Chapter — Slater, Back to Morality
Chapter IX: The Moral Teaching of St Thomas Aquinas
THE subject of this chapter is the moral doctrine of St Thomas Aquinas. That moral doctrine is chiefly to be found in the Second Part of the Summa Theologica of the Angelic Doctor. There he makes use of the philosophic framework provided by Aristotle, and gives an ordered and reasoned account of the traditional Christian teaching on morals. It is familiar to all instructed Catholics. Priests study it to prepare themselves to fulfil the duties of their office. Preachers have recourse to it when preparing their sermons. The Catechism which the children learn at school is a brief summary of it.
The attitude of the learned world outside the Church towards the scholastic doctrine of St Thomas has undergone a notable change during the last few years. The attitude assumed by historians of philosophy during the mid-Victorian era towards Scholasticism was one of supercilious contempt. Nowadays it is quite common to meet with a high appreciation of the acumen, depth, and logical consistency of the Scholastics, and especially of St Thomas. As an instance of this changed attitude I may mention the Bampton Lectures of 1916, published in 1920. They were delivered in London and at Oxford by Dr. Philip Wicksteed. The title under which these lectures were published is: The Reactions between Dogma and Philosophy illustrated from the Works of St Thomas Aquinas. That title is very significant; it tells us how the learned world of to-day regards the problem with which we are dealing. It is studied from the point of view of comparative Religion and Evolution. It is a question of the evolution of human thought on religion and morals.
It is assumed as scientifically proved that the whole universe is constantly changing. As Heraclitus said, everything is in a state of perpetual flux. There is nothing stable, nothing permanent. Man’s nature, his intellect, his will, and therefore his opinions, all share this constant change. Evolution and change are the condition of life. Religion and morals are subject to the same law. Christianity is no exception to the rule. From the first it began to act upon the religious thought of the period which gave it birth. But the religious thought of the period none the less began to react on Christianity. In consequence, Christianity absorbed various elements belonging to pagan religions, ethnic philosophy, and Roman law. Early instances of this reaction are the stoicism of St Ambrose, derived from Cicero, and the Neo-platonism of St Augustine, derived from Plotinus. We have another instance of the same process in St Thomas, who borrowed so largely and openly from Aristotle.
Before going further, let us try to realize how this doctrine of evolution, as commonly understood, affects the science of morals.
It does away with it altogether. If everything that happens is the necessary product of antecedent and necessary causes, there is no such thing as free will or human responsibility. Morality is merely a department of physics, chemistry, or biology. Man is part of Nature. You can describe what man does, just as you can describe what animals, or vegetables, or other forces of Nature do. As in physics you describe the actions and reactions of physical forces, in chemistry the combinations of chemical elements, in biology the development of life, so in morals you describe how man acts in different circumstances. To frame rules as to how man ought to act in different circumstances is unmeaning. You might just as well frame rules as to how oxygen and hydrogen ought to act when they combine to form water.
This is fully realized by many evolutionists. In their hands the science of morals is a merely descriptive or historical science. It describes what men have thought on human conduct; what opinions they have held on particular questions; it cannot say what they ought to think, or say, or do.
Another point is that evolution can tell us nothing about the end of human life. All that the evolutionist knows is that everything is in motion. To what goal or end the motion tends he does not and he cannot know. He cannot know and he does not profess to know the end of human life; the whole question of ends, of final causes, is to him chimerical. Efficient causes are to him the only real causes. And yet, if rules as to what men ought to do are to be formulated, we must know the end of human conduct and of human life. If you are to draw a line as a guide to action you must know in what direction to draw it.
Evolution, then, is not and cannot be a guide to conduct; on the contrary, it abolishes all permanent and authoritative rules of morality. The only rule is for each one to do as he pleases.
An example will help us to realize what I have been saying. The evolutionist holds that monogamous and indissoluble marriage is only one of many ways in which the propagation of the human race has been achieved. He will perhaps go so far as to admit that, on the whole, monogamous and indissoluble marriage gives the best results. Perhaps it would be wise to encourage it as far as possible. But it has never been universally accepted, and in modern society there are signs that monogamous and indissoluble marriage is giving way in favour of much looser relations between the sexes. This tendency without doubt is part of the evolutionary process. If it is, then, pace Huxley, we cannot resist it, because we are part of the cosmic process. That is how evolution affects the practical question of divorce. How can it possibly curb the wild impulses of our lower nature ?
