such thunders of purely moral passion; it was because the whole work of his life was being betrayed behind his back, by those who had used his victories over the reactionaries. The point at the moment is that this is perhaps his one moment of personal passion, save for a single flash in the troubles of his youth: and he is once more fighting his enemies with a firebrand. And yet, even in this isolated apocalypse of anger, there is one phrase that may be commended for all time to men who are angry with much less cause.
If there is one sentence that could be carved in marble, as representing the calmest and most enduring rationality of his unique intelligence, it is a sentence which came pouring out with all the rest of this molten lava. If there is one phrase that stands before history as typical of Thomas Aquinas, it is that phrase about his own argument: “It is not based on documents of faith, but on the reasons and statements of the philosophers themselves.” Would that all Orthodox doctors in deliberation were as reasonable as Aquinas in anger! Would that all Christian apologists would remember that maxim; and write it up in large letters on the wall, before they nail any theses there.
At the top of his fury, Thomas Aquinas understands, what so many defenders of orthodoxy will not understand. It is no good to tell an atheist that he is an atheist; or to charge a denier of immortality with the infamy of denying it; or to imagine that one can force an opponent to admit he is wrong, by proving that he is wrong on somebody else’s principles, but not on his own. After the great example of St. Thomas, the principle stands, or ought always to have stood established; that we must either not argue with a man at all, or we must argue on his grounds and not ours. We may do other things instead of arguing, according to our views of what actions are morally permissible; but if we argue we must argue “On the reasons and statements of the philosophers themselves.”
This is the common sense in a saying attributed to a friend of St. Thomas, the great St. Louis, King of France, which shallow people quote as a sample of fanaticism; the sense of which is, that I must either argue with an infidel as a real philosopher can argue, or else “thrust a sword through his body as far as it will go.” A real philosopher (even of the opposite school) will be the first to agree that St. Louis was entirely philosophical.
A Lesson in Controversy
So, in the last great controversial crisis of his theological campaign, Thomas Aquinas contrived to give his friends and enemies not only a lesson in theology, but a lesson in controversy.
But it was in fact his last controversy. He had been a man with a huge controversial appetite, a thing that exists in some men and not others, in saints and in sinners. But after this great and victorious duel with Siger of Brabant, he was suddenly overwhelmed with a desire for silence and repose. He said one strange thing about this mood of his to a friend, which will fall into its more appropriate place elsewhere. He fell back on the extreme simplicities of his monastic round and seemed to desire nothing but a sort of permanent retreat.
A request came to him from the Pope that he should set out upon some further mission of diplomacy or disputation; and he made ready to obey. But before he had gone many miles on the journey, he was dead.
From St Thomas Aquinas by G.K. Chesterton, Chapter III: The Aristotelian Revolution
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Read Next:
St Thomas and the Church Part I: St Thomas’ Intrinsic Authority
St Thomas and the Church Part II: St Thomas’ Extrinsic Authority
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Benedict XIV, Constitution Sollicita, in Santiago Ramirez OP, ‘The Authority of St Thomas Aquinas’, in The Thomist, The Thomist Press, Washington DC, Vol. XV No. 1, January 1952, p 25.
Vatican I, Session 3: 24 April 1870, Dogmatic constitution on the Catholic Faith – Chapter 4, On Faith and Reason. Available here: https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/ecum20.htm