Today’s Aquinas: Ascending to Heaven’s Door with Peter and PEG

Last week, Pascal-Emanuel Gobry posted a delightful discussion of Thomas Aquinas and his works; and in it he puts his finger on the exact reason why I write about Thomas and his theology on Mondays. He says,

Nowhere is this clearer than in the much-maligned Quinque Viae. These are not “proofs”, they are ways. (Or rather, not only proofs–they are also proofs, and they work as proofs. But they are not merely proofs.) Thomas is much maligned for putting philosophical discussion de Deo uno before the theological discussion de Deo Trine, but for him, they are not just rational arguments, they are also–very much in the spirit of the Neoplatonic-inspired Pseudo-Dionysius, whom Aquinas cites as much as Aristotle–ways for the mind to rise towards the contemplation of God.

(My emphasis.) Yes, exactly. Thomas begins with the things of daily experience, and in each of his Five Ways, his five proofs of God’s existence, he shows how contemplation of the things of daily experience will lead us inexorably to the Lord God Almighty, insofar as we are capable of understanding Him at all.

And yet, the Five Ways are more complicated than they look; they aren’t so much proofs as summaries or sketches of proofs, and they rely on Aristotelian concepts like act and potency and the four causes that are fairly alien to us moderns. Yet I find contemplating them does lead my mind to God, and I want to share that with others.

On the same note, I discovered yesterday that Peter Kreeft has a new book out; called Practical Theology: Spiritual Direction from St. Thomas Aquinas, it consists of 359 reflections on particular questions one might ask of a spiritual director, with each reflection consisting of excerpts from the Summa Theologiae and Kreeft’s own midrash-style commentary. It’s very much in the spirit of my own Aquinas posts except that Kreeft knows the material much better than I do and is much better at leaving out the boring parts. I’ve been reading it a little at a time, and I’m enjoying it quite a lot. If you’ve been following my Aquinas posts and have been wanting to dig deeper, by all means get a copy of this book.

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