Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 8, No. 4 (2010): 869–881
869
The Thomist Tradition*
S ERGE -T HOMAS B ONINO, O.P.
Dominican Studium
Toulouse, France
T HE TWENTIETH CENTURY was a difficult one for the
Thomistic school. In effect, whereas the Thomists of the first half of the
twentieth century gladly referred to the works of their illustrious predecessors, the “commentators,” and drew generously from the well of their
ancestors’ thought—to the point that Jacques Maritain saw himself
unjustly reproached for being more of a “John of St. Thomist” than a
Thomist—the Thomism that has prevailed since has not been sparing in
its critique of the school. Perhaps because they suspected a causal link
between the massive reference to the school and the historical downfall
of the Thomistic renewal in the twentieth century, most Thomists have
adopted the hardly glorious strategy of condemning the disciples in the
hope of better saving the master. In order to preserve the future of
Thomism, St.Thomas has been unburdened of a Thomistic school judged
as compromising, obsolete, and even unfaithful. In the diligently pursued
trial of the school, many have taken an odd pleasure in emphasizing the
undeniable divergences between the commentators and their proclaimed
source, and in opposing the authentic doctrine of Thomas, finally restored
through historical studies, to the Thomistic perversions. Some lament
that the school misunderstood the most original and most fruitful of
Thomas’s theses, and instead has offered a thin, indigestible scholasticWolfian broth, whereas the contemporary understanding expects the
hearty and perpetually fresh bread of pure Thomism. In short, a rallying
cry has spread: Zurück zu Thomas, bypass the Thomistic school!
*
Originally: “La tradition thomiste,” in Thomistes, ou De l’actualité de saint Thomas
d’Aquin (Paris: Éditions Parole et Silence, 2003), 241–53.Translation by Bernhard
Blankenhorn, O.P.
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The Necessary Reference to the Thomistic Tradition
I will certainly not dispute the value of a direct reading of Aquinas. But is
this incompatible with a prudent reference to the school? Must one set up
the systematic mistrust of the Thomistic tradition as a methodological principle, almost as a dogma? It seems strange to think that the painstaking and
assiduous research of the Thomists that spans multiple centuries has
absolutely nothing to offer to our understanding of Thomas’s text. Besides,
it is precisely the historical approach that demonstrates the profoundly
traditionalist character of Scholasticism in general and of Thomism in
particular, regardless of the eventual divergences between Thomas, John
Capreolus, Domingo Bañez, and Marie-Michel Labourdette. In effect, for
Thomas, the exercise of thought—both theological and philosophical—is
inconceivable outside of a reference to the authorities, to foundational
texts, and more, to the foundational texts tightly inserted within a living
tradition of interpretation that has handed them on in a concrete way, even
to the present day.The personal exercise of thought is conditioned by the
reference to something known by a tradition which, far from sterilizing the
effort of reflection, grounds, orients, and stimulates it.
It is thus paradoxical that the Thomism of the second half of the twentieth century has espoused a typically “modern” structure of thought
which, in antithesis to the Scholastic spirit, obscures this constitutive relation to a living tradition. On the contrary, everything indicates that, if it
is going to be faithful to the very nature of Thomism as a Scholastic form
of thought, the effort for the renewal of Thomism cannot think of itself
as an excavation that skips the layers of several centuries in order revive
the cadavers that lie underneath. One must therefore take into consideration the Thomist tradition posterior to Thomas.
Undoubtedly, this tradition is not the homogeneous and harmonious
development of Thomas’s doctrine that some have imagined it to be.
Etienne Gilson had good reasons to ridicule the conception of the
Thomistic school as undivided and unfailingly faithful to the authentic
Thomas:“The legend, given credence by certain popes, that the Dominican school has never diverged from the doctrine of the master ‘even by
an inch’ . . . suffices to prove that papal infallibility has its limits” (Lettre
d’Etienne Gilson à Jacques Maritain, 217). But the Thomist tradition is also
not a pure and simple betrayal of Thomas either. As with every living
doctrinal tradition, it produced certain regrettable deviations from its
source, even alterations that verge on corruption.Yet it also contains gems
of faithful creativity. In short, a study of the relation between Thomism
and its history is not optional but rather a necessity.
