How to Think Like Aquinas

by Kevin Vost

  The saints were indeed a great help to St. Thomas, at times in the most striking ways. Thomas’s friend and secretary, Brother Reginald, reported that once Thomas himself became puzzled for days over the interpretation of a text in Isaiah while writing a commentary on that book. One night while he stayed up in his room to pray, Reginald heard Thomas speaking out loud, it seemed to him, with others in his room, though he could not make out the voices or the words they said. Soon after the voices stopped, Thomas called out:

  “Reginald, my son, get up and bring me a light and the commentary on Isaiah; I want you to write for me.” So Reginald rose and began to take down the dictation, which ran so clearly that it was as if the master was reading aloud from a book under his eyes.68

  When Reginald repeatedly asked Thomas about the voices he heard,

  Thomas finally replied that Sts. Peter and Paul were sent to him, “and told me all I desired to know.”69

  Of course, the main reason we should imitate the saints is that they all became saintly by imitating Christ. It is Christ, first and foremost, whom they help us imitate, by showing how a life centered on Christ is possible anywhere in the world at any time in history. It was St. Peter who responded when Christ asked him if he would leave Him: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68). It was St. Paul who declared, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:20). It is Christ, you will recall, whom St. Thomas called the greatest of all teachers, who taught through His words and His deeds. We are all called to imitate Him foremost.

  Do Not Overlook the “Merely” Noble! (Turning Water into Wine)

  In his masterwork, the Summa Theologica, Thomas respectfully considered the pronouncements of many great saints of the West and the East, from Augustine to Jerome to Pope Gregory the Great to John Chrysostom, Athanasius, Gregory Nazianzen, and so many others. Further, he sought out the truths and the pearls of wisdom in the writings of those who he knew did not possess the fullness of truth of the Catholic Church. These include thinkers such as the Greek pagan Aristotle and the Roman pagans Cicero and Seneca, and many others; the Jewish Maimonides; and the Arab Muslims Averroes and Avicenna. Thomas cherished truths wherever they might be found, and indeed, this is a hallmark of the Catholic Church. Revelation fears no truths of reason, for there is only one truth. Closer to our time, St. John Paul II stated the gist of Thomas’s maxim most elegantly:

  Closer scrutiny shows that even in the philosophical thinking of those who helped drive faith and reason further apart there are found at times precious and seminal insights which, if pursued and developed with a mind and heart rightly tuned, can lead to the discovery of truth’s way.70

  Some theologians in St. Thomas’s day were highly critical of his use of philosophy in general, and Aristotle in particular, for their service to theology.71 They argued that he was diluting the wine of divine wisdom with the water of human wisdom. Thomas, however, knew that there is only one truth and that the truth of the faith could never be contradicted by reason, but that reason could help draw some people to faith and help clarify theological principles for the faithful. He did not believe that the noble philosophy of noble men diluted the Faith whatsoever, but rather, that “those who use philosophical doctrines in sacred Scripture in such a way as to subject them to the service of faith, do not mix water with wine, but change water into wine.”72

  May we, like St. Thomas, thirst for the clear sparkling waters of reason, and all the more for the wine of sacred wisdom and the wine above all wines that becomes Christ Himself in the Eucharist!

  Doctor’s Orders ✍

  Prescription for Letting the Saints Go Marching into Your Soul

  Reflect

  Do you have a favorite religious order whose charism calls out to you? If so, have you considered joining as a lay affiliate? Do you have some favorite saints? If so, what have you done lately to imitate them, especially in regard to their pursuit of truth? If not, might you consider seeking out some new saints to learn from and pray to for their intercession? Our world is desperately in need of saintly heroes.

  Read

  Have you made time lately to read the life of a saint unfamiliar to you or a new book about an old favorite? There are a slew of biographies to choose from. If you have a penchant for novels, I’ve found the works of Louis de Wohl as enlightening and inspiring as they are entertaining. (My favorite? Well, as you might guess, The Quiet Light, about St. Thomas Aquinas, is surely a top contender.) Have you read lately the writings of the saints themselves — St. Thomas, or a whole world of others? Have you recently read the Gospels or a good book about Jesus Christ? If you would care to imitate Christ, one of the world’s greatest spiritual classics is Thomas à Kempis’s Imitation of Christ. It has come out in countless editions across the centuries, and just recently in a version that also fleshes it out and brings it even more alive with well-researched and well-written fictionalized episodes about the life of Thomas à Kempis and the circumstances surrounding the crafting of this simple, yet profound devotional book. This new work is Timothy E. Moore’s The Imitation of Christ, Book I: With Comments, Edits, and a Fictional Narrative.

  Remember

  How are you doing remembering key ideas from all the precepts we’ve covered so far? So far, so good? Then, good! So far, not so hot? Worry not! For in our next chapter, the Angelic Doctor will give us his advice on how to perfect our memories and show us just how to do it.

  68Antoine Dondaine, Les Secretaires De Saint Thomas, 2 vols. (Rome: Editori di S. Tommaso, 1956). As cited in Carruthers, The Book of Memory, 5.

