St. Thomas Aquinas - Part 1 & 2

This is a 2 video series  done by Ryan M. Reeves (PhD Cambridge) who is Assistant Professor of Historical Theology at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. I think he did a great job of summarizing the life and teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas. 

It was through reading St. Thomas that it dawned on me.  Most of my favorite Christian theologians were actually Roman Catholic - priests, monks, and even bishops like St. Augustine. 


So, why wasn’t I also Catholic?

Well, there’s a bit more to it than that. Basically, though, I couldn’t ignore the fact that my ancient friends  held to doctrines that I had been taught were idolatrous and pagan. It didn’t add up in my mind anymore. For example, how could an idolatrous and pagan Church - the Great Whore of Babylon - produce a St. Thomas Aquinas? 

I had to admit that she really couldn’t if what I had been taught about her were true. Basically, Protestants are taught that the Church started out good, but then sometime during about the 3rd Century when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, she went syncretistic. All kinds of pagan ideas were blended with the Church. It wasn’t until the time of the Reformation that things began to be straightened out. 

The Catholic Church was at best, apostate. Sure. I didn’t ever doubt that there were real Christians in the Catholic Church. In general, though, Catholicism was a dead religion leading people away from Christ. 

So, such a religion should not be able to produce anything like an Aquinas who was very obviously a part of that system. 

So, it dawned on me that my thinking was flawed.

St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Augustine, and so many others down through the centuries were all Roman Catholic - not just plain Christians, though they are also just plain Christians. They have blessed all Christians, not just Catholics. They were certainly not Protestant nor proto Protestant.

Through a friend, I was shown one of the fatal flaws in Protestant reasoning. That is, how could the Holy Spirit have allowed the Church to be apostate for over 1,000 years until men like Martin Luther and John Calvin came along to fix things? Why would God let that happen? 

Anyway, I thought  Dr. Reeves did a good job of zeroing  in on the key tenets of Thomism for all believers.

“Grace perfects nature.”

The grace of God doesn’t make us into something we were not meant to be in the first place.

Also, there are things that any person can come to know just by observation and human reason. However, we cannot know the mysteries of God without grace and revelation.

Aquinas worked on how nature and grace can be synthesized into a greater whole.

My Reformed friends that I wrote about in 2 posts were trying to do that as well - to synthesize philosophy of science with their theology. I don’t think it worked very well. I think they fell into falsificationism. Not sure if they will be able to “tweak” their philosophy to fit better with their theology. Maybe. The philosophy of science needs to somehow integrate the mysteries of God, and I don’t know how it could do that. 

For me, I’m fine with the concept of “Grace perfects nature.”

There are Reformed scholars and teachers who are also Thomists. I have said this before, but a couple of my favorite Calvinistic theologians turned out to be Thomists. How about that? So, Reformed theology is not opposed to Thomism.