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Therefore, if there is reason to rejoice in the immense effort that has
been expended to restore Thomas’s corpus to its proper historical context,
a work that enables a better expression of its intelligibility, one would be
wrong to stop there, as if ending a journey mid-way. For to abstract
Thomas—no matter how well he has been contextualized—from the
tradition that has brought him to us is to end up falling into a trap that
one ought to avoid, which is to turn Thomas into a thinker who hovers
above history, and thus to turn Thomism into a Platonic Idea. Thomas
vigorously fought the platonizing theory of “the giver of forms” that
posited a supernatural intervention for the appearance of any new form,
including forms in the physical world and in the realm of knowledge. He
thought that this theory undervalued the immanent causalities at work in
nature. And yet, is this not precisely what happens when one isolates
Thomas from the Thomist tradition? Is Thomism passed on through an
infusion and a new creation in each era? Or rather, is it transmitted by a
kind of generation, that is to say, by virtue of a fleshly continuity that
binds one age to another? In fact, the doctrinal complex that originates
in the work of Thomas is not a pure abstraction but a yeast that operates
at the heart of the contingencies of doctrinal history. It is therefore most
advantageous for contemporary Thomism to reread the “commentators”
in a critical manner, and thus to give careful attention to the history of
the Thomist tradition. The primary focus ought to be on the history of
Thomistic doctrine. One should also research the fascinating cultural
history of Thomism, a history of the interactions between the Thomistic
doctrinal tradition and literature, the arts, politics, etc.
The Doctrinal History of Thomism: Methodological Questions
The historian of Thomism must face some formidable methodological
problems whose solution is, in the final analysis, philosophical. Hence,
there is a properly Thomistic methodology for the history of Thomism.
The first and quite crucial problem involves the criteria that allow us
to classify an author and his or her work as Thomistic.There are two such
criteria, and these should not to be separated. One is external or institutional, while the other is internal or doctrinal.
A history of doctrines that claims to be Thomistic ought to give much
consideration to the sociological conditions of doctrinal life. It should
grant the institutional criteria of membership in the Thomistic tradition
their full importance.This approach has been neglected far too often by
an idealist history. In fact,Thomism has always incarnated itself in certain
institutions—in the Order of Preachers for seven centuries, in the bursa
Montana of Cologne in the fifteenth century, in the Higher Institute of
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Philosophy during the era of Cardinal Désiré Mercier, etc.—and membership in these institutions is a first exterior sign of one’s membership in
Thomism. Thus, unless there are clear counter-signs, one will presume
that a “Jacobin” (that is, a French Dominican) author of the seventeenth
century is a Thomist by profession.
That being said, these external criteria are insufficient, for they must
be confirmed by the properly doctrinal criteria that remain the determining factor. However, a work could be considered as doctrinally
“Thomist” when the teaching it contains presents a certain identity with
that of Thomas. Like Maritain, one could approach this identity with the
model of the substantial identity of a living, developing organism:
This work (of the development of Thomism) should be accomplished
through vital assimilation and immanent progress—if I may say so, by
the progressive formation of the same spiritual organism; by a kind of
perpetual growth and maturing; by a kind of transfiguration of which
we find a rather imperfect image in the growth of corporeal organisms.
Consider a small child that becomes an adult. His metaphysical personality has not changed. Rather, it is still fully present. No heterogeneous
parts have been grafted onto him from the outside.Yet everything has
been transfigured in him, has become more differentiated, stronger, and
has attained a more perfect proportion.1
Thus, according to Maritain, the Thomism of the commentators is nothing but the doctrine of Thomas Aquinas. It is the same doctrine, but at a
later, more mature period of development.
To this optimistic model, one might prefer the more flexible metaphor
of a line of ancestors or the members of a single species spanning different
generations.The same specific essence is transmitted to a plurality of distinct
individuals by way of generation.The Thomism of Thomas of Vio Cajetan
or Maritain is another doctrine than the Thomism of Thomas. However,
since these Thomisms have been engendered in a certain way by Thomas’s
corpus, they demonstrate a specific resemblance with his thought.