The Catholic, taught by the Church and by St Thomas in her name, looks at the facts from quite a different point of view. He sees and acknowledges that we live in a changing universe, but a changing universe does not explain itself; movement and change postulate an Author who does not change. “As a vesture thou shalt change them and they shall be changed, but thou art always the selfsame and thy years shall not fail.”*
Hence the great fundamental question, which underlies all other questions, as St Thomas says,† is the question of the existence of God. Primo, quaeritur an Deus sit. First of all we ask, Is there a God? he says at the beginning of the Summa Theologica. This is especially necessary in the science of morals. God is our first Beginning and last End. He cannot possibly be ignored or left out of account in the science of duties. Our duty to him is the subject-matter of the first and greatest commandment. God is the infinite source of all Being, and he is also infinite Mind. He has a full and comprehensive knowledge of himself and in himself of all things that exist or are possible. He is thus infinite and unchanging Truth. He made us, his finite creatures, in his own image and likeness. He gave us the capacity to know the truth, not all truth, but as much as is necessary and really useful for us. By our natural reason we can know him; we can know that he is our Creator, and we can know our duties towards one another as being made by the same God, our common Father. In other words, by the exercise of right reason, we can know the fundamental precepts of the moral law which we call the ten commandments. This is the teaching of St Paul in the Epistle to the Romans (ii 14). He says that the Gentiles, who had not the positive law of God, nevertheless had its precepts written in their hearts, and that their conscience, or right reason, told them what is right in moral conduct and what is wrong.
However, modern experience is teaching us more clearly every day that reason and conscience are not very reliable guides in conduct. Many men are dull, many more are lazy, most people are occupied with other things, and human passion is apt to warp the judgement. Under these circumstances it is inconceivable that God our Creator has left us to grope after him to see if perchance we should find him. He has not done that, he has spoken to us, he has taught us especially through his own Son, Jesus Christ.* Jesus Christ knew human nature too well to dream of basing his doctrine on human reason. He did not do that, he based it on faith. He demanded unquestioning acceptance of and firm belief in his teaching on the authority of God. He came, he said, not to destroy the law, but to fulfil it. He called the ten commandments, his commandments. He used and appealed to right reason in developing them, as when he taught that the commandment which forbids murder also forbids anger and quarrelling, which if unchecked lead to murder. He also appealed to right reason and conscience in his pitiless exposure of the unsound casuistry of the Pharisees. But he rested his teaching on the authority of God and on faith in his word.
There is, then, one body of truth, resting on the Being and on the Nature of God. Our minds do not make it, they only recognize its existence independent of themselves. We have two ways of attaining to that truth, natural reason and the teaching of Jesus Christ. Both right reason and the teaching of Jesus Christ come from God, they manifest to us the same truth; there can be no opposition, no contradiction between faith and right reason.
The Fathers of the Church acted upon this teaching. Tertullian, St Cyprian, St Ambrose, St Augustine, took what was true in the teaching of the pagan philosophers without scruple. St Augustine defends the practice, and says that when a Christian teacher does this, he only takes what belongs to him. All truth comes from God; it forms one harmonious whole; one truth is not opposed to another; one truth does not contradict another.
It is an axiom of Catholic theology that Christian teaching contains no new moral precepts except those which have reference to faith and the sacraments. In other words, apart from faith and the sacraments, and the new duties imposed by them, Christian moral teaching is merely the teaching of right reason and common sense. St Thomas taught nothing new; he taught traditional Christian doctrine; he taught the moral doctrine of Jesus Christ. He did this in a form borrowed from Aristotle, but the form did not change the doctrine. He proposed Christian truth in a new way, but what he proposed remained Christian truth. He faithfully adhered to the old maxim—Non nova sed nove.
These are the broad and solid foundations on which St Thomas Aquinas built the moral teaching of the Second Part of his Summa Theologica. He found much that was true in the Ethics and Politics of Aristotle; the pagan philosopher’s authority was being used against the Church; St Thomas determined to “baptize Aristotle”—i.e., to make him subservient to Christian teaching, and he succeeded admirably. He reared a monument which is not touched by modern science; it remains unshaken and unshakable, because it rests on God and on Jesus Christ.
I will now pick out a few salient points in the teaching of St Thomas and briefly indicate what he owed to Aristotle and what to Christian teaching. In general, we may say that St Thomas took the form in which his work is cast from Aristotle, and the inexorable logic with which it is developed. Much of Aristotle’s teaching with regard to particular virtues and vices St Thomas also adopted without scruple, but when Aristotle’s virtues and vices are embedded in the Christian scheme they almost change their nature.
