From Vision to Virtue and Back Again: Contemplation and the Moral Life in St Thomas Aquinas
Conference on “Aquinas and the Vita Contemplativa” Campion College Toongabbie, 11 October 2025
Introduction: St John XXIII on the authority of St Thomas
Even if St Thomas Aquinas thought we rise with the bodies of 33-year-olds, the fact is that he’s eight hundred years old this year, at least in earthly time. I’m delighted that Campion College has chosen to celebrate our octo-centenarian with today’s conference and to join you for it. But today is also the feast of Pope St John XXIII. Many think he broke with Leo XIII’s Aeterni Patris, Pius XI’s Studiorem Ducem and other texts that identified Aquinas as the Church’s most reliable theological guide.[i] Good Pope John is said to have been more open to modernity and new thinking. Well, what did he really say? He described Thomas as the most brilliant light of the schools and praised the Dominicans for “not departing one iota from his doctrine”. He said that the study of Aquinas would deepen the understanding of seminarians, priests and others, not just of Christian doctrine but especially of Christian morality; would support the determinations of his Vatican Council; and would enrich the study of the liberal arts by young people.[ii] He even claimed to have chosen the name John in deference to the pope who canonised St Thomas, John XXII, and so to Thomas himself. And so in our conference today I say: St John XXIII, pray for us!
I. Action Man or Contemplative Lifer?
Years ago, I asked some friars whether they thought there was a specifically Dominican morality. They responded that they thought that there was a specifically Dominican immorality! Certain vices have long been associated with particular orders: it is said that a Dominican who can preach is as rare as a Franciscan who is poor or a Jesuit who does as he’s told! Jokes aside, my brethren identified over-intellectualisation, insufficient non-liturgical prayer, indecision, and neglect of common property as common Dominican vices. All are distortions of Dominican virtues: the passions for study, liturgy and especially preaching, underpinned by common life and communitarian government. As the Greek tragedies so well expose, in the genius is often found the fatal flaw.
Prima facie Dominicans will think and act in some ways differently to others. Yet in recent decades some have argued that morals are morals are morals, the same for everyone, Christian or not, Dominican or not. Ever since St Paul’s Letter to the Romans, we’ve recognised that even the pagans have God’s law written on their hearts. This ‘natural law’ idea was richly developed in the Catholic tradition, especially St Thomas Aquinas and his followers, who argued that the moral law is accessible to all people of good will and right reason, believers or not: by applying reason to reality anyone can discern their true good and know how to live well. Without such a universally accessible morality, we would have no objective basis for assessing moral tastes or cultural norms; no foundation for assertions of ‘intrinsic’ human rights; no basis for holding ourselves or each other accountable; no reason for respecting the consciences of others. Practical reasoning would be hostage to personal preference and tribalism, confirming the biases reigning in our ‘bubble’ or beloved of those with power and influence. Catholics might be forbidden to kill unborn babies or old people, but others won’t be so squeamish; and what’s wrong for Dominicans might very well be fine for Jesuits…
But Aquinas on Morality might seem a poor fit for a conference on the Via Contemplativa. After all, he insisted that the goal of practical reasoning is action, not more contemplation; the kind of paralysis or indecision that keeps mulling over what’s to be done, rather than doing it, is for him an intellectual and moral vice. So, if morality is more for the ‘action man’ than the woman who ‘ponders all these things in her heart’, have I come to the wrong conference?
