St. Thomas Aquinas by G. K. Chesterton is described by Chesterton as book that “makes no pretense to be anything but a popular sketch of a great historical character who ought to be more popular. Its aim will be achieved, if it leads those who hardly even hear of St. Thomas Aquinas to read him in better books.”[1] In other words, this books intention was not set out to be a systematic cerebral timeline of this great saint, but rather a work that intends to bring its readers to an understanding of the life of St. Thomas through the admiring eyes and heart of one of one the greatest writers the world as ever known. Chesterton, through this book opens up to its readers the human aspect of this great saint, in hopes kindling a desire for its readers to look deeper into St. Thomas’s groundbreaking philosophy and theology.
St. Thomas Aquinas by G. K. Chesterton was written in 1933. “Chesterton wrote Saint Thomas Aquinas during a period when people generally tended to oppose faith and reason. Scientific people thought that reason is sufficient. Believing people were persuaded that reason is alien. Chesterton tried to address both audiences.”[2] St. Thomas Aquinas is still appealing to audiences to this very day. Perhaps, not because people are looking for a complete historic biography of St. Thomas, or even a thorough analyzation of St. Thomas’s theology or philosophy, but rather its readers may see this work as an inviting doorway into the minds of two of the greatest truth seekers the world has ever had the pleasure to offer.
What I believe the thesis or theme of this work is, is the pursuit of truth. Not the truth of any one thing, but rather the pursuit of all the truth the universe has to offer. Both Chesterton and St. Thomas possessed a great zeal for knowledge and truth and both men had the gift of passing on this great knowledge to not only the people of their time, but also to people through out time. They were able tackle the greatest questions the human mind has to offer and then pass on the answerers to these questions in a simplistic way for everyone to understand. Not because the questions they asked and answered were simple, not by any means, but because the questions they asked were reasonable, and the answers they brought forth to the masses appealed into the soul of humanities God given gift of rational reasoning. Chesterton explains the appeal of natural reason that St. Thomas makes with his learners by stating, “In the subjectivist, the pressure of the world forces the imagination inwards. In the Thomist, the energy of the mind forces the imagination outwards, but because the images it seeks are real things. All their romance and glamour, so to speak, lies in the fact that they are real things; things not to be found by staring inwards at the mind.”[3] St. Thomas allows one to trust their senses and deduct from what is real to gain a truth about that which is in question. Chesterton explains this as a sort of marriage between reality and a recognition of reality by stating, “In other words, the essence of the Thomist common sense is that two agencies are at work; reality and the recognition of reality; and their meeting is sort of marriage. Indeed, it is truly a marriage, because it is fruitful; the only philosophy now in the world that really is fruitful. It produces practical results, precisely because it is the combination of an adventurous mind and a strange fact.”[4]
Chesterton divides the book out into eight chapters. The first chapter “On Two Friars” compares St. Francis to St. Thomas, and explains to its readers by stating:
And it is of primary importance to realize this fact first, about the time of the great Dominican and the first Franciscan, because their tendency, humanistic and naturalistic in a hundred ways, was truly the development of the supreme doctrine; which was also the dogma of all dogmas. It is in this that the popular poetry of St. Francis and the almost rationalistic prose of St. Thomas appear most vividly as part of the same movement. They are both great growths of Catholic development, depending upon external things only as every living and growing thing depends on them; that is, it digests and transforms them; but continues in its own image and not in theirs.[5]
Chesterton is stating that both if these great saints are using their God given abilities and God given callings, which are unique in their own way, but both are focused on the same path of the will of God. To sum the point up Chesterton states, “St. Francis was content to call himself the Troubadour of God; but was not content with himself the God of the Troubadours. St Thomas did not reconcile Christ to Aristotle; he reconciled Aristotle to Christ.[6]
The second chapter is referred to as “The Runaway Abbot.” This chapter’s focus is a quick overview of St. Thomas’s life on how he became a part of the Dominican’s. Originally, St. Thomas’s family had plans for him to join the Benedictine Abbey at Monte Cassino and to eventually take over the role of Abbot from his uncle. Indeed, a prestigious role religiously and politically. But St. Thomas had other plans. According to Chesterton, “Thomas had appeared to wish to be a Monk; and the gates were silently opened to him, and long avenues of the abbey, the very carpet, so to speak, laid for him up to the throne of the mitred abbot. He said he wished to be a Friar, and his family; and his family flew at him like wild beasts; his brothers pursued him along the public roads, half-rent his friar’s flock his back and finally locked him up on a tower like a lunatic.”