Thomas Aquinas on Science, Sacra Doctrina, and Creation

CHAPTER SEVEN

THOMAS AQUINAS ON SCIENCE, SACRA DOCTRINA, AND CREATION

William E. Carroll

Recently there has there been increasing attention paid to Thomas Aquinas’s biblical exegesis,1 the result, in part, of seeing Thomas more as a theologian than a philosopher, or, at least, of coming to emphasize more Thomas’s theological interests. Thomas’s understanding of the relationship between science and Scripture, the subject of this essay, provides evidence for the relationship between philosophy and theology in his work. Since Thomas recognized the unity of knowledge, based on both faith and reason, he was always ready to bring the insights available to reason to his study of God and God’s revelation. His own work occurred in the midst of a signiﬁ cant intellectual revolution in the Latin west, the result of the introduction of the thought of Aristotle into the discourse of philosophers2 and theologians. Dante, through the voice of Vergil, will call Aristotle “il maestro di color che sanno” (the master of those who know), and it is difﬁ cult to underestimate the transformation in thinking3 which the knowledge of Aristotle’s works brought to the West. The revival of learning in the Latin west was well underway when translations of Aristotle appeared. The cathedral school of Chartres was of special importance in this regard; scholars there, such as Thierry of Chartres (d. ca. 1156), sought to use Platonic cosmology (found in the Timaeus) in the reading of the creation account in Genesis.4 New

1 In particular, see Van Nieuwenhove and Wawrykow 2005; Dauphinais and Levering 2005; Levering 2004; Ryan 2000; and Candler 2006. 2 I use the word “philosophy” to include what sometimes Thomas will call the “philosophical sciences,” that is, the whole range of knowledge accessible to reason alone. 3 Already in the Muslim world, which came to the texts of Aristotle before these texts were available to the Latin west, Aristotelian thought was the occasion for new discussions about the relationship between the heritage of the Koran and that of ancient Greece. See D’Ancona 1996. 4 Lindberg 1992, 190–197. William of Conches (d. after 1154) is a good example of the increasing tendency to affi rm the importance of the study of nature. In his 220 william e. carroll translations from Greek and Arabic sources would, by the end of the twelfth century, provide the impetus for the acceleration of this intellectual revival and would transform it in important ways. Scholars such as Dominic Gundissalinus and Gerard of Cremona contributed to the translation of most of the Aristotelian works in the natural sciences. In the thirteenth century Robert Grosseteste5 and William of Moer- beke6 helped to produce even better translations of Greek texts. Between 1200 and 1209, Grosseteste (at Oxford) produced the fi rst full exposition of Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics, a text which John of Salisbury, in the previous century, described as having as many barriers to understanding as there were chapters. By 1220 Averroes’s commentary on Aristotle’s text appeared in Latin. It is diffi cult to underestimate the importance of the Posterior Analytics in Western intellectual history since it represents Aristotle’s systematic understanding of the nature of science and of the role of demonstration in acquiring knowledge of nature. By the late 1260s and early 1270s, both Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas had completed their own commentaries on this work. The reception of Aristotelian thought in the Latin Middle Ages is a complex story, and that reception plays a crucial role in Thomas Aqui- nas’s understanding of the relationship between science and Scripture. The curricula of the newly established universities, especially at Oxford and Paris, would eventually be revolutionized by the infl ux of the new learning. There were various attempts at both universities to prohibit the teaching of Aristotle, especially his natural philosophy, since there

Philosophy of the World, William attacks those who too readily appeal to direct divine intervention in the world: “Because they are themselves ignorant of nature’s forces and wish to have all men as companions in their ignorance, they are unwilling to investigate them, but prefer that we believe like peasants and not inquire into the [natural] causes [of things]. However, we say that the cause of everything is to be sought. . . . But these people . . . if they know of anybody so investigating, proclaim him a heretic.” Andrew of St. Victor, discussing the interpretation of biblical events, cautioned that “in expounding Scripture, when the event described admits of no natural explanation, then and then only should we have recourse to miracles.” Quoted in Lindberg, 200. 5 Grosseteste (ca. 1175–1253) was fi rst chancellor of Oxford University and then bishop of Lincoln from 1235 until his death in 1253. In addition to his role as trans- lator of Aristotle, he was a major political, ecclesiastical, scientifi c, and philosophical fi gure in his own right. Lohr 1982, 61. Lohr provides a useful table of all the translations, 74–79. 6 Moerbeke, a Dominican and friend of Thomas Aquinas, was born in Belgium around 1215. He travelled extensively in Greece and was likely a member of the Dominican priory established at Thebes at least since 1253. He served in the papal court at Viterbo, and in 1278 he was named Archbishop of Corinth in Greece, where he died in 1286. See Lohr 1982, 62–3.