Well, St Thomas’ approach to morality is multifaceted: not simply a moral rulebook, an updated decalogue; not even a theory of practical reason with which you might write such commandments. It begins with an anthropology: an account of human nature and the good for the human being. It proceeds to an examination of our moral psychology, our passions and habits. It then offers an account of the goods of human choice and the moral norms that follow. In all this Aquinas draws upon philosophical wisdom but also God’s revealed plan for the human soul in this life and the next, and the God-given means by which it might be fulfilled. All of which is properly the stuff of contemplation! In what follows, I will outline some contemplative aspects of Thomist morality.[iii]
II. From Action to Vision
If the frame for Thomas’ masterpiece, the Summa Theologiae is the Neo-Platonic schema of exitus–reditus—that all things proceed from God and are ordered to return to Him as their final end—then Aquinas’ conception of the moral life will unfold according to this same dynamic.[iv] Moreover, if the goal of all moral reflection, according to Thomas the Neo-Aristotelian, is not more contemplation but moral action in accord with good practical reasoning, then we’d better get our thinking straight first. And if Thomas the Neo-Augustinian understood contemplation of the holy things, especially of God, to be the end of our moral lives here on earth and of the perfect beatitude of heaven,[v] then it, too, must play a critical role in how we conceive, order, and direct the moral life.
For Thomas, the moral life begins at the end, so to speak, for questions concerning human action are inextricably connected to the finis ultimus (=our final end).[vi] This goal is no less than the perfect happiness of the creature experiencing the direct vision of God.[vii] In this teleological frame a human act derives its moral significance not merely from its immediate consequences or even the proximate good(s) it seeks, but from its capacity to direct the agent toward ultimate fulfillment.[viii]
But how do you know? For Aquinas reason plays an indispensable role. True happiness abides principally in the intellectual rather than the sensitive part of the soul, because while sensitivity can unite us to created goods, intellect can unite us also with the final good for which these exist.[ix] Thus movement towards the beatific vision is primarily intellectual, and our moral choices part of our contemplative life, as we mull over our nature, longings, options and ultimate happiness.
But what do we mean by ‘happiness’ here? For some it’s little more than a fuzzy feeling of contentment, a fleeting moment of pleasure, a positive emotion due to or even despite one’s circumstances. Yet Thomas has more in mind. Happiness for him is attaining the objective good that perfects our human nature. Though reason alone can grasp certain natural goods, it requires the illumination of faith to achieve perfect happiness or ‘beatitude’.[x] So what does faith tell us will perfect our nature or make for our flourishing? Thomas’ answer is straightforward: participation in the divine life through knowledge, love and service of God.[xi] Yet knowing, loving and serving God presupposes grasping what is really real—which brings us to Thomas’ account of truth.
In his De Veritate Aquinas highlights several dimensions of truth that provide the philosophical architecture for his later teaching that God is ipsum esse per se subsistens (= subsistent being itself)[xii] and so the truth of everything that exists is its participation in God.[xiii] But truth apprehended by reason alone proves insufficient for directing us toward our supernatural end. And so Thomas emphasizes how divine wisdom, incarnate in the person of Christ and mediated through divine revelation, completes and perfects what natural reason begins.
Here the contemplative dimension of morality becomes most apparent: the moral life is not simply about applying universal principles to particular cases, but about a vision of reality, a vocational plan and individual choices conformed to divine wisdom. This transforms not only how we understand moral obligation, but how we perceive human flourishing itself. Thomas distinguishes three irreducible forms of wisdom—metaphysical wisdom founded on human reason, theological wisdom grounded in sacred teaching, and spiritual wisdom that comes through connaturality with divine things.[xiv] Each involves a different relationship to truth: philosophical wisdom judges rightly about divine things through rational inquiry, theological through participation in revealed truth, and spiritual wisdom through an affective union that enables us to judge divine realities as it were from within. The contemplative life therefore involves the whole person—intellect and will, reason and affect—in a movement toward God the First Truth and Final End.[xv]
In his Commentary on St John’s Gospel, Thomas notes that just “as light is not only visible in and of itself, but also allows all else to be seen, so the Word of God is not only light in Himself but makes known all things that are known.”[xvi] Christ is then the unique and supreme source of truth for creatures and, as von Balthasar would later claim, the “concrete norm” of moral life.[xvii] Through the incarnation the infinitely wise makes wisdom accessible to finite minds, in the Church’s teachings and sacramental economy, and especially through Sacred Scripture.
