Fr. Albert, O.P.

The Summa Theologiae of St. Thomas Aquinas is justly one of the famous works of Christendom. Yet this book, meant for beginners in the ages of Faith, can seem overwhelming today. We give here an introduction to the Summa by Fr. Albert, a son of St. Dominic, in the hope of making this important work more accessible to modern readers.

 

Since a teacher of Catholic truth must not only teach those who are advanced but has the duty to instruct beginners, as the Apostle says: “As unto little ones in Christ, I gave you milk to drink, not meat” (I Cor. 3:1-2), our aim in this work is to teach those things that pertain to the Christian religion in a manner that is fitting for the instruction of beginners.

With these words St. Thomas Aquinas opens his masterpiece, the Summa Theologiae, the greatest theological treatise ever written. One of the main reasons of this greatness consists precisely in the fact that its author perfectly succeeded in his aim of proposing all of Christian doctrine “in a manner that is fitting for the instruction of beginners” (secundum quod congruit ad eruditionem incipientium). As Cardinal Cajetan (1469-1534), the greatest of St. Thomas’ commentators, remarks:

This work is not said to be fitting for beginners because of its facility, or because it is a superficial or summary or introductory treatise, but because of its omission of the repetition of superfluous things and the very beautiful order it constructs; for, as will appear, all the difficulties of theology, and according to what is essential to them, are treated here with clarity.¹

The Summa is fit “for the instruction of beginners,” then, not because it is easy or superficial, but because of its order, brevity, and clarity. St. Thomas wrote it, as he goes on to say himself in his prologue, because he realized that those who were beginners in this science were “much impeded” by the confusion and repetition of the books then in use and especially because “those things necessary for them in order to understand were not presented in the order necessary to learn them but rather as was required by the commentary of some book or the occasion of some disputed question.” To help these poor beginners, then, out of the charity of his heart, the great teacher stoops down to them and explains everything to them from the beginning in order and as simply and briefly as the subject matter will permit (secundum quod materia patietur).

The result of this effort is the marvellous book entitled Summa Theologiae. Written in full maturity, and for the purpose we have just seen, the work gave its author the occasion to summarize and crystallize his own thought. Fr. Walter Farrell remarks on the wonderful brevity and simplicity occasioned by the concern of the author to simplify things for “beginners.”

Here, in the full fruit of great genius, there is an economy of word and concept that is deceiving: a few lines of the Summa often equal pages of an earlier work and yet leave us puzzled as to what has been omitted. Frequently the marvel is not what has been so well said but what has been so well left unsaid.²

What we propose to do is share with “beginners” some of the Christian wisdom contained in this book, without a doubt one of the most important books ever written. True, it is not an easy book, but several things about it are easy. First, there is this clarity of style, fruit of the charitable resolution to make things as easy as possible for beginners. Secondly, the subject matter: the Catholic faith. As we shall presently see, the subject of the sacra doctrina which the Summa teaches is God as He is revealed to us by faith, in so far as we can investigate this revelation with our reason. Now God reveals His truth, not to the wise and prudent but to the little ones, as Our Lord Himself declares: “I confess to thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent and hast revealed them to little ones” (Mt. 11:25).

As every priest knows, it is not at all necessarily the intellectual and learned people who understand the Faith best; often it seems just the opposite. The first principles of the sacra doctrina (St. Thomas’ word for what we call theology) come from faith, so anyone with faith can learn it and anyone who doesn’t have the Faith can’t.³ It must be added as well that the more charity one has, the better one understands the truths of the faith because the more one then receives the gifts of the Holy Ghost which give us a certain experimental knowledge of God.

Nevertheless, it is true that sacred doctrine does require a certain exercise of the intelligence and the understanding of philosophy, since it consists, precisely, in the application of our intelligence to what we believe. In the Summa, however, St. Thomas spells out these philosophical principles in the simplest form possible for beginners in a way that makes them seem easy (always, however, secundum quod materia patietur). Even if this facility is somewhat deceptive,⁴ it makes the Summa by far the most approachable of all theological treatises and enables it to be read, with a certain guidance, by any educated Catholic who loves his faith and wants to understand it better. We hope, with the help of St. Thomas and his great Patroness, Our Lady, Seat of Wisdom, to make you experience the truth of this.