The first task of the moralist is to lay down the fundamental principle which should guide human life and conduct. What should be the aim of all deliberate human action?
Modern utilitarians said that our aim should be the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Kant inculcated the observance of the “categorical imperative.” Idealists lay down the principle of perfection or self-realization. Aristotle and the ancients taught that the highest good or happiness is the end of human life. St Thomas goes more to the root of the matter when he asks what is the ultimate end of human life, for, as he says, human actions are a means to the end, and the means derive their moral quality from the end. That is good which conduces to the end, that is bad and wrong which turns us from our end.
Aristotle taught that man’s highest good and happiness is not to be found in pleasure, wealth, honours, knowledge, or health. It is not to be found even in virtue by itself, but it is to be found in the most perfect activity of the soul according to the most perfect virtue, in a perfect and enduring life. Aristotle limits his consideration to the present life. His ethic is of this world and purely natural.
St Thomas teaches that man’s ultimate end and happiness does not consist in wealth, glory, honour, power, pleasure, or in any created good; it is to be found only in God, in the intuitive vision of God. This, of course, is the teaching of revelation. “We see now,” says St Paul, “through a glass in a dark manner, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know even as I am known.”* “This,” said our Lord,† “is eternal life, that they may know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.” Man's ultimate end, then, according to St Thomas and Christian teaching, is not to be found in this life; we can only attain to it after death. It is not natural to man; man has no natural capacity of seeing God face to face, of knowing him as he knows himself. In order to be able to attain his end, which is supernatural, man must receive a supernatural gift of God, which raises him above the order of created beings and makes him a “partaker of the divine nature.” He must be endowed with a new power of vision, and his will must receive new strength. He needs the grace of God for the performing of every action of his life, for thus only can human actions become a proportionate means for the attainment of his supernatural destiny.
We are told that the philosophy of Aristotle reacted on Christian dogma, that Christianity is a synthesis, or syncretism, or a patchwork of Jewish and pagan ideas. Let us test the theory by what has been said.
St Thomas followed Aristotle in beginning his exposition of Christian morals by laying down man’s final destiny, but he denied the doctrine of Aristotle on the point, and accepted the teaching of Christ, who called the vision of God life everlasting. He followed Aristotle in teaching that our ultimate end does not consist in wealth, pleasure, honour, or power. He rejected Aristotle’s teaching as to what it does consist in. It consists in nothing created, says St Thomas, the whole of creation cannot fill the void in the human heart—we were made for God and we know only unrest till we rest in God.
If Christian teaching as seen in St Thomas is a synthesis or syncretism, it certainly is not a patchwork, an amalgam of different ideas derived from different sources. It is derived from Holy Scripture and the teaching of Jesus Christ.
Aristotle’s ethical teaching is natural, that of St Thomas is supernatural. The distinction cuts deep, says Dr. Wicksteed. It cuts to the very marrow, colours every action of human life, makes the two systems of ethics wholly different, and even opposed to each other.
Aristotle tells us that as human conduct is infinitely varied, there must be a certain vagueness and indefiniteness in moral science. We cannot expect mathematical accuracy or always demand logical demonstration in the solution of moral problems. Hence young men, whether they be young in years or in character, says Aristotle drily, are not fit for the study of ethics. They have not the experience of life which is required, and they are too much under the sway of passion.
In other words, the science of ethics, as unfolded by Aristotle and other philosophers, is theoretical but hardly practical. At most it may influence a few of the nobler characters who are a law to themselves. The many (οἱ πολλοί) will pursue their pleasures and laugh at the fine-spun theories of the philosophers. Jesus Christ rested his moral teaching on faith. He knew perfectly well that if people want divorce, they can always find plenty of reasons to justify it. And so he simply said: “What God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.” And he demanded unquestioning submission to his teaching; he taught as one having authority. The sanctions annexed to the violation of his moral code were terrible—‘ Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire.” Here are other fundamental differences between the ethics of St Thomas and those of Aristotle. Christian teaching is couched in clear, precise, and definite commandments, easily intelligible to the minds of children, and it is backed by sanctions which appeal to all.
The Christian conception of sin is altogether absent from Aristotle. Moral lapses are departures from the golden mean, to be deplored, and if of the baser sort, to be contemned; they are not offences of an ever present and all-holy Creator and Lord.