In the Prima Pars, Thomas explains that Sacred Scripture fittingly employs sensible images and metaphors because “all our knowledge originates from the senses” and is abstracted or reasoned from this data.[xviii] This mirrors contemplative ascent, the ladder-like progress of the soul from surface readings to higher realities.[xix] Unlike purely empirical or philosophical texts, Scripture both informs the intellect and inflames the will with divine love.[xx] Yet this does not happen by default: ever the Dominican, Thomas thinks the proper reading of scripture is by union of study and prayer.[xxi] While metaphysical wisdom demonstrates God’s existence and perfections, and theological wisdom systematizes revealed truths about God and the things of God, spiritual wisdom is theological charity making divine things connatural to us. We should seek all three!
By meditating on Christ in the sacred text—His teachings, actions and especially His sorrowful Passion—the soul gradually becomes conformed to Him as “the way, the truth, and the life.”[xxii] Scripture therefore functions not as a substitute for contemplation but as one of its divinely appointed means, always leading us to Christ who is both the Word speaking through the text and the ultimate object of our contemplation.[xxiii] It bridges the gap between our natural capacity for truth and our supernatural calling to share in Christ’s own vision of the Father.
III. From Vision to Virtue
Talk of the contemplative life is easily misunderstood. People think they must choose over a life-time or at any particular moment whether to engage in theoria or praxis as if these were a zero-sum calculus. Or they regard time devoted to contemplation as demonstrating uninterest in earthly things and a retreat into the mystery of God. Thomas explicitly rejects such dichotomies.[xxiv] For him, contemplation and action form a dynamic unity. Contemplative love of God flows naturally into active love of neighbour. Contemplative love of neighbour and self flows naturally into acts of pietas toward God. Active love of God, neighbour or self confirms and inspires more contemplation.[xxv] So whilst the contemplative life considered in the abstract is more excellent than the active, because its focus is more directly on God, St Thomas teaches that certain works of the active life—specifically the Dominican works of teaching and preaching—surpass simple contemplation. This is because they proceed ex plenitudine contemplationis (= from contemplative abundance) and share divine wisdom with others for their salvation. This is captured in the Dominican motto, inspired by Thomas, contemplare et contemplata aliis tradere (= to contemplate and to hand on the fruits of contemplation to others).[xxvi] And so the vision of God sought via contemplation and the exercise of virtue for the good of others relate symbiotically: the contemplative life provides virtue with its proper measure and direction, while virtuous action prepares the soul for deeper contemplation.[xxvii]
But what precisely is contemplation? In the Secunda Secundae, Aquinas defines it as simplex intuitus veritatis (= the simple intuition of truth), that restful, non-discursive gaze whereby the intellect apprehends divine truth without the labour of reasoning from premises to conclusions.[xxviii] For Aquinas this represents the soul’s highest operation, ordered ultimately to the beatific vision where it will rest eternally in God. More than simple concentration, meditation or what people today call ‘mindfulness’, in its earthly mode it offers a foretaste of heaven. As Thomas explains “the contemplation of divine truth begins in this life imperfectly but will be consummated in the next.”[xxix] How then does the soul move from seeing to doing, from apprehending the good to pursuing it? Virtue plays a crucial role here…
For Aquinas, drawing from Aristotle and Augustine, virtue is not merely good behaviour but a habitus (= a stable disposition or excellence of character) that perfects human powers and orients them to their proper acts and ends. Virtues restructure our desires, so we not only know the good abstractly but desire it concretely, enabling us to choose well with ease and joy. Thus more than just CV lines for ‘the virtuous man’, the virtues are true sources of human action. Virtue bridges the gap between knowing truth and living it, transforming contemplative knowledge into lived reality.