 

Like Dante’s Divine Comedy,⁵ which begins with a preliminary Canto that introduces the three grand sections of his monumental work, St. Thomas prefaces his great three-part summary of Christian doctrine with a preliminary question whose purpose is to explain precisely what the science he is going to explore treats of. Similarly, Aristotle in his great work, the Metaphysics, begins by investigating in what precisely consists the subject of the science of metaphysics that he wants to discuss.⁶ So St. Thomas begins this first question, saying: “To place our purpose within proper limits, we first endeavour to investigate the nature and extent of this sacred doctrine.”

True to the form he will follow throughout the Summa, St. Thomas then lists the different points he will treat in discussing the question he has enunciated, points which are called “articles” because they are like articulations of the question, similar to the articulations present in any body. Thus these articles are the key points necessary for the understanding of the question posed, around which the whole subject discussed turns. It is precisely in his pinpointing of these nerve centers, as it were, of the subject he treats, and the order in which he places them in his discussion of it, that the genius of St. Thomas lies.

Obviously, then, the understanding of these key questions and their order will be very important for us in trying to explain the meaning of St. Thomas’ text. Fortunately another great commentator of St. Thomas, John of St. Thomas (1589-1664), wrote a whole treatise where he traces out this marvellous order in the Summa.7 On this first question he writes: “In the very first and introductory question, he considers the science itself, explaining its necessity, dignity, specification, and mode of proceeding.”

The plan, then, of this first question, can be given as follows:

 

Firstly, then, St. Thomas asks whether it is necessary that there be a sacred doctrine, that is, a teaching by revelation from God on top of what men can know by reason. He answers that it is necessary for two reasons: 1) firstly, because God has given man a supernatural end, and so He must give us the supernatural knowledge that is necessary for us in order that we might direct ourselves towards that end; 2) secondly, because even the natural truths about God, which are necessary for us as well, must be revealed to men by God since otherwise they would be known only “by a few, after a long time and with many errors.”⁸

Cajetan in his commentary here quotes and refutes an opinion of Duns Scotus, a Franciscan theologian (1265-1308), which was to be later taken up by the neo-modernist theologians in the 20th century, in particular by the Jesuit Henri de Lubac. According to Scotus the end God has given to man cannot be supernatural in the sense that man does not have an innate desire or natural potency for this end, because then this end would not be a beatitude for him. A dog, for example, has no natural potency for appreciating classical music, so listening to classical music cannot be his end, because it will not make him happy. Similarly, man must have a natural potency for the beatific vision or it could not be his final end. Therefore, says Scotus, this end is supernatural, not in the sense that man is not ordered towards it naturally, but simply in the sense that he cannot attain it naturally, but only by the supernatural help of God. He agrees with St. Thomas, then, that we need a supernatural knowledge given to us by God to show us this end and the way to attain it, but he maintains that man has a natural potency for it.

Innocent as this opinion might seem at first glance, it leads, nevertheless, directly to the new doctrine of Vatican II on ecumenism and the non-Christian religions. That is why it was condemned by Pius XII in his encyclical Humani Generis in 1950 when it appeared in the writings of Henri de Lubac at that time. For if, indeed, man has a natural potency or desire for the vision of God, the distinction between the order of nature and the order of grace is blurred and all religions end up being considered to be more or less on the same level, for they all express this same inner desire to see God. Certainly some are considered to be better than others, to be more true or more efficacious, but they are all in the same order.

In reality, however, this view is completely false. In reality, grace infinitely transcends nature, and thus the only true religion, the only one that can lead men to their last end, is the religion that gives men grace which elevates their intelligence and their wills to this supernatural level. All other religions just get in the way of this absolutely necessary shift to a higher order where alone salvation can be found. Cajetan’s reply to Scotus, then, is of the greatest interest to us today, for the modernists have come back to his same objection, saying that if the end fixed by God for man is not natural to man, then he will have no interest in it. We have here the germ of all the naturalism of Vatican II, from its desacralization of the liturgy to all its exaggerated concern about politics and human rights and “culture.”⁹

Cajetan responds by conceding that it is true that there must be a certain potency in man for the supernatural end God has fixed for him, but he says that this potency is not natural but “obediential.” It cannot be natural, he says, because this would confuse the orders of nature and grace. A natural potency cannot require a supernatural act to bring it to fruition, as Scotus, (and de Lubac) propose because there is no proportion between the two.¹⁰ There is only a potency which he calls “obediential,” which is, he explains, “the aptitude a thing has so that whatever God will have ordered be done in it.” Thus, he says, “the obediential potency to have faith and charity is in the nature of men because it is intellectual, but it is not in the nature of a lion to which this would be repugnant.” This doctrine preserves the absolute supernatural character of man’s last end while answering at the same time the objection against it.

