A Review
In recent years there has been increasing debate about the doctrine of God within evangelical circles. This debate has frequently invoked the name of Thomas Aquinas, both positively and negatively. For some, citing Aquinas reveals an unwitting servitude to undigested Greek philosophy, for others, rejecting Aquinas’s teaching on say, simplicity, reflects a rejection of the foundations of the Christian tradition’s teaching about the divine. Leonardo De Chirico’s book Engaging with Thomas Aquinas (EWTA) is, therefore, timely since Protestant interest in the Angelic Doctor has rarely been higher. It is all the more unfortunate, however, that the book fails to deliver what it intends – a “realistic reading of Thomas Aquinas under the supreme authority of Scripture” (172) – and, despite its many merits, offers the evangelical reader a distorted picture not only of Aquinas but also their own tradition.
The book begins with two chapters summarizing Aquinas’ life and work, followed by two on his reception in Roman Catholic and Protestant traditions. The final chapters offer a theological assessment. Towards the end of the book, De Chirico summarizes his understanding of Aquinas’ thought which, he claims,
is pervaded with ontological optimism that translates into epistemological optimism (stressing the positive role of reason), moral optimism (underlining the role of virtues as human habits), and…soteriological optimism (all humanity participates in one way or another in mystery of salvation). (168)
Thomas, we are told, “does not have a tragic understanding of sin,” (67) and this leads him to an “ontological optimism” in which nature is seen as “open’ to grace” (126) so that “human nature is still open to cooperate with grace.” This results in an “epistemological optimism” specifically expressed in Thomas’s use of the concept of analogy, which, according to De Chirico, “does not fully account for the noetic effects of sin” (142) because it “places great trust in the ability of human nature to express and investigate the ‘similitude’” (144). Thomas compounds this mistake by employing the concept of participation to “account for the relationship between the finite and the infinite.” (144) Participation and analogy undergird Aquinas’ natural theology and allow him to “justify true rational knowledge of God through analogy. Creation is, by analogy, like God since he created it.” (145) This means that “Thomas’s system, including his metaphysics and epistemology, contains tendencies and trajectories that lead to structural flaws” (168) such that “Roman Catholicism is the full outcome of Thomas’ theology and legacy” (169). Thus, De Chirico calls for reading “with spiritual empathy and critical discernment” and with an “evangelical eclecticism” (171-172), This last point will meet with almost universal agreement. But the question is whether this volume has equipped the reader to do that well. This review focuses on three main areas in which EWTA fails to do so, namely, methodology, argumentation and conceptual substance.
The major methodological shortcoming of Engaging with Thomas Aquinas is that it does not engage sufficiently with Thomas Aquinas. There is a striking lack of direct quotation and citation from the Angelic Doctor himself. Instead, we are given a varied diet of what others have said about Thomas Aquinas. In part, this is due to the book’s structure which allocates only one chapter to an actual exposition of Aquinas. Of course, reception history is important in assessing any theologian but the balance here is far too skewed towards secondary literature and commentary rather than a detailed engagement with Thomas’s work. Had De Chirico done this, he may have offered a model for the kind of ‘evangelical eclecticism’ that he advocates. Instead, we hear almost as much of John Frame’s words than we do Aquinas’ and much of the book would have been more accurately titled Engaging With Other People Engaging with Thomas Aquinas than the one actually chosen. Given De Chirico’s substantial claims about the incompatibility between Thomas’ theology and Scripture and the Reformation tradition, he would have been better served focussing on demonstrating these points from Thomas’ own words and the Reformed Confessions.