Thomas distinguishes between the cardinal or human virtues of prudence, justice, temperance and fortitude (along with some related excellences), which perfect our natural powers, and the theological or godly virtues of faith, hope, and charity, which orient us toward our supernatural end. While the cardinal virtues are generally cultivated by human modelling, effort and habituation, the theological virtues are infused by God, elevating our nature to participate in divine life.[xxx] While recognising the different origins and goals of these two kinds of virtue, we notice their overlap: we can pray for the grace of an increase in any of the human virtues, not just the godly ones; human fidelity, hopefulness and friendship are excellent groundings upon which the theological graces can build; if the theological virtues, especially charity, must inform all the cardinal ones, so, too, human virtues such as prudence must be applied to actions shaped by faith, hope or charity; and so on.
Indeed it is charity that animates and orders all other virtues toward their ultimate end.[xxxi] Without it, the Angelic Doctor argues, even the cardinal virtues lack proper orientation.[xxxii] A person might possess natural courage or temperance, but it’s only when informed by charity’s supernatural orientation that these dispositions become virtues in the fullest sense. In contemplation the soul encounters God as the Supreme Good from whom all goods derive, in whom all goods participate, and toward whom all goods move us. This orders our loves, avoiding constant tension between them: we can love our neighbour and ourselves for God’s sake rather than as a rival with God. We love God all the more because of the goodness we see in His creation. And we recognise that the true good of created beings consists in their union with Him.[xxxiii] Charity, we might say, is the connective tissue between contemplative vision and virtuous action.
Pressing that connection further, we might ask how these two dimensions of Christian moral life mutually reinforce one another? Well, moral virtues dispose us to contemplation, insofar as they act to govern the passions. The intemperate person, enslaved to sensual pleasures, unable to still themselves and attend to God, lacks the freedom necessary for contemplative ascent.[xxxiv] The unjust person, consumed by acquiring earthly power and possessions, struggles to forego the material for the spiritual and rest in divine simplicity. And so on. Moral purification, through unrooting vice and practicing virtue, is a primer for contemplation, clearing the ground of impediments and tilling the soil to receive spiritual seed.
Yet contemplation, in turn, perfects virtue by ensuring a clear vision of truth and goodness, for right choosing is impossible without right seeing. Prudence—the auriga virtutum (= the charioteer of the virtues)—is illuminated most perfectly by divine wisdom. Being attuned to the mind of God, it is able to order temporal matters in light of the person’s final end, and direct conscience accordingly.[xxxv] Moral imperfection, in this sense, is not only a defect of the will but a failure of vision, an ignorance both intellectual and spiritual.[xxxvi] Consider Christ’s parables about the avaricious, unable to see that earthly treasures are of passing value and incapable of fully satisfying us, and that only God can satisfy our deepest longings. Or think of the person so captive to lust that they can only see other human beings as objects for pleasure. Or consider the soul, so blinded by pride that it does not appreciate its own creaturely limits and dependence, and so attempts things too great.
Thus moral formation requires acquiring ethical knowledge through catechesis and modelling, and ethical skill through practices like prayer and penance, which reorient us toward God; the reading of Scripture, that expands imagination, illuminates reason and challenges the soul; and the examination of conscience, so as to reveal sinful failures, self-deception and blind-spots.
What’s more, most moral growth occurs, not as isolated individuals in solitary pursuit of goodness but rather in a morally sound community that models, challenges and supports. Thomas practised his science with an attitude of constant hearing or receptivity—thinking symbiotically with the philosophical, scriptural, dogmatic and liturgical Tradition and with his Dominican religious community.[xxxvii] Even that which could be known ‘naturally’ by people without Christian faith is, he taught, confirmed, clarified and applied best within what he called “the family tradition of the Apostles”.[xxxviii]
Thus the entire Summa might be seen as a guide to moral formation within a Christian community, not a series of arguments to be used apologetically with outsiders or that could be taken up by a pagan on a desert island.[xxxix] Tradition, custom and society play crucial roles in this moral vision, in cultivating virtues and in mediating mores often more immediately useful than abstract moral theories.[xl] Natural reason (including the natural law) and supernatural reason (including revealed law) need one another: ratio interrogates and evaluates auctoritas, but it accepts and builds on Sacred Tradition.[xli] Aquinas challenges his readers to balance attention and innovation “by practice of active inheritance”.[xlii] Moral formation is, again, a contemplative activity.