And yet, the real problem is not the choice of a model with which to
conceive the unity of the Thomistic tradition. Rather, the greater difficulty
is how to determine whether this presumed unity corresponds to the
historical reality! Is there a doctrinal unity of the Thomistic tradition? Do
the differences and variations that have been found within the Thomistic
tradition remain on the plane of individual differences within a single
species, or do these differences place the specific identity into question?
1
Sept leçons sur l’être (Paris: Pierre Téqui, 1940), 18.
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Gilson—who never hid his profound dislike for Cajetan, corruptorium
Thomae, and other commentators—tended toward the second solution to
this question. But it seems to me that this negative judgment rests on a
highly disputable approach to the nature of doctrine and on an all-tooCartesian excess of systematization. For Gilson, Thomism is a “system”
structured and specified by a single principle, which alone gives meaning
to the whole.This principle is the “fundamental truth” of Thomism, to take
up an expression of Norbert Del Prado. For him, this truth, this cornerstone of the Thomistic system, is the thesis of the real distinction between
being (esse) and essence in creatures, and its necessary complement, the
thesis of the real identity of being and essence in God. In other words, as
Gilson will specify, this fundamental truth is a certain understanding of the
mystery of being as existential act.This first principle, which can be grasped
only intuitively, is the soul of Thomism. In this perspective, those who overlook this principle miss everything, no matter how great their subjective
desire for fidelity to Thomas may be, and they are left with nothing but a
Thomistic corpse. Since most “Thomists” have not understood being the
way Gilson has, a veritable massacre follows. There is no history of
Thomism, just a history of the forgetting of Thomism.
This apocalyptic historiography of the Thomist tradition rests on the
postulate according to which Thomas’s thought is so systematized and
unified that we find ourselves in the binary logic of “all or nothing.”
There is no Thomism without an understanding of the first principle! It
is true that philosophical or theological thought cannot dispense itself
from the search for a unifying principle. Furthermore, by its very nature,
philosophical and theological thought tends toward systematization. But
in the concrete, a doctrinal teaching such as that of Thomas integrates a
plurality of principles that are not tightly interconnected. The Thomism
of Thomas is a complex, articulated whole that includes certain theses
which are relatively independent of one another. Thus, a “commentator’s” shortcoming in a certain domain does not ipso facto entail a
disqualification of his entire work. For example, one can maintain very
authentically Thomistic positions in morals and politics, as Francisco de
Vitoria did in the sixteenth century, without necessarily adopting
Thomas’s view of the relation between being and essence.The weakness
or regress of a body part has repercussions for an entire organism, but it
does not necessarily cause death. Consequently, one can have limping
Thomisms, or those afflicted with a horrible Scotistic swelling of the
throat, which nevertheless merit the name of Thomism. In short,
Thomism is an analogical reality.There are more or less profound, more
or less perfect,Thomisms, yet they still partake in the same heritage.
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The historian of the Thomist tradition is thus invited to combine the
doctrinal and the institutional criteria.Yet in each case, these criteria must
be carefully contextualized. This is obvious for the institutional criteria
that are by their very nature historical.Thus, the institutional connection
between Thomism and the Dominican Order has known its ups and
downs, as it still does today.This is just as true for the doctrinal criteria.
It is not possible to define the Thomist tradition a priori using doctrinal
criteria that are extrinsic to the historical context of a certain era without being anachronistic. To be a Thomist at the end of the thirteenth
century did not mean defending an Augustinian conception of predestination against improbable Molinists, for an Augustinian doctrine was still
admitted by everyone and remained unquestioned. Rather, to be a
Thomist meant maintaining the unicity of substantial form and the superiority of the intellect over the will against a very active Franciscan opposition! To be a Thomist in the fifteenth century meant fighting the
Scotistic doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, and not the promotion
of the notion of esse as existential act! Thus, one must avoid projecting
the doctrinal criteria that characterize one era of Thomism onto another
historical period of Thomism.
