How to Think Like Aquinas

by Kevin Vost

  Remember

  Do you remember the gist or key lessons of our first four precepts? To give you a brief refresher on some of the key themes, we’ve looked at the value of being quick to listen and slow to speak, of purity of conscience and the power of prayer, of learning to enjoy your place of study, and now, of keeping friendliness, fun, and friendship in the happy kind of balance that will maximize your pursuit of the truth.

  49This is Thomas’s title for question 114 in his Summa Theologica, II-II.

  50Ibid., building on Sirach 4:7: “Make yourself beloved in the congregation.”

  51The Glossa Ordinaria, widely used in the Middle Ages, was a version of the Latin Vulgate Bible that contained, in the margins of the text, brief glosses (comments or explanations) that were compiled from the writings of various Church Fathers. Thomas availed himself of this gloss regularly and would later compile his own truly remarkable Catena Aurea (Golden Chain) of commentary on all four Gospels, featuring the line-by-line comments of more than eighty Eastern and Western Church Fathers, often with three or four Fathers’ comments on each set of verses.

  52Summa Theologica, II-II, Q. 115, art. 1.

  53Ibid., II-II, Q. 32, art. 1.

  54Ibid., II-II, Q. 32, art. 2.

  55Ibid., II-II, Q. 166, art. 1.

  56Ibid., II-II, Q. 168, art. 2.

  57Ibid. (Exclamation point added!)

  58Ibid., II-II, Q. 168, art. 4.

  59Ibid.

  60Thomas’s honorific title for Aristotle.

  61Summa Theologica, II-II, Q. 23, art. 1, citing John 15:15.

  62Ibid., II-II, Q. 23, art. 1.

  63Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics, 87.

  64In chapter 6, “Lightening the Load of Your Neighbor’s Loneliness,” of my book The Catholic Guide to Loneliness: How Science and Faith Can Help Us Understand It, Grow from It, and Conquer It (Sophia Institute Press, 2017). See also my book The Four Friendships: From Aristotle to Aquinas (Angelico Press, 2018).

  Chapter 5

  Set Your Intellect Free by Avoiding Worldly Entanglements

  Also, do not get enmeshed in the words and deeds of worldly people. Above all, flee from aimless conversations.

  The Perils of a World Growing Ever More Worldly

  Thomas warns particularly about getting entangled in the words, deeds, and conversations of worldly people whose thoughts are not focused on the highest things of God. Drawing another insight from Aristotle’s discussion of classes of friendships — those based on mutual pleasures, utility, and virtue — Thomas also knew well that Aristotle had declared that virtuous friendships are rare because virtue is rare.

  Worldliness, unfortunately, is anything but rare, and most friendships never rise higher than a concern for the pleasures or other benefits one friend might gain from another.

  Virtuous friendships are to be formed not with the worldly (unless they are willing to strive toward higher things), but with those who set their sights on God. Both common sense and modern psychology tell us how susceptible we are to the influences of our environment. Those who strive to think like Aquinas would be wise to exercise their free will to place themselves in the right environments, such as inside our cells of study and within the circle of virtuous, studious friends whom we have gathered around us. In such virtuous environs, conversations will be far from aimless. They’ll aim squarely and surely at the true, the good, and the beautiful things of God.

  Unfortunately, avoiding enmeshment in the words and deeds of worldly people may be more difficult in our day than in the days of Thomas and Brother John. Of this we can be certain: there are many new, compelling means to draw our minds from the higher things of God and enmesh them in worldly concerns. I speak of our modern electronic technologies of communication and entertainment.

  Perhaps you have at times felt distracted by or even enmeshed in those virtual worlds on your desktop, on your lap, in the palm of your hand, or even plugged into your ear. Our modern electronic marvels can be incredible boons to the acquisition and sharing of knowledge. Having written all my college and graduate-level papers on an old-fashioned typewriter, and my master’s thesis on a then (1990) modern marvel with a word-processing display of one line of visible text, I can hardly fathom how I could have completed my doctoral program and dissertation and proceeded to write a fair number of books without the aid of modern computers and their word-processing programs. Further, as I’m sure you can also attest, they prove invaluable not only for writing but for research and fact-checking, too. I am also quite thankful that through the wonder of cell-phone technology, I find myself talking, texting, and learning from people all over the world. Praise be to God!

  And yet these wonderful tools are also exceptionally sharp two-edged swords. If they are not wielded with care, they can slice through our attempts to rein in our minds for serious study.

  Enmeshed, Scattered, and Hijacked Minds

  Thomas wrote of the perils of enmeshment in worldliness in the middle of the thirteenth century. Here in the early twenty-first century, many voices are warning us of the novel tools of worldly entanglement; indeed, they may even entangle, or at least reshape, the connections between our brain cells! In his book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains (W. W. Norton, 2010), Nicholas Carr, a modern writer on technology and culture, argues that by repeatedly practicing the sweeping, but fleeting and superficial scanning of information that electronic formats on the Internet supply, we are actually producing changes in our brain tissues and organization that make prolonged, sustained attention more difficult. Of course, it is hard to think deeply about things that you can’t focus on!