IV. From Virtue to Sanctity
The Church is itself one of those communities important for moral formation—St Thomas would say the most important, for even the family and society are at their best instantiations of the Church. Here we encounter the stories of Christ and the saints that offer us moral models for our contemplation. Here we are gifted with reliable teaching about the divine plan for us, the covenants, commandments, parables, beatitudes and spiritual gifts. And here we experience the sacramental life, so important for our moral formation and reformation, enabling what might otherwise be ‘heroic’ for us. In his commentary on Thomas’ ethics, Servais Pinckaers’ asks whether and how Christ’s salvific acts shape us morally this side of the eschaton?[xliii] Are we doomed to be ‘miserable sinners’ who, in this life at least, can hope for little more than God as an indulgent parent turning a blind eye to the dark within us while we struggle to obey Him at least from time to time? Or can we really be more and more conformed to Christ in our minds and actions?
Here we might turn to Why of the sacraments. Thomas offers several whys. As embodied creatures we require sensible things to lead us to intelligible and spiritual realities. Salvation is mediated to us through the physical Incarnation, Passion and Resurrection of Christ, and through sacramental signs that unite us to those bodily mysteries. But, as spiritual creatures, our rejuvenation is achieved through spiritual graces only indicated and occasioned by those corporeal signs. And as both corporeal and spiritual beings, the sacraments help us achieve a balance in the face of our tendencies to be too materialistic or overly spiritualising.[xliv]
Moreover, Thomas notes, sacramental grace is sanans et elevans (= therapy for the wounds of sin and transformation of the soul “in things pertaining to divine worship”).[xlv] Through Holy Baptism, the soul receives not only remission of sin but the theological virtues and spiritual gifts that make contemplation possible. Holy Confirmation strengthens and perfects these gifts, conferring a ‘spiritual increase’ that enables the Christian to confess the faith publicly, engage in spiritual combat, and be spiritually fruitful.[xlvi]
Next, we receive what Aquinas refers to as the “consummation of the spiritual life, the end of all the sacraments” and Lumen Gentium dubbed the “source and summit of the Christian life”.[xlvii] Unlike the other two ‘sacraments of initiation’, the Eucharist is available to us repeatedly, as our growth continues until death. Its power derives not just from its symbolic richness but from the ontological reality of Christ’s real presence and, through reception, our real union with Him. The Eucharist occasions our moral contemplation, as the mind is enlightened by the Word of God proclaimed and holy paranesis preached and prayed; the will is then brought into communion with the Word-made-flesh and the Flesh-made-Eucharist. The movement from word to sacrament, hearing to receiving, knowledge to wisdom, understanding to union motors the contemplative journey.
Yet the Eucharist is also pivotal in supercharging the connective thread of the virtues, their ‘form’—charity. Through worthy reception of Christ’s Body, charity grows in the soul, and with it the entire edifice of moral virtue becomes more perfectly ordered to its divine end. The communicant experiences what Thomas Harmon calls “the sacramental consummation of the moral life”—not merely external conformity to divine law but internal transformation through participation in Christ’s self-offering to the Father.[xlviii] Regular Eucharist creates a rhythm of contemplative receptivity and virtuous action, each communion deepening both the vision of God and the capacity to act for God.
If the Eucharist represents the summit, Reconciliation provides the foundation, through what Thomas calls the “restoration of spiritual health”.[xlix] In contrition the penitent sees the true effects of sin in the separation from God, neighbour and self, but in absolution he experiences the infinite love of the Father for the prodigal son and the ever available opportunity to return. In prayer, fasting, almsgiving, above all sacramental Confession, we learn to value spiritual goods over temporal pleasures, reordering affections that sin had misdirected. Holy Penance thus prepares the soul for that fuller contemplation possible only to the pure of heart.
