Although one of the chief virtues of Aquinas’s Summa is its careful reason and rational consistency, there do seem to be areas of tension in spite of its exceptional logical rigor.  What I mean is this: Thomas has positional tensions, even if they are not necessarily logical tensions.  If one wished to be critical she might consider his explicit reasons for his positional posture as itself illogical inasmuch as he might appear to be somewhat arbitrary (although as I will argue in my conclusion, he is not being arbitrary).

I hope to show that Aquinas’s humility to the Tradition did not entail his absolute rejection of propositions contrary to the Tradition.  Instead, Aquinas sought to simultaneously defend the Tradition while aiming to parse in what senses contrary claims might also be true.  For a brief post, one example will have to suffice from his treatise on Charity (which is love for God as last end).

Proper Objects of Charity: A Positional Tension

Thomas excludes irrational creatures from the list of objects of charity on the basis that they can have no share in the rational life of man, since charity consists in a certain fellowship of life in the enjoyment of God; a life that irrational creatures have no share in.  However, Aquinas allows the body to be considered an object of charity even though he does not consider the body as having the capacity of reason.

Although our bodies are unable to enjoy God by knowing and loving Him, yet by the works which we do through the body, we are able to attain to the perfect knowledge of God.  Hence from the enjoyment in the soul there overflows a certain happiness into the body, viz., the flush of health and incorruption, as Augustine states (Ep. ad Dioscor. cxvii).  Hence, since the body has, in a fashion, a share of happiness, it can be loved with the love of charity.  (ST II-II.25.6.ad.2)

Here Aquinas concedes that the body does not know or love, but the person can come to know and love through the deeds of the body.  The instrumentality of the body in knowing and loving, then, is his basis for allowing the body to be considered an object of charity.  Hence the body, being “used” by the person for serving God, can in this way become an object of charity even though Aquinas does not consider the body to have the capacity of reason, which belongs to the soul.

This is not a logical contradiction, however, since in the same way Aquinas allows for irrational creatures to be objects of charity.

All friendship is based on some fellowship in life; since nothing is so proper to friendship as to live together, as the Philosopher proves (Ethic. viii. 5).  Now irrational creatures can have no fellowship in human life which is regulated by reason.  Hence friendship with irrational creatures is impossible, except metaphorically speaking.  … Nevertheless we can love irrational creatures out of charity, if we regard them as the good things that we desire for others, in so far, to wit, as we wish for their preservation, to God’s honor and man’s use; thus too does God love them out of charity. (ST II-II.25.4)

Thus, while considered from a logical perspective, Aquinas is being quite consistent.  For he affirms that in the most proper sense of the term charity, irrational creatures and the human body cannot be charity’s object since they do not posses the life of reason.  On the other hand, inasmuch as they are instrumental to charity, being used in service to God, they can be considered the objects of charity.

However, when we consider Aquinas from a positional perspective, he has postured himself contrary to the former position (that irrational creatures can be the objects of charity) and in defense of the latter position (that the human body can be the object of charity).  To say it yet another way, although the sense in which irrational creatures and the human body can be considered objects of charity—by reason of their being instrumental to knowing and loving—is the same in both cases, Aquinas postures himself contrary to the former and in defense of the latter in his dialogical structure.

Aquinas’s Posture as Humble, Not Arbitrary 

Is this arbitrary?  It may seem arbitrary to us, but most likely Aquinas postures himself throughout the Summa in such a way as to be defending what he considers to be the sacred Tradition.  Thus, he is trying to give priority to the senses of propositions that he thinks have been intended by the Tradition, while still conceding the same logic when found in other propositions set against the Tradition.

This seems the most satisfying solution to Aquinas’s otherwise arbitrary posture—his posture is one of humility to the Tradition.  Irrational creatures can be the objects of charity in some sense, but this isn’t as important to Aquinas as the fact that the deep fellowship we have with God, as creatures made in his image, is not something irrational creatures can have.  For the same reason the human body can be considered as not the proper object of charity by reason of its lack of the faculty of reason.  But this is not as important to Aquinas as polemicizing against the Manichean pretensions about the body having been created by an evil principle, thus in article five he postures himself as for the human body as a proper object of charity.

Aquinas did not simply reject the truth claim of the Manichean absolutely, however, for he concedes that if we consider the body under the aspect of sin and corruption, it must be loathed as an evil.

Our bodies can be considered in two ways, first, in respect of their nature, secondly, in respect of the corruption of sin and its punishment.  Now the nature of our body was created not by an evil principle, as the Manicheans pretend, but by God.  Hence we can use it for God’s service, according to Rom. vi. 13: Present … your members as instruments of justice unto God.  Consequently, out of the love of charity with which we love God, we ought to love our bodies also; but we ought not to love the evil effects of sin and the corruption of punishment; we ought rather, by the desire of charity, to long for the removal of such things. (ST II-II.25.5)

Aquinas is here trying to both defend the Tradition and also affirm what he sees as the truth in Manicheanism, which often quoted from biblical passages, as in objection 1:

It would seem that a man ought not to love his body out of charity.  For we do not love one with whom we are unwilling to associate.  But those who have charity shun the society of the body, according to Rom vii. 24: Who shall deliver me from teh body of this death? and Philip. i. 23: Having a desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ.  Therefore our bodies are not to be loved out of charity. (ST II-II.25.5.obj.1)

In his response to this objection, Aquinas again draws from his synthetically designed distinction.

The Apostle did not shrink from the society of his body, as regards the nature of the body, in fact in this respect he was loth to be deprived thereof, according to 2 Cor v. 4: We would not be unclothed, but clothed over.  He did, however, wish to escape from the taint of concupiscence, which remains in the body, and from the corruption of the body which weighs down the soul, so as to hinder it from seeing God.  Hence he says expressly: From the body of this death. (ST II-II.25.5.ad.1)

Conclusion

Are we to loathe the body or to love it?  Aquinas says, in a word: both (but in different senses).  This way of approaching theology might have its misfortunes (such as technical language and “death by a thousand distinctions”), but it has even more to recommend it.  By such a synthetic approach, Aquinas has done what so desperately needs imitating in the church today.  He fails to allow heat to block out light.  Instead of letting his zeal polarize truth claims by defending the Christian Tradition as “true” and attacking every other proposition that seems to contradict it as absolutely “false” or “unbiblical,” he was instead careful to affirm all truth he could see in the opposing positions set against his Tradition.

In doing so, he let as much light in as possible while maintaining the humility necessary in defending a Tradition.  If Thomas were to have been so zealous for the Tradition that he failed to look for the truth in other Traditions (which sometimes involved acknowledgment and affirmation of propositions that seemed to be contrary to it), his theological vision would have been myopic and his Summa would not have the synthetic brilliancy that gives it a great deal of its luster and theological durability.

Protestants especially could learn something from Aquinas’s method of synthesis.  It is not by accident that the Catholic Tradition (with Thomas as their leading theologian) has been considered the “both/and” tradition, and Protestants have been considered more of an “either/or” tradition (with Luther and Calvin as the leading theologians).  I would consider Thomas’s method especially resourceful for ecumenical dialogue, which requires a similar kind of humility that we find Aquinas striving for in his Summa.