  In the very first line of his recent article, “How Smartphones Hijack Our Minds,” Carr writes: “If you are like the typical owner, you’ll be pulling your phone out and using it some 80 times a day, according to data that Apple collects.”65 He notes that this amounts to nearly 30,000 times in the course of the year. We would do well to ask ourselves if we are “typical owners,” and if so, how this might square with St. Thomas’s recommendation not to become “enmeshed” in the things of the world if we are to attain truth.

  Such checking behaviors can become increasingly addictive and time-consuming because they operate on the principle that behavioral psychologists have termed “intermittent positive reinforcement.” We are more likely to perform repetitive behaviors more often when they are rewarded only at times, and when we don’t know in advance which repetition will yield the reward. One of the simplest, most striking examples of intermittent reinforcement is seen in the payout ratios built into slot machines used for gambling. The gambler wins only once in a while and never knows whether the very next pull of the arm (or push of the button these days) is not the one that could bring home the jackpot. Of course, such gambling machines would generate no profits if people, on average, won more than they lost.

  Well, our cell-phone or e-mail checking behaviors operate on just the same principle. Most of those eighty checks of the cell phone each day are not going to reveal some important message. Sometimes there will be nothing at all, or perhaps a bunch of junk mail. Yet, each time we check, our attention may be diverted from higher things, such as reading, study, prayer, or even simply paying attention to the people around us or the God-given beauties of nature. The good things of relationships and natural beauty are also there waiting for us — unless we’ve let little devices hijack our brains and drive them toward pettier things.

  Speaking of cell phones, didn’t Thomas advise us as well to “flee from aimless conversations”? (Hmm. Did the Angelic Doctor foresee those electronic hijackers more than seven centuries in advance?) What Thomas had in mind in his time was face-to-face conversation, and while we might bemoan their relative decrease, courtesy of technology, even
face-to-face conservations should be curtailed if their content is not wholesome and doesn’t lead us to higher things. Thomas warns, in the original Latin, against discursus: aimless wandering or meandering.

  Those who would think like Aquinas will be affable to others and will engage in pleasantries and small talk at times. (Did I tell you, by the way, that we had snow here in April this year?) Indeed, a conversation can have a focused, worthwhile aim, even if it be merely to grease the wheel of polite social interactions. Those who would think like Aquinas will find no time, though, for inappropriate conversations, obscene language, malicious gossip or slander, or flattery or quarreling, as we saw in our last chapter. Those who would think like Aquinas will seek out time for study, though, and for conversations with higher-than-worldly aims, such as the truth, beauty, and goodness of God and Creation.

  One of the most famous incidents in Thomas’s life illustrates how he would engage in friendly conversation, but with a mind toward heavenly things. It occurred on the road to Paris. As Thomas and some fellow Dominican friars approached the great city, a brother friar stated how grand it would be to possess all of Paris’s vast wealth. St. Thomas replied that he would rather have a copy of St. John Chrysostom’s Homilies on the Gospel of St. Matthew!66

  Doctor’s Orders ✍

  Prescription for Getting Your Brain, Mind, and Soul Disentangled

  Reflect

  Which take-home messages has Thomas wrapped up for you in this chapter? Have you allowed your mind to become hijacked or your soul entangled by things of the world? How many times per day do you check your text messages, e-mails, or social media accounts? Even if, praise God, you connect most often with virtuous people, is all that checking really raising your mind toward higher things and strengthening intimate interpersonal bonds, or is it pulling you away from people and matters that matter much more? Further, are you allowing the one-way conversations of other media, such as the programming and advertisements of television, radio, the Internet, or even highway billboards to draw your mind and soul too often not only away from lofty things but to the pursuit of worldly pleasures and material things? These are questions well worth thinking about and acting upon.

  Read

  For a modern look at the effects of too much worldly electronic stimulation upon the mind, and indeed, upon the brain that serves it, I highly recommend Nicholas Carr’s aforementioned book, The Shallows. For an excellent Catholic perspective addressing the effects on the soul as well, see Christopher Blum and Joshua Hochschild’s A Mind at Peace: Reclaiming an Ordered Soul in the Age of Distraction (Sophia Institute Press, 2017). I recommend again that you read, if you haven’t done so, Thomas’s writings on the virtue of studiositas and the vice of curiositas (Summa Theologica, II-II, Qs. 166 and 167) in light of the lenses provided in this chapter. And finally, come to think of it, why not dip into those homilies of St. John Chrysostom so cherished by St. Thomas? I’ve just done so for the first time. Deciding to see what he had to say about Christ’s Sermon on the Mount, I jumped in at Homily 15. Commenting on the very first verses of that sermon (Matt. 5:1–2), St. John Chrysostom, in describing Christ’s teaching methods, hits upon themes central to this book’s focus on study and indeed central to this very chapter. There he describes the need to become disentangled from the world, separating ourselves “from the tumults of ordinary life”:

  [Jesus] sits in one spot: and that not in the midst of any city or forum, but on a mountain and in a wilderness; instructing us to do nothing for display, and to separate ourselves from the tumults of ordinary life, and this most especially, when we are to study wisdom, and to discourse of things needful to be done.67

  Remember

  Do you recall our chapter’s themes? The precept itself read: “Also, do not get enmeshed in the words and deeds of worldly people. Above all, flee from aimless conversations.” And come to think of it, how are you doing with retaining the gist of the lessons of chapters 1 through 4? If you’ve got them — great! If not, we’ll see if the lessons Thomas teaches to perfect our memories in chapter 7 make the task quite a bit more doable (and a lot more fun).