The Sacraments of Holy Orders, Holy Matrimony and Holy Unction contribute in their own ways to moral formation and empowerment by sanctifying states of life and moments of vulnerability. Through Orders, Christ perpetuates His priestly office, enabling ordained ministers to act in persona Christi for the sanctification of others, becoming instruments through which Christ Himself teaches, sanctifies, and governs His Church.[l] Matrimony, the great “remedy against concupiscence,” elevates natural love into a supernatural sign of Christ’s union with the Church, providing spouses with the graces to fulfill their obligations to each other and their children, so that their embodied love teaches what divine charity means.[li] Holy Anointing (along with Absolution and Viaticum) addresses those moments when illness of body and soul threatens to overwhelm both contemplation and virtue, preparing the soul for glory and strengthening it for final perseverance against the “remains of sin”.[lii] As the sacraments raise us from natural virtue to supernatural holiness, ordinary moral life becomes the life of extraordinary Christlikeness.
V. Conclusion
In his Letter to the Romans, St Paul counsels against being “conformed to this present world” and advocates “renewal of mind” so that we understand the will of God, what is “acceptable and perfect”, and then pursue that good wholeheartedly.[liii] This is, I think, a fair way of encapsulating Thomas’ view of the moral life. We must, at the end of the day, be transformed in Christ through the dynamic interplay of contemplation, virtuous action, and sacramental grace. Paul’s transformed mind emerges from receptivity towards and contemplation of divine truth, a truth capable of reordering our loves, reinforcing our practical reason, and redirecting our actions. In our fallen state we experience a gulf. “I do not understand my behaviour,” Paul confesses. “I truly desire to do what is good but fail to carry it out. What I want to do I don’t, and what I hate I do… And I keep doing this… for Sin lives in me.”[liv] Yet the wisdom of God and His love come to meet us in the contemplative life, so that we might “live, and move, and have our being” in Him.[lv] In this way the moral life becomes what Thomas always understood it to be: our graced return to the God from whom we came.
[i] The classic text on the authority of Aquinas is Santiago Ramirez OP, ‘The authority of St Thomas Aquinas,” The Thomist 15(1) (1952):1-109.
[ii] St John XXIII, Dominicanus Ordo: Motu Proprio Raising the Angelicum to a Pontifical University (7 March 1963). See other texts cited in Christian Wagner, “Pope John XXIII and the authority of St Thomas Aquinas,” Scholastic Answers 8 June 2023.
[iii] Important writers on Aquinas’ moral theory and its underpinnings include Gerard Bradley, John Finnis, Kevin Flannery, Etienne Gilson, Ralph McInerney, Servais-Théodore Pinckaers, Stephen Pope.
[iv] St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiea (hereafter ST) I-II, Prologue: “After what has been said about the exemplar—that is, about God—and about those things which have proceeded from the divine power according to His will, it remains for us to consider His image, namely man, inasmuch as he too is the principle of his own works.” See also Marie-Dominique Chenu, Toward Understanding Saint Thomas (Chicago: Regnery, 1964), 300–05.
[v] ST IIa-IIae, q. 180, a.4; ST Ia-IIae, q.3, a. 5, a.7. See Also Rik Van Nieuwenhove, Thomas Aquinas and Contemplation (Oxford: OUP, 2021) 1-2.
[vi] ST Ia-IIae, q.1, a.8. See also Ralph McInerny, ‘Aquinas’ Moral Theory’ in Journal of Medical Ethics, Vol. 13, No.1 (March, 1987), 31.
[vii] ST Ia-IIae, q.1, Prologue and a.1; q.3, a.8; q.4, a.5
[viii] ST Ia, q.1, a.9 resp.
