“A
quite special place in this long development [longo
itinere] belongs to Saint
Thomas, not only because of what he taught [ob
ea quae in eius doctrina continentur] but also because
of the dialogue which he undertook with the Arab and Jewish
thought of his time. In an age when Christian thinkers were
rediscovering the treasures of ancient philosophy, and more
particularly of Aristotle, Thomas had the great merit of giving
pride of place to the harmony which exists between faith and
reason. Both the light of reason and the light of faith come
from God, he argued; hence there can be no contradiction between
them.
More
radically, Thomas recognized that nature, philosophy's proper
concern, could contribute to the understanding of divine Revelation.
Faith therefore has no fear of reason, but seeks it out and
has trust in it. Just as grace builds on nature and
brings it to fulfillment, so faith builds upon and perfects
reason. Illumined by faith, reason is set free from the fragility
and limitations deriving from the disobedience of sin and
finds the strength required to rise to the knowledge of the
Triune God. Although he made much of the supernatural character
of faith, the Angelic Doctor did not overlook the importance
of its reasonableness; indeed he was able to plumb the depths
and explain the meaning of this reasonableness. Faith is in
a sense an “exercise of thought”; and human reason is neither
annulled nor debased in assenting to the contents of faith,
which are in any case attained by way of free and informed
choice.
This
is why the Church has been justified in consistently proposing
Saint Thomas as a master of thought and a model of the right
way to do theology. In this connection, I would recall what
my Predecessor, the Servant of God Paul VI, wrote on the occasion
of the seventh centenary of the death of the Angelic Doctor:
“Without doubt, Thomas possessed supremely the courage of
the truth, a freedom of spirit in confronting new problems,
the intellectual honesty of those who allow Christianity to
be contaminated neither by secular philosophy nor by a prejudiced
rejection of it. He passed therefore into the history of Christian
thought as a pioneer of the new path of philosophy and universal
culture. The key point and almost the kernel of the solution
which, with all the brilliance of his prophetic intuition,
he gave to the new encounter of faith and reason was a reconciliation
between the secularity of the world and the radicality of
the Gospel, thus avoiding the unnatural tendency to negate
the world and its values while at the same time keeping faith
with the supreme and inexorable demands of the supernatural
order.”
-- John Paul II, "Fides et Ratio," 43
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