At times, De Chirico appears to offer a balanced view of Thomas, reinforcing his call for evangelical eclecticism. And yet, at various times De Chirico makes statements that make undercuts this argumentative and leave the reader with a much more negative impression of Aquinas, or at least of De Chirico’s impression of Aquinas. While De Chirico acknowledges that there are “multiple brilliant insights in his thought” (168) the book spends little time spelling out what they are, or what contemporary evangelical theology could learn from them. Instead, it focuses on Thomas’ perceived shortcomings. Further, there is a tension between his call for an “evangelical eclecticism” and his claim that “Thomas’ thought is an integrated system” (169). If so, is it even possible to appropriate him eclectically or must one receive or reject him tout court? Throughout the book, De Chirico refers to the fact that Thomas is the root of contemporary Roman Catholic teaching. This enables De Chirico to make lengthy chronological leaps and lay the blame for modern-day Roman Catholicism at the feet of the Angelic Doctor. So, Thomas’ work “contained the seeds” of Pope Francis talking of “atheists going to heaven” due to his concept of “nature-grace interdependence” (134). Throughout the book any positive historic Protestant engagement with Thomas is “flexible” and “selective” (109) while almost any statement made by any Roman Catholic cleric or council can be attributed to Thomas even if he explicitly says the opposite. Not only does this give too much credit to modern Roman Catholicism (if only it were a mere reappropriation of Thomas!), it leaves the impression that while De Chirico states one argument, his actual one is different. Tacitly, the book argues that Protestants, should they wish to remain so, must be suspicious of the theologian whose work was used in the sixteenth century “to prove the incompatibility between Rome and the Reformation.” (78)
This naturally leads to the final weakness of the book: its substantial theological judgements regarding the differences between Thomas and Reformed evangelical doctrine. Is it true that Thomas exhibits ontological epistemological and moral optimism? First, we must note that these terms are vague – what does it mean to be ‘optimistic’ in these senses? Second, examining Thomas’s writings, it is unclear that he differs from mainstream Reformed confessionalism on these points. In terms of ontological optimism, since the Reformers, as De Chirico states, stood in the Augustinian lineage, they agreed with Augustine’s view that being and goodness are convertible. As Augustine says, “all nature’s substances are good, because they exist.”[1] Is this ontological optimism? Perhaps De Chirico would highlight Thomas’s view that “grace does not annul nature but perfects it” which he says suggests that Thomism “does not have a tragic understanding of sin” (67). The problem is that many Protestant theologians say much the same thing. For instance, Edmund Calamy, a member of the Westminster Assembly, cites Aquinas arguing “Gratia non extinguit sed ordinat affectiones, saith Aquinas, Non tollit sed attollit naturam, Grace doth not destroy, but elevate nature.”[2] Likewise, Franciscus Junius, John Calvin’s student in Geneva, states that “For grace perfects nature; grace does not, however, abolish it.”[3] Many other examples could be adduced. The point is not that Calamy or Junius had exactly the same view of nature and grace as Aquinas, but that the contrast is not nearly as strong as De Chirico presents it.
What of epistemological optimism? The term is not fully defined but De Chirico does tell us that “Aquinas believed that reason without revelation can arrive at the truth about God.” (58). Well, first, Aquinas tells us that truths about God can only be obtained by reason “by a few, and that after a long time, and with the admixture of many errors” (ST I q1.a1) and he steadfastly maintains that God’s triunity is “impossible to attain” by reason alone (ST I q32.a1). Nonetheless, in affirming that reason can acquire truth about God, Aquinas is completely Augustinian since the great Bishop of Hippo believed the same. More to the point, Aquinas is in complete agreement with the Reformed on the matter. James Ussher, the Archbishop of Armagh writes that “even the Heathen Men have found out that there must be a God; seeing that of every Effect there must be a Cause.”[4] Likewise, Francis Turretin, the great Genevan theologian writes that “the orthodox, on the contrary, uniformly teach that there is a natural theology.”[5] Finally, the very first words of the Westminster Confession of Faith state that ‘the light of nature, and the works of creation and providence do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God’. De Chirico may object that Turretin and Ussher have a different view of the relationship between faith and reason than Aquinas does, but it is clearly a more subtle difference than supposing that Aquinas is “epistemologically optimistic” because he believes in natural theology.