  65Nicholas Carr, “How Smartphones Hijack Our Minds,” Wall Street Journal, October 6, 2017.

  66As for the positive blessings of technology, I should note that Chrysostom’s homilies, considered so invaluable by St. Thomas, are now free to all online! See, for example, New Advent, http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2001.htm.

  67Homily 15 in St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on Matthew, New Advent, http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/200115.htm.

  Chapter 6

  The Imitation of Christ (and of Those Who Imitate Him)

  Do not fail to imitate the lives of saintly and noble men.

  So Many Saints So Worthy of Our Imitation

  What a great boon we all have in our heavenly extended family, the glorious communion of saints God has given us, through their willingness to devote themselves to Him. Not every saint is an intellectual or a scholar, but every saint knows how to center his life on the things that matter the most and therefore can share valuable lessons that every one of us should learn. With their Christ-centered heroic virtue, the saints can inspire and teach us all. The awesome self-discipline so many saints manifested and the external trials they endured should put into proper perspective the minor inconveniences and self-deprivations we undergo to pursue learning.

  Perhaps it goes without saying that among the most noble and saintly of men we should strive to imitate is St. Thomas Aquinas, who, in his imitation of Christ, so devoutly exercised the great gifts God gave him. (In fact, that’s why I’m writing and you’re reading this book!) Thomas was a member of St. Dominic’s Order of Preachers, the order with the motto of Veritas (Truth), the order upheld by study itself as one of its four pillars (the others being prayer, community, and preaching). The Dominican charism, with its intellectual bent, has been closest to my heart and mind since I was taught in grade school by wonderful Dominican Sisters. Still, I thank God for the wonderful charisms and gifts of all the holy religious orders and the legions of saints they’ve produced. Who cannot be inspired by the glorious lives and loving deeds of St. Benedict and his Benedictines, St. Francis and his Franciscans, St. Ignatius and his Jesuits, and so many more holy orders formed in so many nations across the centuries?

  Of course, great saints are not only members of religious orders. In fact, there are great saints from every age since Christ established the Church, from virtually every nation, from both sexes, and from almost every occupation and state in life. Further, there are saints who have suffered and triumphantly endured almost every kind of difficulty, distress, disease, or disorder that you and I might face. There are very good reasons we can track down a patron saint for almost everything! It is most important, per Thomas, that we do track them down, and find what lessons and inspirations they hold for us. We can learn so much from saints with whom we can closely identify and oftentimes who seem so different from us, at least on the surface.

  If I might offer a personal example, I am often absorbed in the study of the writings of Sts. Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas (of course), two of the most profound minds in history. A few years ago, I was asked to deliver a talk on St. Martin de Porres (1579–1639) to a Dominican group. I knew this saint lived in Peru, and I knew that whereas Albert and Thomas are often depicted holding a globe, or a church, or a massive book in their hands, St. Martin is often shown holding a broom. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I delved into the life of this saint, but what I discovered exceeded my wildest dreams. This great saint of mixed race was a champion of drawing together the rich and the poor and those in between, African slaves, Spanish rulers, and indigenous peoples of Peru. His love of animals would bring a smile to the heart of any Franciscan or Irish saint, and while he was happy to sweep floors, he was also so adept with the surgeon’s scalpel that archbishops called upon him when ill. Perh
aps my greatest surprise about Martin was that this humble, loving man was also fond of St. Thomas and well-versed in the lessons of the Summa Theologica, sometimes providing citations or explanations to seminary students when he overhead them discussing their confusion as he cleaned or swept the floors!

  Another saint dear to my heart, and similar to Martin in some ways, is the humble, loving Little Flower, St. Thérèse of Lisieux (1873–1897). How remarkable that this nun who died so young would be named, like Sts. Albert and Thomas, among the few dozen Doctors, or great teachers, of the Church. So would St. Catherine of Siena (1347–1380), though she received no formal education and did not even learn to read until she was in her twenties! (She reported that her reading capacity came as a mystical gift from God, in which Christ appeared to her, accompanied by St. John the Baptist — and our own St. Thomas Aquinas!)

  Our space is limited here, and if you will forgive me the thought, I hope, in a sense, that you are disappointed that I did not mention a favorite saint or two of yours. How are we going to follow St. Thomas’s advice if we have not immersed ourselves in the lives of our favorite saints? So, I’m really saying that I hope you do have some favorite saints, while remaining always on the lookout for new, unfamiliar saints to inform and inspire you, perhaps toward a life of study, and surely toward a life of holiness.