[ix] ST Ia-IIae, q.3, a.3; See Hayden Ramsay, Beyond Virtue: Integrity and Morality (Palgrave McMillan, 1997), 182-85.
[x] Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (trans. C. Litzinger, Regnery, 1964), Book I, Lecture 9, n. 113.
[xi] ST Ia-IIae, q.3 a.8 (perfect happiness consists in vision of the Divine Essence); Ia-IIae, q. 62, a. 1 (beatitude as participation in divine good); Ia-IIae, q. 3, a. 4 (beatitude requires both knowledge and love); Ia, q. 12, a. 1 (necessity of grace for divine vision).
[xii] ST Ia, q.4. a.2; De Ente et Essentia, ch. 5.
[xiii] Thomas Aquinas, De veritate q. 1 a. 1 etc.; cf. ST Ia, q.16, a.1. For a developed account of Thomas’ understanding of truth, see John F. Wippel, Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas (CUA Press, 1984), pp. 65-112.
[xiv] Paul Morrissey, “The sapiential dimension of theology according to St. Thomas,” New Blackfriars 93(1045) (May 2012): 309-23. See ST Ia, q. 1, a. 6, ad 3 for the distinction between theological wisdom and the gift of wisdom; ST IIa-IIae, q. 45, a. 2 for wisdom as gift of the Holy Spirit.
[xv] Jean-Pierre Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol. 1: The Person and his Work (transl. R. Royal, CUA, 2005), 157. ST Ia, q. 1, a. 4: “Christian theology is about God, who makes men and is not made by them. It is therefore more contemplative than practical.”
[xvi] Aquinas, Commentary on St John 1:17.
[xvii] Hans Urs von Balthasar, “Nine Theses in Christian Ethics” in International Theological Commission:Texts and Documents 1969-1985, ed. Michael Sharkey (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989), 105-28. See also Romanus Cessario OP, Introduction to Moral Theology (Washington D.C. CUA Press, 2001), 57.
[xviii] ST Ia, q. 1, a. 9, resp.
[xix] ST Ia, q. 1, a. 10.
[xx] ST IIa-IIae, q. 45.
[xxi] Jean-Pierre Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas: Spiritual Master, trans. Robert Royal, vol. 2 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2003), 54-57; see also Denys Turner, Thomas Aquinas: A Portrait (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), 254-259.
[xxii] Jn 14:6; ST IIa-IIae, q. 180, a. 4, ad 1.
[xxiii] Torrell, Spiritual Master, 36-45.
[xxiv] Nieuwenhove, Thomas Aquinas and Contemplation, 197.
[xxv] ST IIa-IIae, q. 182, a.1-4. Van Nieuwenhove, Thomas and Contemplation, 71.
[xxvi] ST IIa-IIae q.188, a.6.
[xxvii] ST IIa-IIae 180, a.2
[xxviii] ST IIa-IIae, q. 180, a. 3, ad 1. See also q. 180, a. 6
[xxix] Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles (hereafter SCG) III, 63. No 10.
[xxx] See Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1812-1816.
[xxxi] ST IIa-IIae, q.23, a.8.
[xxxii] ST Ia-IIae, q.65, a.3.
[xxxiii] ST IIa-IIae, q. 25, a. 1; q.26, a.2. Van Nieuwenhove, Thomas and Contemplation, 138.
[xxxiv] Ps 46:10 etc.
[xxxv] CCC 1806. ST IIA-IIAE, q. 47, a.2. Cessario, Introduction to Moral Theology, 128-129.
[xxxvi] ST Ia-IIae, q.76-77.
[xxxvii] As Giles Emery op, Trinity in Aquinas (Sapientia Press, 2006), p. xxiii; cf. p. 83.LikewiseJean-Pierre Torell op, Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol 2: Spiritual Master (transl. R. Royal, CUA Press, 2003), p. 2, says that for Aquinas Sacra doctrina includes “every activity through which Christian truth comes to us”.
