St. Thomas Aquinas
The Angelic Doctor
St. Thomas is called the angelic doctor because of his devotion to the holy angels and for his angelic purity and personal holiness. He is the patron saint of universities and scholars. He was the first to begin to make the Catholic faith respectable to the mind of the virulent atheist I once was. Due to my own poor circumstances, I could only be reached through my intellect, and St. Thomas fit the bill. The example in the next section provides a wonderful illustration by addressing doubt. I was raised on doubt, my father having totally given himself over to the belief that we could not be certain of anything, from which he derived great comfort. A strange thing to draw comfort from to be sure, but one that I realize was an attempt to avoid being overwhelmed by the guilt that was always dogging his footsteps. If all humans were defined by signs on their backs, mine would have read: “Should not doubt be encouraged as healthy in order to avoid believing everything we encounter?” Reading St. Thomas turned my whole universe on its head.
Whether Sacred Doctrine is Nobler than the Other Sciences?
It seems that sacred doctrine is not nobler than other sciences; for the nobility of a science depends on the certitude it establishes. But other sciences, the principles of which cannot be doubted, seem to be more certain than sacred doctrine; for its principles–namely articles of faith–can be doubted. Therefore, other sciences seem to be nobler.
St. Thomas’s answer: “It may well happen that what is in itself the more certain may seem to us the less certain on account of the weakness of our intellect, ‘which is dazzled by the clearest objects of nature as the owl is dazzled by the light of the sun.’ Hence the fact that some happen to doubt about articles of faith is not due to the uncertain knowledge obtained of the truths, but to the weakness of the human intellect; yet the slenderest knowledge that may be obtained of the highest things is more desirable than the most certain knowledge obtained of lesser things.”
In that single stroke, St. Thomas obliterated any need for discussing the conflict between faith and reason ushered in by the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, which has clouded our modern thinking. His faith established the integrity of his reason. Faith and reason were inextricably welded together in him to produce a persona stronger than steel. His are shoulders I am grateful to stand on: solid, reliable, trustworthy, and quiet. Thomas, sancte magne, ora pro nobis!!