What about Aquinas’ moral optimism which consists of “underlining the role of virtues as human habits”? De Chirico does not expand on exactly what he means by this, but it is hard to see how Aquinas’ view of habit marks him out from Reformed theology. For instance, John Owen affirms “that in the sanctification of believers, the Holy Ghost doth work in them…a gracious, supernatural habit.”[6] In his work Thomism in John Owen, Christopher Cleveland concludes that “Owen uses Thomistic concepts of infused virtue and infused habits in order to develop a strong understanding of regeneration and sanctification.”[7] Likewise, Turretin describes the work of the Holy Spirit in effectual calling as “working efficaciously and hyperphysically by an infusion of good habits.”[8] This is not to argue that Owen or Turretin’s doctrine of habits is exactly the same as Thomas’s but it is to say that the differences between them is much more subtle than De Chirico suggests.
The above should be sufficient to show that De Chirico’s conclusions about Thomas are, at best, premature if not erroneous. At least, if they are accurate then they must apply as much to the Reformed Orthodox as they do to the Angelic Doctor. Unfortunately, the problems in De Chirico’s analysis stem not from a misreading of Thomas but from an apparent ignorance of his own Reformed evangelical tradition. De Chirico’s divide is not between Aquinas and Reformed Protestantism but between the historic Christian tradition and a post-Kantian sceptical theology, which dispenses with metaphysics, deflates natural theology, and devalues the moral anthropology shared by Christian theologians from Augustine to Turretin. These philosophical presuppositions have become so ubiquitous in 20th and early 21st century Protestant dogmatics that we no longer understand our own theological forebears. But, as Jared Michaelson puts it, ‘the early modern philosophical assumptions – often broadly Kantian and idealist’ of modern theologians are “just as contested…as the…assumptions undergirding Thomas’s theology.”[9]
In 2016, the Reformed evangelical world was in turmoil because we discovered that some of the most prominent voices on the doctrine of the Trinity were out of step with the historical creeds and confessions of the Christian church. Reformed evangelicals are, therefore, in a weak position to engage in sustained doctrinal and metaphysical critique and correction of a theologian as titanic as Aquinas. We do have our differences with Thomas, to be sure, as our Reformed forebears did too. But our main posture should be to let Thomas teach us once again the understanding of being, of knowledge and of virtue of which he is a pre-eminent exponent and which he shared with our Reformed confessions. Once we have adopted that humble and docile position, we may be able to offer some chastened words of critique or correction. But unless we do so, we will continue to misidentify, as De Chirico does, where the real dividing lines between Thomas and Reformed Protestantism lie.
Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
[1] City of God XII.5 or as he says in the Confessions VII.18 ‘as long as (things) exist, they are good.’.
[2] Edmund Calamy, The Monster of Sinful Self-Seeking, Anatomizd Together with a Description of the Heavenly and Blessed Selfe-Seeking : In a Sermon Preached at Pauls the 10. of December, 1654 (London, 1655), 7. I’m grateful to Dr David Sytsma for this reference.
[3] Franciscus Junius, The Mosaic Polity, ed. by Andrew M. McGinnis, trans. by Todd M. Rester (Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2015), 38.
[4] James Ussher, A Body of Divinity: The Sum and Substance of Christian Religion (2007), 24.
[5] Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, ed. by James T. Dennison, trans. by George Musgrave Giger (Phillipsburg, 1992), 1.3.4.
[6] John Owen, The Works of John Owen, ed. by William H. Goold, 5th printing, 16 vols (Edinburgh, 1998), 3:468-69 .Italics added.
[7] Christopher Cleveland, Thomism in John Owen (Farnham, 2013), 119.
[8] Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, 15.4.23.
[9] Jared Michelson, The Doctrine of God and the Crisis of Modernity (London, 2025), 26.