The pre-eminence of Aristotle as a philosopher did not save him from committing grave mistakes in his moral teaching. He taught, for example, that abortion should be practised when the population threatens to become excessive, and his doctrine concerning slavery is untenable. According to Aristotle the slave is a living instrument, to be used for his master’s benefit like any other instrument. He is a chattel, a portion of his master’s property, and his master can dispose of him as he pleases. All this is very far removed from the teaching of St Thomas and Christianity.
Even when St Thomas follows Aristotle closely, the teaching of the pagan philosopher is entirely changed by being embedded in the Christian system. As an instance of this we may take Aristotle’s famous description of the magnanimous or high-minded man. The picture is drawn with great minuteness of detail; Aristotle seems to have dwelt on it with loving care, for it is the crown of his system; the magnanimous man is his ideal of the perfect Athenian gentleman.
“The magnanimous man,” says Aristotle,* “is one who being really worthy of great things, holds himself worthy of them. For he who holds himself thus worthy beyond his real deserts is a fool, and no man possessed of any virtue whatsoever can ever be a fool or show want of understanding. He, on the other hand, who holds himself worthy of less than his merits is little-minded, no matter whether the merits which he thus underrates be great or moderate or small. The merits, then, of the high-minded man are extreme, but in his conduct he observes the proper mean. For he holds himself worthy of his exalted deserts, while others either over-estimate or underestimate their merits. And since he is not only worthy of great things, but also holds himself worthy of them—or rather, indeed, of the very greatest things —it follows that there is some one object which ought most especially to occupy him. Now this object is honour, for it is the very greatest of all external goods. But the high-minded man, since his deserts are the highest possible, must be among the best of men; for the better a man is, the higher will be his deserts, and the best man will have the highest deserts. True high-mindedness, therefore, cannot but imply virtue; or rather the criterion of high-mindedness is the conjoint perfection of all the individual virtues. High-mindedness, then, would seem to be the crown, as it were, of all the virtues; for it not only involves their existence, but it also intensifies their lustre. It is with honour, then, and with dishonour that the high-minded man is most especially concerned. And where he meets with great honour, and that from upright men, he will take pleasure in it; although his pleasure will not be excessive, inasmuch as he has obtained at the outside only what he merits, if not perhaps less—since adequate honour for perfect virtue cannot be found. He will, however, none the less receive such honour from upright men, inasmuch as they have no greater reward to offer him. But honour given by the common herd and upon unimportant occasions, he will hold in utter contempt, for it will be no measure of his deserts. Now the high-minded man justly despises his neighbours, for his estimate is always right, but the majority of men despise their fellows upon insufficient grounds. He also loves to confer a favour, but feels shame at receiving one; for the former argues superiority, the latter inferiority. The high-minded, moreover, would seem to bear those in mind to whom they have done kindnesses, but not those from whom they have received them. For he who has received a kindness stands in a position inferior to that of him who has conferred it, whereas the high-minded man desires a position of superiority. And so he hears with pleasure of the favours which he has conferred, but with dislike of those which he has received.”
- Ethics iv 3.
It is obvious that Aristotle’s magnanimity is nothing else but inordinate self-esteem and contempt of others. Truth and the teaching of Christ compel us to say that it is not a virtue at all, but pride, the pinnacle of all vice. St Thomas converted it into a virtue by making the truly magnanimous man acknowledge that all the gifts which he possesses were given him by God, that he has nothing of his own except sin, that consequently he has no reason to exalt or glorify himself, and that, as St Paul teaches, instead of despising others, he should esteem them as better than himself. Humility was unknown to Aristotle: it is the test and the foundation of all virtue in the teaching of Christ and St Thomas.
Enough, perhaps, has been said to show what St Thomas owed to Aristotle, and whether the philosophy of Aristotle reacted on the moral and Christian teaching of St Thomas so as to change it. Reaction implies change. When a bullet is discharged against a target it acts on the target, but the target reacts on the bullet, changes and destroys it. The moral teaching of St Thomas is derived from Holy Scripture —it is that of Jesus Christ. He makes the teaching of Jesus Christ the test of truth. He rejects everything that is opposed to it or that is out of harmony with it. What he adopts from Aristotle harmonizes with it completely, and only makes his exposition of Christian doctrine more orderly, more clear and more full. These being the facts, we cannot rightly talk of the Reactions of Philosophy on Dogma, as illustrated from the works of St Thomas Aquinas.