(The Conversation) — A few years ago, I was running past the treasures of the Louvre in Paris, on my way to the “Mona Lisa,” when a painting stopped me in my tracks.

Massive and unusually elongated, “The Triumph of Saint Thomas Aquinas” depicts the 13th-century saint enthroned beneath a golden sun, with Aristotle and Plato standing reverently on either side. The Renaissance artist Benozzo Gozzoli paints Christ and the writers of the Gospels looking at Thomas Aquinas with approval.

But who is the turbaned figure beneath Aquinas’ feet, crushed by his frankly famous weight and groveling in defeat? It would be the 12th century Muslim philosopher Ibn Rushdor Averroes, as he was called in Latin Europe.

“Oh no,” I said out loud.

Us versus them

As a Catholic philosopher and passionate student of Aquinas, I always wonder if this medieval saint is still “worth” reading today, almost 800 years after his birth.

Thomas Aquinas is a giant of Western philosophy and theology, and for good reason. His writing is clear, well organized, without grandiloquence – the ideas shine through his words. He insisted that faith and reason form a harmonious partnership, integrating the science, philosophy, and theology known to his day into a comprehensive, interconnected system. All of this helps explain why his work has retained an enduring appeal, even as equally brilliant medieval thinkers have faded into obscurity.

But Aquinas’ followers often used his ideas as blunt instruments, wielding the weight of his words against their own enemies – earning him a reputation as a Catholic hatchet.

There is a story that Thomas Aquinas once dined with King Louis IX of France. Suddenly, the saint slammed his massive fist on a table, causing the cups to shake. “That settles the Manichaeans!” » he exclaimed, referring to an ancient religious sect.

With his thoughts wandering, Aquinas had found a refutation of the Manichaean belief that physical matter was evil – a view that Aquinas fundamentally opposed, given his deep convictions about the goodness of all nature. creation.

His supporters are used to trying the same thing: hitting The writings of Aquinas on the table to strike their enemies.

This is the spirit that Gozzoli and other painters channeled in their time, depicting Thomas Aquinas as a vanquished of Muslim philosophy. They worked in the 15th century, as tensions between Christian and Muslim kingdoms escalated into war, from Spain and Italy in Constantinople.

‘St. Thomas Aquinas confusing Averroes, by Giovanni di Paolo.
St. Louis Art Museum via Wikimedia Commons

Likewise, in the 19th century, Catholic seminaries and universities elevated the teachings of Thomas Aquinas repel threatening ideas of modern philosophy – such as the assertion that all reality is material and that all truths can be deduced by reason alone.

In this day and age, this kind of “us or them” dynamic is easy to recognize. Addicted to the ever-amplifying outrage of social media, we are all too eager to cheer on the champions who can “settle” our enemies for us. We thrive on the public takedowns, the sarcastic memes, the clever quips of our political heroes, whether what they say is true or not.

Yet this dynamic leaves a bad taste. Thomas Aquinas’ dominance over Catholic theology collapsed in the 1960s. Today, many scholars of medieval philosophy Aquinasarguing that it has already received enough attention.

The ‘OG’ of Aquin

After all this, is Thomas Aquinas still worth reading?

Well, which Thomas Aquinas?

A painting by Thomas Aquinas from the cathedral of Cingoli, Italy.
Sailko/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

The Aquinas who is brought to settle his scores is, I would say, not the “OG” Aquinas. The Italian brother who traveled Europe on foot, teaching and writing 8 million mind-boggling wordsoffers a different kind of model – one that seeks intellectual understanding, not just victory.

Ironically, during my visit to the Louvre, I was in Paris for a conference of the Thomas Aquinas and the Arabs band. These researchers document the widespread influence that Muslim And Jewish thinkers trained on Thomas Aquinas. More broadlythe group also studies the impact of these thinkers on the enormous explosion of philosophical and theological creativity in 13th-century European universities.

Take Averroes, the philosopher cowering beneath Thomas Aquinas in Gozzoli’s painting. Aquinas certainly had pointed remarks about Averroes’ notion of the soul, arguing, for example, that it undermined free will. In one of his most passionate moments, the typically gentler Thomas Aquinas wrote that Averroes’ theory was “repugnant to the obvious.”

A detail of Averroes from a painting by Andrea di Bonaiuto.
Sailko/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

However, Thomas Aquinas’ entire theory of human knowledge is based on principles inherited from Averroes. Even in describing the highest Christian goal – contemplating God in the afterlife, the “beatific vision” – Thomas Aquinas borrowed from the Muslim philosopher’s explanation of how the human spirit can be raised to a higher plan of being.

Indeed, Thomas Aquinas continually drew inspiration from other thinkers with whom he did not share faith: he cites the Persian Muslim book philosopher-doctor Ibn Sīnā, or Avicennathe Jew Rabbi Maimonidesthe Roman statesman and skeptic CiceroAnd Aristotle himself.

Aquinas’s embrace of their ideas stems from his passionate quest for the truth about God and creatures – a quest that requires an open heart.

If I don’t aspire to see reality as it really is, there’s no point in listening to someone else’s ideas. If nothing is true, there is no reason to disagree – but they have nothing to teach me either. I can put their ideas together like so many pebbles in a glass case, but I can’t engage in a real conversation with them.

The reason Aquinas is still worth reading today is not that he was right about everything, or that he offers prepackaged formulas that are easy to swallow. Rather, it opens a grand journey, inviting readers to “raise our spirits and pursue the goal» of truth – a goal that everyone can share.

At the end of his life, after experiencing a vision of God beyond words, Thomas Aquinas declared: “everything I wrote is straw.” Undertaking such a beautiful journey, with such a generous guide, is perhaps the tonic we need today.

(Therese Cory, associate professor of Thomistic studies, University of Notre Dame. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)