The second methodological problem that the doctrinal history of
Thomism presents involves a particular application of a general philosophical problem: what is the engine or explanatory principle of doctrinal history? Here, one should avoid two tempting extremes.The first or
“idealist” temptation suggests an explanation of doctrinal development
using only the logic of ideas. Thus, the history of doctrines appears as
nothing but the unfolding of the logical consequences of a set of initial
doctrinal options. For example, Géry Prouvost, taking up one of Gilson’s
intuitions, thinks that the history of Thomisms is in the service of “an
experimental laboratory which seeks the secret or un-thought tendencies” of the doctrine of Thomas.2 Prouvost proposes that “perhaps the
diversity of Thomisms finds its first source in the very ambiguity of
Thomas’s text” (17).Thus, they reveal “aporias and speculative dissonance”
(126). The conflicting interpretations inside the Thomistic school thus
appear as nothing but the unfolding and actualization of an ambivalence
already virtually present in the works of Thomas himself. Although this
type of approach is not un-interesting, it hardly corresponds to the
historical conditions of doctrinal history; at the same time, moreover, it
flirts with an “idealist” approach to history that is hardly in harmony with
the principles of Thomistic anthropology.
2
Saint Thomas et les thomismes (Paris: Cerf, 1996), 33.
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The “materialist” temptation is to reduce the development of ideas to
a “real history,” to the evolution of infrastructures and sociopolitical life,
an evolution of which doctrines will be only an epiphenomenal reflection. Yet a good understanding of the connection between the proper
finality of the doctrinal act and its sociopolitical inscription excludes this
kind of reductionism. The doctrinal act, however conditioned it may be
by its social context, is not reducible to it (this would mean the end of
philosophy, theology, and the history of doctrines), except when thought
degrades itself into an ideology, that is to say, when the doctrinal act is
directly governed by goals that are radically extrinsic to the quest for the
truth.Again, in the face of every temptation toward a simplistic univocity,
the historian of doctrines must demonstrate a sharp and discerning spirit.
Highlights from the History of Thomism
Thomism experienced a painful birth, first as a reaction to an antiThomism. The 1270s were marked by a growing suspicion that culminated in the doctrinal condemnations of 1277 directed at an Aristotelian
naturalism and certain theologians who had integrated this philosophy
into their thought. The first Thomism, essentially Dominican, focused
primarily on a defense of certain controversial doctrines in Thomas’s
works against the attacks of some Franciscans and the reaction that has
been called (rightly or wrongly) “neo-Augustinianism.”The main points
of conflict were the same as when Thomas was alive. Are there multiple
substantial forms in the human being, or only one? Is a created eternal
world possible? Does the intellect play a more determining role in
human liberty than the will? This was the time of the Correctoria. Just
before 1279, the Franciscan William de la Mare’s Correctorium pinpointed
a number of controversial aspects in Thomas’s doctrine. The Dominican
response to the Correctorium, re-baptized as the Corruptorium, was not long
in coming. It consisted of five refutations of William de la Mare’s work.
This literature is the first manifestation of a Thomistic tradition. It
emerged from the two great centers of the Thomistic resistance: Paris and
Oxford. Indeed, while Oxford, with Robert of Kilwardby and John
Peckham, was at the heart of the anti-Thomist offensive, its Dominican
priory also housed a young and dynamic team of Thomists who engaged
in a thorough defense of “our doctor,” Thomas Aquinas. Among these
were Richard Knapwell (†1289), author of the correctory Quare and
proto-martyr of Thomism, and Thomas Sutton († after 1315). While
Sutton did not compose a Correctorium, he was very active in the defense
of Thomistic ideas. He also seems to have been one of the first Dominicans to engage in the debate with Scotism, which was destined to last.
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In the closing years of the thirteenth century, the literary genre of the
Correctorium was succeeded by that of the Impugnatio, a genre in which
the Dominican Bernard of Auvergne († after 1304) distinguished himself.
These treatises offered a systematic Thomistic critique of the new theologies that emerged at the end of that century, including a critique of their
philosophical foundations. The thinkers targeted included Henry of
Ghent, Godfrey of Fontaines, and Gilles of Rome.
