A notable feature of Aquinas's writings is the degree to which he is willing to engage with interlocuters who hold views very different from himself. By doing this in a charitable manner, Aquinas is able to find that kernel of truth in his opponent's position which in turn enables him to articulate his own understanding of theology and philosophy more clearly. The authors of this book are clearly inspired by Aquinas's approach.
This book offers three very different world views: the Christian world view of Aquinas, the Buddhist world view of Tsongkhapa, and the naturalist/atheistic world view of Steven Pinker. After laying out these three world views, the authors compare them with one another and show how these views relate to a variety of contemporary issues such as gender equality, homosexuality, and stem-cell research. Finally, the authors engage in some speculation on how the theory of evolution might aid us in our understanding of Original Sin, on whether non-rational animals go to heaven, and if rational aliens exist, would they be in need of Christ's redemption.
One of the highlights of the book is in the first chapter when the authors reflect on the nature of Gothic cathedrals. To the extent that Gothic cathedrals express a ‘harmony out of diversity’ and ‘order within variety’, they emulate what we see in the writings of Aquinas. As the authors put it, ‘Both cathedrals and [Aquinas’ Summa] sought to convey a vision of a greater, overarching, transcendent reality by arranging their particular elements within a greater unity that revealed the larger truth through attention to the details of individual truths and the connections between them. Individual elements of art within a cathedral and individual questions within the Summa have a truth of their own, a message to convey. But the work as a whole unites and arranges the elements into a larger truth, placing various elements in interpretive juxtaposition to other elements to tell this larger story’.
On reading this passage, I had high hopes for this book, for it surely expresses an aspiration found not just in Aquinas and the cathedral architects, but also to some extent among Buddhists and naturalists as well. All of them are trying to find some principle of unity by which the diverse elements of reality can be brought together in order to tell a larger story: Christians tell the story of salvation history, naturalists tell the story of evolution, and Buddhists appeal to the law of karma in telling their story. By fully entering into one of these stories, not only is one able to recognize the internal coherence and beauty within them, but also why people tend to get upset when one attempts to show them that there is some aspect of reality that does not fit in with their story. Just as a beautiful landscape can be ruined by building a factory, so can a beautiful story be ruined when an ill-chosen character or scene is added or a central character or scene is removed. One can see why an evolutionary biologist might be hostile to Christians who insist that natural selection cannot completely account for human nature. Likewise, it is understandable why someone who believes in the Christian account of salvation history might be hostile to the idea that humanity never existed in a state of Original Justice.
Concerning the issue of Original Justice, I disagree with the authors. Unlike them, it is not at all clear to me that Aquinas's understanding of salvation history hangs together if the doctrine of Original Justice is jettisoned. That is not to say that everything Aquinas believed was essential to the story of salvation history, but great care needs to be taken in deciding what is essential to the story and what is not.
In this regard, the authors are perhaps a little bit too cavalier. At one point, the authors write that ‘if our bodies were created through the process of evolution, the death spoken of in the biblical record (e.g. Rom 5:12) must be metaphorical and not actual physical death’. The authors would be correct in their assessment if not being subject to physical death meant being immortal due to some intrinsic vigour in man's nature. However, this is not how Aquinas understood man's immortality in his state of Original Justice. Rather, Aquinas writes ‘man's body was indissoluble not by reason of any intrinsic vigour of immortality, but by reason of a supernatural force given by God to the soul, whereby it was enabled to preserve the body from all corruption so long as it remained itself subject to God’. (ST I, 97, 1) If this is farfetched, it is no more farfetched than the claim that Jesus rose from the dead.
There are of course aspects of Aquinas's world view that really are farfetched, but the authors’ presentation of Aquinas sometimes obscures how radically different Aquinas's world view is from a more modern one. For instance, when Aquinas says ‘man is generated by man and the sun’ it is anachronistic to suppose that Aquinas is simply alluding to the important role the environment plays in procreation. Aquinas believed that intelligent separated substances were essentially involved in procreation as they moved the celestial spheres. If Aquinas tried to cut separated substances out of his picture of reality, I do not think he would be able to defend his belief in delayed hominization in a manner that was consistent with the rest of his hylomorphic theory of nature. These issues should not be obscured if one wants to consider contemporary issues such as stem-cell research from a Thomistic perspective.
Despite these shortcomings, the authors are obviously very well intentioned. We live in an age in which a desire for tolerance appears to be waning, so this book is a helpful reminder of the value in trying to see the world from the very different perspectives of other people.