  69Ibid.

  70John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, no. 48.

  71Perhaps, to some degree, the “fideists” of their day. See the entry on fideism in chapter 12.

  72See section 2.3, ad. 5 in St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Boethius’ On the Trinity, St. Isidore Forum, https://isidore.co/aquinas/english/BoethiusDeTr.htm#L22.

  Chapter 7

  Loving Truth Regardless of Its Source (and On the Perfection of Memory)

  Do not place value on who says what, but rather, commit to your memory what true things are said.

  Who Said What?

  Thomas’s very next maxim is a wonderful complement to and completion of the one of our last chapter. Although we will strive to honor and imitate noble and saintly people, we should also remain aware of every human person’s potential fallibility.73 Further, we will not automatically discount or ignore the sayings or writings of less-than-saintly or ignoble people either! These two ideas capture the essence of Thomas’s approach to truth in the Summa Theologica. When he draws from the bevy of the great Western and Eastern, Latin and Greek Fathers before him, he considers their pronouncements with the utmost respect, but he also reflects on whether they have provided complete truths regarding the matters at hand. He does not accept them all blindly but peers at their thoughts with laser-like focus and penetration.

  The bottom line here is the truth, and not merely the authority, holiness, or nobility of the person who speaks it. This leaves us free respectfully to question the conclusions of fallible authorities and to embrace truth wherever it may be found. I must note one thing about Thomas himself, though. While he indeed valued truth above all else, perhaps due to both his profound sense of gratitude and his astounding powers of memory, when sharing his countless words of wisdom with us, he usually provides both the truths and the names of the people he gleaned them from!

  This leads us to the second half of Thomas’s maxim. When we latch on to an important truth, regardless of its source, we should commit it to memory. Thankfully, Thomas has shown us just how to do this, so now let us let him show us how!

  How to Commit Truths to Your Memory

  In addition to his intellectual credentials as a profound philosopher and theologian,
St. Thomas is perhaps less widely known as one of the world’s great masters of memory. He understood how human memory works and wrote about and practiced how to perfect memory by bringing higher powers of thinking into play.

  In an opening passage of her fascinating work The Book of Memory, modern English professor Mary Carruthers compares descriptions of Albert Einstein and St. Thomas Aquinas, written by men who knew them well. Although there were interesting similarities, one relevant difference stands out. Whereas Einstein, in the twentieth century, was praised most highly for his creativity, which led to his great accomplishments in physics, St. Thomas, in the thirteenth century, was praised most highly for his memory. It was said that what he once read and grasped, he never forgot.

  One reason Thomas’s role as a memory master is not widely known is that he writes about it in just one page of his over three-thousand-page Summa Theologica and almost smack-dab in the middle, in the Second Part of the Second Part, question 49, article 1. There Thomas answers the question of “Whether Memory Is a Part of Prudence.” To cut to the chase, he answers a resounding yes!

  Now, prudence is an applied intellectual virtue that governs our moral actions. Thomas calls prudence “right reason applied to action,” and its job is to find and execute virtuous means of attaining virtuous goals. To think like Aquinas is to think prudently about things that matter, and to do so requires that we not only use but also strive to perfect our powers of memory.

  Thomas’s great mentor, St. Albert the Great, also saw memory as an essential part of prudence — in fact, its most essential part, for to achieve moral goals in the future, we must act in the present, guided by what we have learned in the past. As Albert wrote: “Whence we say that among all those things that point toward ethical wisdom, the most necessary is a trained memory, because from past events we are guided in the present and future, and not from the converse.”74

  Note well that St. Albert points to the necessity not merely of memory, but of a “trained” memory. His greatest student, Thomas Aquinas, tersely told us just how to train our memories in four steps, which I’ve summarized as follows.75

  1.First, when we wish to remember a thing, we should take some suitable yet unwonted illustration of it, since the unwonted strikes us more, and so makes a greater and stronger impression on the mind.

  2.Second, whatever we wish to retain in our memory we must carefully put in order, so that we may pass easily from one memory to another.

  3.Third, we must be anxious and earnest about the things we wish to remember, because the more a thing is impressed on the mind, the less it is liable to slip out of it.

  4.Fourth, we should often reflect on the things we wish to remember. Therefore, when we reflect on a thing frequently, we quickly call it to mind, through passing from one thing to another by a kind of natural order.

  So, in a nutshell that will soon mature into the full-grown oak of artificial memory, Thomas recommends that we form mental images, place them in a certain order, concentrate on them intently, and rehearse or repeat them often. Seven hundred years and at least as many scientific studies later, any honest modern memory training expert will have to admit that St. Thomas Aquinas got it right!

  Now, if we are to think more like Aquinas, we’ll need to memorize things like him, too. So let’s flesh out his four points with a memory exercise using his study precepts as our subject matter. Before we begin, invoking the first and third points, I invite you to fire up your powers of imagination and of concentration. If you follow closely along, I’ll guide you right through the second and fourth points too, as we go through things in order and repeat them a time or two, doing all that is required to perfect our powers of memory just as St. Thomas advises!

  Welcome to the House of Memory!