In the first half of the fourteenth century, the thought of Thomas
Aquinas continued to inspire to varying degrees a number of Dominicans. In the south of France, Bernard of Trillia (†1292) had already distinguished himself as one who was, in the words of Bernard Gui, “richly
impregnated with the teachings and nectar of Brother Thomas,” and did
not recoil before outright plagiarism. One should also mention Cardinal
William of Peter Godin (†1336), the first provincial of the Dominican
province of Toulouse and author of a commentary on Peter Lombard’s
Sentences hailed as a lectura thomasina, as well as the exegete Dominic
Grima, and Armand of Belvézer († after 1348), who was the first
commentator on the De Ente et Essentia. In the north of France, one must
mention Hervaeus Natalis (†1323), perhaps the most controversial figure
in medieval Thomism (he rejected the real distinction of being and
essence!), but one with considerable influence. Natalis made himself the
promoter of institutional Thomism. In addition, one can mention Peter
of Palude (†1343), a man of little speculative talent, though he was well
known for his moral and sacramental theology.Among the Italians, Remi
dei Girolami, Gui Vernani, and especially John of Naples were well
deserving of the title “Thomist.” In Germany, Albertism remained so
dominant that, after the condemnation of Meister Echkart, two Toulouse
Dominicans were commissioned to bring their German brothers into the
Thomistic fold.
Two major phenomena marked the Thomistic tradition in the first half
of the fourteenth century. First,Thomism became the official doctrine of
the Dominican Order, not only in their university teaching but also in
their internal formation, with all the consequences that this Thomistic
penetration can have, given the Dominican influence on socio-cultural
life at that time. Here, the “affair of Durandus of Saint-Pourçain” marks
a turning point.The direct inheritor of a pre-Thomist Dominican vein,
Durandus opposed numerous Thomistic positions in his teaching. The
scandal was considerable. A number of Dominican theologians—led by
Hervaeus Natalis—felt obliged to refute the theology of their excessively
independent confrere. The institutional reaction was no less firm. In
1313, the Order of Preacher’s General Chapter at Metz declared:
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Since the teaching of the venerable doctor, brother Thomas Aquinas, is
regarded as the most sound and the most common, and since our Order
is especially obligated to follow it, we strictly forbid any brother in his
courses, determinations, or responses to have the audacity to maintain
and propose as true the contrary of that which is commonly believed
to be the opinion held by the doctor.
With the help of the canonization of Thomas by Pope John XXII in
July of 1323, this institutionalization of Thomism even began to extend
itself to the universal Church. The recognition of Thomas’s sanctity
occurred in a very particular context, that of the controversy about
poverty between the Franciscans and a papacy that regarded the theology
of Thomas Aquinas as a precious ally.Thomas’s canonization contributed
greatly to the establishment of his doctrinal authority, as did his solemn
doctrinal rehabilitation by the University of Paris in 1325, an event that
later Thomists will recall time and again.
Yet Thomism also suffered the repercussions of the profound mutation
in Scholasticism in the fourteenth century, a change both in Scholasticism’s
methodology and in the problems with which it dealt.This was a century
of critique rather than a century of decadence.This shift can be explained
by the end of the “great translations,” of the translatio studiorum, which
closed the Latin mind in on its own history, as well as by the growing separation between philosophy and theology. These developments—aided by
other mediating factors that cannot be explained here—were expressed in
a new “style” of thought. This new thought was characterized by the
inflated role that it granted to logic and epistemology.
Beyond this change in “style” that also marked Thomism, doctrinal life
in the first half of the fourteenth century was characterized by the
predominance of a certain number of challenges, in which one can
distinguish two kinds. First, the constellation of problems was directly
tied to the critical problem, that is, to epistemological questions that
focused on the status of theology and its scientificity, and other problems
related to the theory of knowledge.Thomism responded with a defense
of an Aristotelian noetic system, which had found much opposition.
Second, we find three problems tied to the great sociocultural conflicts
of the era. First, there was the fight between the papacy and certain
temporal powers that led to the emergence of a political philosophy and
theology.The Thomists oscillated between a strict theocratism (especially
the Italians, including John of Naples and Gui Vernani) and a more
refined sense of the autonomy of political realities (especially among the
French, e.g. John of Paris). Second, the revived conflict between the
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mendicants and the secular or diocesan clerics stimulated a reflection on
the internal structure of the Church, and in particular, on the proper role
of the pope within that structure.The Thomists showed themselves to be
fully convinced supporters of the papacy, whatever the differences in
their approaches to the problem of the relationship between the Church
and civil society. Third, the above-mentioned conflict between the
papacy and the Franciscans encouraged a deeper reflection on the theology of religious life and in the areas of social and political philosophy (for
example, on the question of property).
