Inspiring Christian Lives

Thomas Aquinas, 1225-74

How can we love what we do not know? We can’t. Neither can we despise it. So we must set about beginning to know, if we are persuaded that the journey might be worthwhile. For help with this, we must turn to an inspiring Christian figure who used the gifts he had been given to help us understand what God is and what He is not, who it is that we believe in, and who and what it is not. His name is Thomas Aquinas and he lived in the 1200s in Italy and France. Thomas was a great student and dedicated his life to preaching, study, lecturing and writing. He wrote many commentaries which help our understanding of the Bible and great works which explain something about the unfathomable depths of the Christian faith. He was an intellectual genius. He also is a personal favourite of many Christians who like science, because his ideas are so applicable to science, especially today with all our wonderful advances in scientific knowledge. He was a highly educated man with a powerful intellectual mind – a genius, in fact. Not that he said much, though, for Thomas was no loud mouth or show off, no arrogant big head – he wore his learning very lightly. In fact, he was so modest and unassuming, that many of his intellectual friends thought he was stupid and nicknamed him the ‘dumb ox’.

But his first teacher, himself a great scholar, recognised Thomas’ gifts. He said that ‘soon the lowing of the dumb ox would be heard all over the world’. And he was absolutely right. Thomas had tremendous powers of concentration and was able to turn out some of the most prolific, precise and profound writing on the Christian faith ever. He certainly succeeded in his aim of showing that the Christian faith was not against reason, even though it stretches beyond reason (our ability to think about it). It would take a person many lifetimes to do justice to a study of Thomas’ writings, let alone to write them.

Arguably his greatest work, the Encyclopaedia of Theology (or Summa Theologica) still supplies many of the philosophical foundations for Christian thinking in many Christian traditions today.

By 1269, such was his reputation that he became the chief theologian at the court of the French King, Louis IX. Then, suddenly, in 1272, he gave it all up. Why? He said he had experienced a revelation from God, in comparison with which, all his words were as useless and worthless as straw. In the end, all he had written, were only words; and words, as all lovers know, can never really say enough. Thomas’ life shows us that ultimately the only way one can know God supernaturally is by faith. Reason can give us a certain, but very limited knowledge of his existence and some of his characteristics; but faith can tell us of the wonders of his love and his plans for us. It is faith that puts us into vital contact with him, for when we believe in God we share his knowledge and draw strength from him. Faith is indeed founded on reason, but faith asks us to go beyond reason, never against it – just like love. Faith is never blind, but is always ready to give a reason for itself and aspires always to greater clarity.