[7] Who can say for sure if this act of his family was indeed an act of “tough love” or an act of selfish pride on the part of St. Thomas’s family, in hopes of changing the future saints mind. The shenanigans did not end with imprisonment. One night his brothers tried to tempt their brother into an impure scandal by bringing a woman into his room. Chesterton explains St. Thomas’s reaction to this situation by stating, “He sprang form his seat and snatched a brand out of the fire and stood brandishing it like flaming sword. The woman not unnaturally shrieked and fled, which as all that he wanted; but it quaint to think of what she must have thought of that madman of monstrous stature juggling with flames and apparently threatening to burn down the house. All he did, however, was to stride after her to the door and bang and bar it behind her; and then, with a sort of impulse of violent ritual, he rammed the burning brand into the door, blacking and blistering it with one big black sign of the cross.”[8]
The next chapter in Chesterton’s St. Thomas Aquinas is called “The Aristotelian Revolution.” One might label this chapter as the “meat and potatoes” of this great work, because it dives into the part of St. Thomas’s life that formed his intellectual greatness, as well as describing his great intellectual battels. St. Thomas had the privilege of being one of St. Albert the Greats students. Though St. Thomas was large in stature and not overly large in verbal dialogue, St. Albert the Great saw what God’s plan was for St. Thomas, sainthood. Chesterton explains the binging of their relationship by stating, “He learned with amusement that this dunce had been nicknamed the Dumb Ox by his school fellows. All that is natural enough; but it does not take away the savour of something rather strange and symbolic, about the extraordinary emphasis with which he spoke at last. For Aquinas was still generally known only as one more brilliant and promising pupils, when the great Albert broke silence with his famous cry and prophecy: “You call him a Dumb Ox; I tell you this Dumb Ox shall bellow so loud that this bellowing’s will fill the world.”[9] Together the two traveled to Paris to battle heretics and heresy’s.
One of the great battles they engaged in was the battle against Averroes and Averroism. St. Thomas was able to re-translate the works of Aristotle according to their truth and was able to use these truths philosophically and theologically inline with Church teachings. However, this contradicted Averroes’s translations and teachings of Aristotle. St. Thomas ultimately won the battle against Averroes and duality. “Rejecting Plato's dualistic theory which made the soul and body of man two distinct beings joined together without substantial unity, he adopted, explained, and defended the teaching of Aristotle, that the soul is the substantial form of the human body, distinct from it, but united so intimately with it that the two form one substantial being, which is an individual of the human species. The soul alone is not the man; the body is not the man; but the soul and body united constitute an individual man, a person, e.g., John, or Peter, or Paul. This doctrine was afterwards solemnly defined as a dogma of the Catholic faith at the Council of Vienne (1311-1312), and its proclamation by St. Thomas was a deathblow to Averroism. If the soul belongs to a particular individual, then there is no place for the Averroistic dream of one intellect for all men. Moreover, there is no foundation for such a oneness of intellect as Averroes imagined.”[10] The end of St. Thomas’s great life is explained by Chesterton, “He fell back on the extreme simplicities of his monastic round and seemed to desire nothing but a sort of permanent retreat. A request came to him form the Pope that he should set out upon some further mission of diplomacy or disputation; and he made ready to obey. But before he had gone many miles on the journey, he was dead.”[11] Though tired, St. Thomas was in service to God and His bride to the very end.
This book made several impressions on me personally. Probably the greatest impression is the bond between Chesterton and St. Thomas. Obviously, they never met physically, but they did meet through the pursuit of the truth through the grace of God. Not so much as one could say Chesterton was a devote student of Thomism, but more so a devote son of God and pursuer of the truth of God. It has been said the majority of St. Thomas Aquinas was written before he thoroughly studied the works of the great saint. “For it is highly doubtful that Chesterton had actually devoted much time to reading Aquinas or to studying Thomism. In fact, it is reported that Chesterton began the book without the benefit of extended research. The volume is dedicated to Chesterton’s secretary, Dorothy Collins, who told one of his early biographers, Maisie Ward, that Chesterton had dictated the first half of the book to her before he asked her to go to London and to buy up whatever books may be available about Aquinas.”[12] Both Chesterton and St. Thomas nobly acted in accordance with the will of God, to battle the lies against their God at each ones God given time and place.
[1] G. K. Chesterton, St. Thomas Aquinas (Connecticut: Martino, 2011), ix.
[2] Romanus Cessario, O.P., Saint Thomas Aquinas: “The Apostle of Common Sense”, Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 7, No. 3 (2009): 567.
[4] Chesterton, St. Thomas Aquinas, 148.
[5] Chesterton, St. Thomas Aquinas, 20.
[6] Chesterton, St. Thomas Aquinas, 20.
[9] Chesterton, St. Thomas Aquinas, 56.
[10] Jacques Maritain Center, Influence of St. Thomas on Philosophy.
[11] Chesterton, St. Thomas Aquinas, 76.
[12] Cessario, Saint Thomas Aquinas: “The Apostle of Common Sense”, 566.
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