The second half of the fourteenth century was a kind of journey
through a desert for the Thomist tradition. In general, this era was doctrinally poor, yet the decline of Thomism is also explained by the success of
another kind of Scholasticism, one that later solidified itself into the via
moderna. Thomism’s decline was also reinforced by its memorable defeat
in the debate on the Immaculate Conception. One thinks especially of
the conflict between John of Monzon and the University of Paris
(1387–89), from which the Dominicans were temporarily excluded.
We find the first “Thomistic renewal” in the fifteenth century. It
occurred in the general context of a return to the thirteenth century. A
romantic image of the 1200s had emerged, of an era of harmony between
faith and reason, one exempt from the deviations of the fourteenth
century.The monumental Thomistic work of the fifteenth century—the
Defensiones theologiae divi Thomae by the French Dominican John Capreolus (†1444)—offers a good example of this project. Capreolus sought a
return to Thomas himself, to Thomas sui interpres, by means of a critique
of the fourteenth-century critique (Duns Scotus, Durandus of SaintPourçain, Peter Auriol, Gregory of Rimini, etc.). However, it was not in
France but in Germany and in Italy that Neo-Thomism flourished. At
Cologne, the Thomistic torch passed to the secular clerics, with the bursa
Montana and its masters, such as Henry of Gorcum (†1431), Gerard of
Monte (†1480), and their confrontation with Neo-Albertism. This
Colognian Thomism exercised a considerable influence on the universities in Germany and in Central and Eastern Europe, institutions that were
then in full bloom. In Italy, the success of Thomism was inseparable from
the reform movement within the Dominican Order, especially at
Bologna, where Dominic of Flanders (†1479) and Peter of Bergame
(†1482) taught.
But in fact, the fifteenth century marked the arrival of a new kind of
Thomism. A Thomism of inspiration was succeeded by a Thomistic
school that distinguished itself by four traits. The first was literal fidelity
to Thomas. In a context where the category of doctrinal certitude tended
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to follow right after the category of truth, the cult of the ipissima verba of
Thomas became a kind of ideal. But this “canonization” of Thomas’s text
had some fortunate results. It caused a somewhat timid manifestation of
the first beginnings of textual and historical criticism. It also produced
the genesis of an unprecedented exploration of Thomas’s corpus, one that
included the immense work of indexing, whose greatest accomplishment
remains Peter of Bergame’s Tabula aurea.The second trait of the Thomistic
school in this era was, fittingly, the reduction of Thomas’s corpus into the
form of a textbook. Here we find the first Thomistic manuals. Thus,
Henry of Gorcum was a good pedagogue and an author of manuals
rather than an original thinker. This was also the age in which the first
commentaries on the Summa theologiae appeared (by Henry of Gorcum,
the Dominicans Laurent Gervais, Gerard of Elten, and others). These
were works whose pedagogy targeted a very broad audience. The third
trait was the solidification of the boundaries between the schools. The
doctrinal debate degenerated into a “war of positions,” a “trench war” in
which each camp defined itself by simple and well-defined theses that
were opposed to the theses of the adversarial camp. Finally, the last trait,
one that especially pertains to the end of the fifteenth century, is the
appearance of a tradition of interpretation. To be a Thomist meant not
only to refer oneself to Thomas but also to read him with the help of a
certified series of Thomistic authors.
The Thomists of the fifteenth century also sought to construct a
systematic Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy. One finds it especially in
their commentaries on Aristotle, works largely inspired by Thomas’s own
Aristotelian commentaries. In theology, the school took part in the great
controversies of the era, especially the ecclesiological debates brought
about by the Great Western Schism. In general, Thomism became the
great defender of papal authority against the conciliarists. A good example is found in the work of John of Torquemada (†1468), author of the
first Summa de ecclesia.This pro-papal tendency in Thomistic theology was
not unrelated to the renewed support from Rome that Thomas would
enjoy henceforth.
This late-medieval renewal prepared the way for the sixteenth century.