St. Thomas then goes on to speak about what this “sacred doctrine” is exactly, showing that it is a specific science that is simultaneously speculative and practical. It is a science even though it proceeds from principles that it doesn’t know (since its principles are articles of faith which are not known but believed) because it receives these principles from a superior science, the science of God and the blessed in heaven. Similarly music is a science subordinated to a superior science, because its principles come from the science of arithmetic. A musician’s art is completely based on the laws of harmony that are purely arithmetical, but a musician doesn’t need to know arithmetic to be a musician: he simply accepts these principles and works with them. “Thus,” says St. Thomas, “just as music believes the principles given to it by arithmetic, so does sacred doctrine believe the principles revealed to it by God.”¹¹

This science is specifically one, because even though it treats of many diverse things (God, angels, human acts, and even historical events), it regards all of them from one particular angle, namely that they are all revealed by God and are ordered to Him as to their principle and their end. Thus, says St. Thomas, using homely examples as he often does to get across his idea, “a man, an ass, and a rock agree in the one precise formality of being colored, and color is the formal object of sight.” Similarly the formal object of sacred doctrine is what is revealed by God, no matter what it is, and it is from this that it receives its unity. “So that in this way, he goes on, sacred doctrine is, as it were, a certain stamp of the divine science, which, one and simple, embraces everything.”¹²

For this same reason sacred doctrine extends to what is speculative and what is practical at the same time “just as God too,” says St. Thomas, “knows Himself and what He does by the same science.” Being “a certain stamp of the divine science” which is both speculative and practical, sacred doctrine will necessarily be so as well. This point is very important, and unfortunately has often been forgotten by theologians who made a too strict division between dogmatic theology, which deals with what we are to believe, and moral theology, which deals with what we have to do. As we shall see, one of the great qualities of the Summa is the intimate union it maintains between these two elements, union which is founded precisely on this union of the speculative and practical knowledge in sacred doctrine.¹³

In the next two articles St. Thomas considers sacred doctrine in comparison to other sciences. First, he shows that it is superior to them because, in so far as it is speculative, it treats of what is highest, namely, the things of God that transcend human reason, and this with the absolute certitude that comes from the divine light, and, in so far as it is practical, it treats of man’s ultimate end, to which all other acts are directed, namely, eternal bliss. Secondly, he shows that it is, in the strictest sense of the word, a wisdom, which is the highest of the sciences since it treats of the highest cause of all things. Sacred doctrine does this because it treats of God, the cause of absolutely everything, and in the highest possible way, since it treats of Him not only in so far as He is knowable through the creatures He has made but also as He is known to Himself alone.¹⁴ This is because, again, it participates in the knowledge God has of Himself and communicates to us by revelation.¹⁵

This leads to the final article in the section on the essence of sacred doctrine which determines the subject of this science which is God considered, specifies Cajetan, “according to what He is in Himself.”¹⁶ This again follows from the key principle of this whole first question, namely, that the formal object of sacred doctrine, what it is primarily and fundamentally about, is what God has revealed about Himself. Thus it follows that it is primarily and fundamentally about God Himself as He knows Himself, and so “according to what He is in Himself” and not just according to what He is known to be by the creatures He made. This shows the properly infinite depth of sacred doctrine, for what God is in Himself infinitely surpasses what He is revealed to be by His creatures because, great as His creation is, it only gives a vague idea of what He really is, His being infinitely surpasses any finite thing He has made or could make.¹⁷

The last three articles of this first question treat of the method used by this science of sacred doctrine. The first article explains that sacred doctrine uses arguments not, however, to prove its principles, which come from faith, but rather to argue from these revealed principles to other truths.¹⁸ Here we have, in fact, the precise object of sacred doctrine strictly speaking, which is not divine revealed truth itself, which is the object of the virtue of faith, but rather the truth that our reason can conclude from this divinely revealed truth. Cajetan neatly explains this distinction in his commentary on the second article about sacred doctrine being a science:

In Holy Scripture demonstrations are contained in a virtual manner and by the deduction of conclusions from the articles of faith another habitus is generated. Nor is it true (as Scotus says) that we give our assent to all these truths (that is to revealed truths and those taught by theology) equally and in the same way. For we do not assent to the articles of faith because of something else; but we assent to the conclusions, about which alone is this science (of sacred doctrine) because of the articles. (c) Articles of faith are proposed to us to be simply believed, other things as to be deduced from the articles, therefore we do not give our assent in the same way to the principles and the conclusions (c) for faith is about the principles and science about the conclusions.

Faith, then, and sacred doctrine (the science that we call theology) are clearly distinct. The object of faith is what has been revealed (the “revelatum,” whether it be explicitly or implicitly) whereas the object of theology is what is deduced by reason from these revealed truths (the “revelabile,” that is, what is revealed only virtually in the principles, in so far as it can be deduced from these principles). What has been revealed, even implicitly, can be defined as a dogma of faith, for it is assented to by the virtue of faith ; what has only been virtually revealed cannot be so defined because it has not been revealed but is a conclusion of reason from what has been revealed.¹⁹

The following article explains that sacred doctrine uses metaphors to teach men divine things because it is natural to men to come to the knowledge of spiritual realities through material things since all of their knowledge comes through the senses.²⁰ Metaphors are especially useful because this doctrine is intended for all men, even those who are unlearned, so it must be presented in such a way that at least by figurative images they might understand something about higher things. “Also,” St. Thomas adds, “this hiding of the truth by figures is itself useful in order to exercise the studious and avoid the ridicule of the infidels of whom it is said: ‘Do not give what is holy to dogs’ (Mt. 8).”

The final article shows how Sacred Scripture, unlike merely human writings, has more than one sense. This is possible because God, who is its author, can not only signify things by words, as men do when they write, but also by the things he signifies by words he can signify yet other things. What is signified by the words is what is called the literal sense, what is signified by the things signified by the words is the spiritual sense. For example, when Moses in the book of Genesis says that Abraham has two sons, that is the literal sense: but when St. Paul tells us that these two sons, Ismael and Isaac, signify the Old and the New testaments, he reveals to us the spiritual sense of Moses’ text. [This spiritual sense is itself divided into: 1) the allegorical sense, when the Old Testament prefigures the New, as in the example just given; 2) the anagogical sense, when present things represent eternal, heavenly things (as Jerusalem, for example, is a figure of heaven); 3) the moral sense, when Christ’s actions, or the signs that prefigure Him, show us how we must act (for example, the patience of Job, which is a figure of that of Christ, is a model of patience for us).]

 

Fr. Albert Kallio is a traditional Dominican priest ordained by Bishop Fellay and presently working with the Society of St. Pius X in the United States.

 

¹ Commentarium in Praemio.

² Fr. Walter Farrell, O.P., A Companion to the Summa (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1941), I, 8.

³ This is why no one who doesn’t have the faith can be a theologian, which drastically reduces the number of theologians in the Church today.

⁴ In the prologue to his commentary Cajetan speaks of this apparent facility and its deceptiveness: “The reason why we have endeavoured to take up this commentary is that the text of our Doctor hides a great depth of meaning, even though the arrangement and choice of his words, having nothing complicated about them, seem at first glance to attract the reader and promise a facility of meaning. But the reader then understands that what happens is very different from what he first thought; for the repeated lecture of this Author seems to augment rather than resolve the difficulty of understanding his meaning.”

⁵ Or rather it is Dante who imitates in this the Summa, which he admired very much and used as the theological basis of his poem.

⁶ Unfortunately this concern to specify precisely the object of the particular science one is pursuing is sorely lacking in modern times, particularly among some scientists who wander off into philosophical subjects and start speculating about them without knowing what they are doing nor what they are talking about. The classification of the sciences according to their objects belongs to the science of Logic, a science of which modern “scientists” are, generally, totally ignorant, to the great detriment of the intellectual climate of our age.

⁷ Ralph McInerny has published a translation of this work under the title Introduction to the Summa Theologiae of Thomas Aquinas (South Bend, Indiana: St. Augustine’s Press, 2004).

