Aquinas the Foundationalist?

No, according to A.N. Williams, writing in New Blackfriars .  Williams defines foundationalism not only in terms of the structural distinction between basic and inferred propositions, but in telic terms: “the purpose of the non-inferred or basic propositions is to impart to the structure as a whole a measure of certainty.”  He also notes that this criterion often loosens “as one moves farther away from the classical roots of the idea in Aristotle and Descartes,” because “criteria for foundations are modified and chastened to the point where it becomes difficult to determine what could not count as a basic belief.”

So, how does Aquinas differ from foundationalism so defined?

Williams acknowledges that Thomas opens the Summa with a claim that structurally resembles foundationalism: There are basic principles, and there are inferences.  But he suggests that there are two sorts of scientiae with two different sorts of starting principles, the first of which is based on self-evident principles and the other based on principles that are not self-evident.  The former sorts of scientiae are not superior to the latter, and in fact the master scientia , sacra doctrina , is of the second sort.  Despite arising from principles that depend on revelation, sacred doctrine has “greater certitude than other speculative sciences” because of the source of the knowledge: “it derives from the light of divine knowledge,” the knowledge of God Himself and of the blessed.

Further, sacred doctrine is not subject to reason.  It is the highest science, the supreme exercise of human intellect, but it leads to the transcendence of human reason rather than being judged by it.  For Thomas, Williams argues, not even Scripture serves as a “certain warrant for sacred doctrine” but rather as a mediator of the truly certain knowledge, which is the knowledge of God and of the blessed.

Thomas understand the weakness of human reason, even when guided by faith and corrected by Scripture.  There is a foundation, but Thomas openly acknowledges the “potential fragility” of the foundation.  Williams also points to the importance of Thomas’s discussion of metaphor in the first question of the Summa .  All knowledge comes from sense, and metaphor is a means of knowing that assumes our embodiment and uses of the senses.  To this extent, Scripture’s use of metaphorical language is not a special case; Thomas implies, without developing the point, that all sciences employ metaphor.  Metaphor is particularly apt in theology, since it is “both theologically useful and necessary.”

Thus, “the scriptural texts on which sacred doctrine draws are riddled with metaphor and so is sacred doctrine itself.  Aquinas seems unconcerned about acknowledging that the obliqueness and ambiguity inherent in figurative language are native to the paradigmatic scientia , an insouciance that suggests construction a structure solid in its foundations and transparent in its justificatory grounds was not his concern.”  To be sure, Thomas says that doctrine must be grounded in the literal sense, but Williams does not find him convincing or consistent: “even by the standards of medieval Biblical interpretation, many of his appeals to scriptural warrant seem rather less than literal.”  He understands Thomas to say that the truths necessary for salvation are stated literally somewhere in Scripture, not that all theological truths are stated literally.

Why lay a foundation that doesn’t do what foundations are supposed to do?  Williams argues that “the awareness of fragility should not be taken as an admission of the hopelessness of the enterprise, or of the general unreliability of the propositions within it.”  But the purpose is not to “supply certitude or guarantees.”  The purpose is to provoke seeking: “The fragility of knowledge in this life is not a permanent state, but an adequate one, one meet for the moment.”  In fact it seems that for Thomas “the very possibility of questioning which sacred doctrine allows . . . keeps human minds in this life attentive: faced with the beatific vision, no one’s attention would waver, but given that our glimpse in this life is less compelling, the aporiae and debatability of sacred doctrine – indeed of scripture itself – keep the wandering mind wondering and in that sense, more fixed on the things of God than it might otherwise be.”