  Imagine that you have been invited for the first time to the home of a modern follower of St. Thomas.76 It’s a sprawling ranch house in American’s Midwest, within an older neighborhood surrounded by mature maples and oaks. When you reach the front door, you see a most unusual sight, as you are greeted by a former American president. It’s Theodore Roosevelt. Can you imagine him with that big mustache and spectacles on a chain? Oddly though, he doesn’t speak at first, and when he does it is in slow motion. You are certain it is him though, because he’s wielding a big stick (like the one from his famous aphorism). You notice it is decorated at the thick end with a painted blood-red heart, and next to it, a painted image of a human brain, with a whole lot of gray matter!

  After our good former president lets you in, you step in onto an entrance mat. The mat depicts two large hands folded in prayer. Now there’s nothing particularly unusual about that, except that the hands are emitting electric sparks that are making your toes tingle through your shoes!

  Then you notice a clear glass panel next to the front door, and you see something you can’t believe that you missed on your way to the front door. There in the front yard sits a medieval religious person’s cell where a large man is deep in study, hunched over a great big book. (Could that be St. Thomas himself?) You suspect as well that he must be fond of wine, since the room is full of old bottles of fine vintage wine, in addition to many books.

  Facing back into the house you are surprised to find a portrait on the wall on the other side of the front door with two related, but very different scenes. In the first scene, on the left side of the painting, two friends smile at each other as one points out to the other a passage in a large book. In the second scene, on the right, the friends are red-faced in the midst of a heated argument, and the book has fallen on the floor.

  On the adjacent wall of the foyer is a gun rack, perhaps an odd place for one, but odder still, you become fascinated by an ancient globe sitting on its top. You can’t resist touching the globe, but when you do your fingers penetrate into it and you really have to struggle to pull them back out.

  In the middle of the foyer you behold a far more pleasant sight, in fact, perhaps the most pleasant sight any of us can ever hope to see. You wonder if this could be a glimpse of the beatific vision, for there stands Jesus Christ Himself beaming at you, surrounded by a smiling group of your very favorite saints.

  Overhead you notice a chandelier, and upon it you behold a statue of an ancient Greek goddess. Furthermore, she’s surrounded by nine very beautiful daughters. You deduce that this must be Mnemosyne (because her name is carved upon the base of the statue), and she is, in fact, the goddess of memory. Those daughters are the “muses,” the goddesses of the nine liberal arts. After all, even the ancient Greeks knew darn well that you can’t perfect any art at all unless you can remember the skills that you have learned! Oh, and you notice that for some reason, Mnemosyne is holding in her hand and admiring a very large tooth.

  You are well aware by now that this Thomist has a most unusual home, and when you glance over to a mirror on the wall across from the gun rack, you are most disconcerted when you see not your own reflection, but a big book with legs standing under a powerful electric generator. Under the mirror is a cushioned bench and resting upon it sits another piece of furniture, a cupboard to be exact. You’re concerned that it might slide off to the floor since it is full to nearly bursting and it stands on a narrow base with no ledge.

  The last stop in our Thomist’s foyer is a little drawer under the cushion of the bench and when you open the drawer you are most surprised to see a frustrated mentalist you know, attempting to show off his powers, but failing. Don’t know any mentalists? Don’t worry, you need only imagine you do. Don’t even know what a mentalist is? Don’t worry, we are using it according to this dictionary definition: “a magician who performs feats that apparently demonstrate extraordinary mental powers, such as mind-reading.” (Of course, in our case, his demonstration does not go so well.)

  Well, there you have it! But just what do you have? Let’s review this strange scene again as you try to vividly imagine every piece of it within the “mind�
�s eye” or your imagination. Here are the locations: (1) the front door, (2) the doormat, (3) the glass panel next to the door, (4) the portrait on the wall, (5) the gun rack, (6) the center of the foyer, (7) the chandelier overhead, (8) the mirror on the opposite wall, (9) the bench under the mirror, and (10) the drawers in the bench.

  Next, let’s look at the strange visual images associated with those locations. At the front door you met a slow-speaking President Theodore Roosevelt carrying his big stick with a heart and a brain painted on it. The doormat was decorated with praying hands emitting electrical sparks. Through the glass panel by the front door you saw that medieval religious person’s cell, and in it St. Thomas himself, a big book, and plenty of bottles of vintage wine! Upon the portrait on the wall were two scenes, one of two friends enjoying a book and another of the same two friends arguing. Sitting upon the gun rack was the globe that entangled your fingers. In the center of the foyer was Christ surrounded by saints. Up in the chandelier holding and admiring a tooth was the statue of Mnemosyne. In the mirror on the other wall you saw that book standing under a power generator. Upon the cushion bench was that overloaded cupboard teetering upon a base with no ledge. Finally, in a drawer of the same cushioned bench was the mentalist whose trick failed. Let’s lay this out for ease of review.

  Location

  Image

  1. Front door

  Roosevelt speaks slowly and carries stick

  2. Doormat

  Hands in prayer with sparks

  3. Glass panel

  Monk’s cell/wine cellar