⁸ The First Vatican Council made this teaching its own in the second chapter of its document on the faith (Denzinger-Schönmetzer 3005).

⁹ This tendency at times goes to ridiculous lengths, as for example in the recent commemoration in the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, of the 40th anniversary of the break-up of the Beatles!

¹⁰ As Garrigou-Lagrange explains very clearly in his commentary on this article: “The innate desire for the beatific vision would have to be efficacious. Otherwise God as the Author of nature would have given a natural inclination to an end to which as Author of nature He could not bring the creature, and thus there would be no proportion between agent and end.” Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., The One God (St. Louis: Herder, 1943), p. 43.

¹¹ Cajetan points out here, nonetheless, that there is a difference between what we believe by faith and what we assent to because of what our reason deduces from the principles of faith. It is only the latter that is properly the object of sacred doctrine strictly speaking, which is what distinguishes it from faith, as we will see later.

¹² Ut sic sacra doctrina sit velut quaedam impressio divinae scientiae, quae est una et simplex omnium. Cajetan finely remarks the difference here between this sacred doctrine and infused science, as for example, if God were to infuse into someone’s mind the science of geometry. In the latter case the divine light would not be the formal object of the science even though it would be the efficient cause by which the intellect would attain that object: the mind would know geometry, just as anyone else does, he would just know it miraculously by a divine illumination. In sacred doctrine, however, it is the divine light itself which is the formal cause of the knowledge and not just its efficient cause: one knows what God knows, as He knows it, because He knows it, here by faith (because He said it and we believe Him) and in heaven by vision.

¹³ St. Thomas gives the advantage, nevertheless, to the speculative aspect of this science “because it is more concerned with divine things than with human acts which it treats inasmuch as man is ordained by them to the perfect knowledge of God, in which consists eternal bliss.” We see appear here what has been called the “intellectualism” of St.Thomas, as well as his decided emphasis on God rather than man. As he says in this same article, justifying his position that sacred doctrine is not primarily about the works men have to do: “Sacred doctrine is principally about God of whom rather men are the work.”

¹⁴ “Etiam quantum ad id quod notum est sibi solo de seipso.”

¹⁵ The commentary of Cajetan here is too perspicacious to omit: “Note with regard to those things that are naturally hidden to us about God, that just as they are more proper to Him in the order of knowledge, so are they more proper in the order of being. And that is why the science which treats in God the things which are known to God alone is the science of God according to those things that are proper to God. And since it is in these proper things that are found the primary and supreme foundations of divine causality, therefore this science is said to treat in the most proper way of God in so far as He is the highest cause.”

¹⁶ Sub ratione propriae quidditatis.

¹⁷ In the prologue to the fourth book of his Summa Contra Gentiles where, after treating of God philosophically, he begins to treat of Him theologically, St. Thomas gives a beautiful exposition of this cleavage between philosophical doctrine and theology by commenting on a verse of the Book of Job: “Behold, these things have been said about His ways in a partial way, and since we have barely heard a little drop of His words, who will be able to behold the thunder of His greatness?” (Job 26:14). The things said “in a partial way” is the philosophical knowledge about God, the “little drop of His words barely heard” is the knowledge we have about Him by faith in His revelation, and the “thunder of His greatness” is the knowledge the blessed have of Him in heaven.

¹⁸ “As, for example, the Apostle, in 1 Cor. 15, argues from the resurrection of Christ to prove the resurrection of all men.” This sort of use of argument does not take away the merit of faith but rather submits natural reason to it as a servant. Thus St. Thomas writes: “Since grace does not abolish nature but perfects it, natural reason must serve the faith, just as the natural inclination of the will serves charity. Thus the Apostle says in II Cor. 10: ‘Bringing into captivity every understanding unto the obedience of Christ.’”

¹⁹ This is what is meant when theologians speak about a doctrine, for example, the mediation of all graces by Our Lady, as being “definable.” It means that it is implicitly revealed, and so can be an object of faith. An example of a truth only virtually revealed would be the fact that Our Lord has an agent intellect. This follows from the fact that He has a true human nature, but it is not formally revealed, even implicitly. It is not a dogma of faith but what is termed a “theological conclusion.”

²⁰ He quotes here Dionysius the Areopagite, who says: “It is impossible for the ray of divine light to reach us if it not be surrounded with a variety of sacred veils.”