[xxxviii] When exploring the Catholic doctrine of the sacraments, Aquinas talks of those things “habet tamen ea Ecclesia ex familiari Apostolorum traditione” (STh IIIa 25.3.4; 64.2.1; 72.4.1). This family tradition is recorded in the Scriptures, interpreted most reliably by the Fathers and carried forward by magisterial decrees, liturgies, sainted lives and approved authors.
[xxxix] Mark Jordan, Rewritten Theology: Aquinas after his Readers (Blackwell, 2006), e.g. at p. 52 argues that the entire Summa was written for the Secunda Pars (the moral section) and that the Secunda Pars was written as a text to assist a community of moral formation, not for a public debate by people of various religious and moral beliefs and backgrounds. It is only because his text is so rich and persuasive that people have sought to take some of his arguments into ‘the public square’. But the natural place for reading this texts, as indeed for the Scriptures, is in the moral community – the family – of the faithful.
[xl] Aquinas notes that many human laws are supported as much by custom and usage (consuetudo) as by reason (ratio) and that it is often best to follow a human tradition against the counsel of pure reason because of the ‘greater reason’ that is served by preserving continuity and community (STh Ia IIæ q. 97, a. 2). Of course, in due course a tradition may become positively burdensome or die out by desuetude. The essence of what that tradition sought to preserve can be threatened by being overgrown with concrete forms which would kill the tree underneath if allowed to continue unchallenged. See Pieper, Tradition, pp. 40-1.
[xli] Josef Pieper, Über den Begriff der Tradition (Opladen, 1958), pp 24ff; Guide to Thomas Aquinas (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991), p. 51, notes that Aquinas never cited ‘traditional’ sources as if their names or age gave their arguments extra gravity. He did explore and cite the Tradition – what has been handed down – but not because of an antiquarian interest or an overblown reverence for what was old: his interest in the Tradition was on the basis that it ultimately derived from the Word of God.
[xlii] Mark Jordan, Rewritten Theology: Aquinas after his Readers (Blackwell, 2006), p. 194. He rails against Thomisms that are so often either “fantastic mimesis” or else “the manufacture of a police badge to be pinned on the current uniform”. For a more optimistic view of the various Thomisms, see: Roman Cessario op, A Short History of Thomism (CUA Press, 2003); Fergus Kerr op, After Aquinas: Versions of Thomism (Blackwell, 2002). Also important here is: Alasdair MacIntyre, “Aquinas and the rationality of tradition,” Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopaedia, Genealogy and Tradition (Duckworth, 1990), ch. VI.
[xliii] Servais Pinckaers, ‘The Body of Christ: The Eucharistic and Ecclesial Context of Aquinas’ Ethics’ in John Berkaman and Craig Steven Titus, ed., The Pinckaers Reader (CUA Press, 2005), 29.
[xliv] ST IIIa, q.61, a. 1.
[xlv] ST Ia-IIae, q. 85, a1-3 (on sin’s wounds clouding reason and diminishing virtue); ST Ia-IIae, q.109, a.5 ( on the disproportion between human nature and eternal life); ST IIIa, q. 61, a.1 (on sacraments addressing both human weakness and elevation to the supernatural) and q. 62, a. 5 (on the therapeutic role of divine worship).
[xlvi] ST IIIa, q. 72, a. 1 and a. 5.
[xlvii] ST IIIa, q. 73, a. 3. LG, 11; CCC 1324.
[xlviii] See Thomas P. Harmon, ‘The Sacramental Consummation of the Moral Life According to St Thomas Aquinas’ in New Blackfriars, Vol. 91, No. 1034 (July 2010), 479.
[xlix] ST IIIa, q. 84, a.1.
[l] ST IIIa, q. 82, a. 1.
[li] ST Suppl., q. 42, a.3.
[lii] ST Suppl., q. 30, a.1.
[liii] Rom 12:2.
[liv] Rom 7:15-20.
[lv] Acts 17:28.