This was the golden age of Thomism and the era of the great “commentators.” In Italy, Thomas of Vio, alias Cajetan (†1534), and Francesco
Silvestri (†1526) composed the two classic commentaries on the Summa
theologiae and the Summa contra Gentiles, respectively. In Spain, Francisco
de Vitoria (†1546), initiated into Thomism at Paris, was the first of a series
of illustrious masters that included Domingo Soto (†1560) and Melchior
Cano (†1560), the men who formed the Thomistic school at Salamanca.
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More attentive to morals than to metaphysics, and anxious to integrate
the contributions of the humanist tradition and positive theology into
Thomism,Vitoria had the great merit of applying Thomistic principles to
the elaboration of a theory of international law and the defense of the
natural rights of the indigenous people in the Americas. On these points,
his ethical doctrine rested on the Thomistic conception of the distinction
between nature and grace. This Iberian Thomism produced a plentiful
late harvest that continued into the seventeenth century, with the systematic Thomistic courses of John of St.Thomas (†1644) and the Carmelites
of Salamanca (Salmenticenses ).
The Thomists were soon confronted by the drama of the Reformation.
They opposed a narrow Protestant theology that reserved all efficacy to
God with Thomas’s conception of the non-competitive relation between
the first and the second cause. This conception provided the foundation
for the principle of mediation, including mediation in the order of salvation. In this context, it is understandable that the Thomistic theologians
were omnipresent at the Council of Trent, where they directed in a decisive way the Christian reflection on the great questions concerning justification, the sacraments, et cetera. The proclamation of St. Thomas as
Doctor of the Church by St. Pius V in 1567 marked the zenith of this
Thomism. This school provided the doctrinal structure for the Catholic
Reform.Thomism also took an active part in the spiritual movement that
distinguished the great French century. Authors such as Louis Chardon
(†1651), Vincent Contenson (†1674), and Antoine Massoulié (†1706)
built the foundations of a spirituality shaped by Thomism. The Dominican reform of S. Michaëlis effectively produced a plethora of solid
Thomists in the south of France, both at Toulouse and at Bordeaux. Here
one might mention Vincent Baron (†1674), the intemperate anti-Jesuit
polemicist Antoine Réginald (†1676), Jean-Baptiste Gonet (†1681), and
Antoine Goudin (†1695).These men dedicated themselves to the development of Thomism’s potential as a “third way” between the Molinist and
probabilist theologies of the Jesuits and Jansenism.
The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were largely occupied by the
endless controversies about grace.The Society of Jesus had quickly rallied
to the Thomistic cause and given it Francisco Suarez (†1617), an extraordinary thinker whose connections with Thomism still need to be clarified.
Nevertheless, the Jesuits, heavily influenced by modern humanism, felt
extremely uncomfortable with the traditional doctrine of grace as efficacious by itself, one that was inspired by St. Augustine and defended by St.
Thomas. To the Jesuits, it seemed to leave too little initiative for human
liberty in the work of salvation. In addition, the way Protestantism
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employed Augustinianism seemed to confirm the need for a profound
revision of this part of the Christian faith. In his celebrated Concordantia,
Luis Molina (†1600) elaborated a general system of relations between
divine causality and human liberty. He consistently made the efficacy of
divine grace depend on the prior consent of human liberty. In the face of
this subversion,Thomists such as Peter of Ledesma (†1616), Diego Alvarez
(†1635), Thomas of Lemos (†1629), and especially the great Domingo
Bañez (†1604) made themselves the champions of the primacy of grace,
of a grace efficacious by itself and not in virtue of the prior consent of
human liberty. The free consent to grace already appeared to them as an
effect of grace.The human being and God are not in competition, simply
because the first and the second cause are not on the same plane. Furthermore, it is God himself who gives the free choice of the creature all of its
(determined) reality. Confronted with the immense mystery of predestination and the unequal distribution of grace, one ought not to propose a
“solution,” but to situate the mystery in its proper place: in the fathomless
liberty, goodness, and wisdom of God, and not in the “no God’s land” of
a human liberty improperly raised to the rank of a secondary divinity.
Henceforth, Bañezianism—and the thesis of physical premotion—became
N&V
the official doctrine of the Dominican Order.