Theology and Non-western Philosophy
- Scholastic Theology and Non-Western Philosophy: the work of Thomas Aquinas =============================================================================
Western Christian Scholasticism bears testimony to a substantial engagement between Christian thinkers and non-Western philosophy in the mediaeval period. The mediaeval West was surrounded by what Marshall Hodgson has referred to as the ‘Islamicate,’ Muslim dominated territories, but where there were Jewish, Christian as well as Muslim philosophers active.[^9] Western Christian scholastics knew and used Muslim and Jewish commentaries on and adaptations of the works of Greek philosophy, as well as independently composed Jewish and Muslim philosophical and theological treatises. Christian scholastics were able to regard Jewish and Muslim thinkers as having something intelligible and useful to say about the fundamental themes of God, creation and human nature, even though Christian attitudes towards Judaism and Islam at that time were routinely very negative and condemnatory. It was, after all, a period that witnessed both crusades against Islam and persecutions of Jews.[^10]
The most influential of all Christian scholastics, Thomas Aquinas, was remarkable for the extent to which he used Jewish and Islamic philosophy and for the respect and courtesy he showed his sources. Aquinas makes reference in his works to Muslim thinkers such as Avicenna (Ibn Sina, d. 1037) and Averroes (Ibn Rushd, d.1198), to Jewish thinkers such as Moses Maimonides (1138-1204), as well as to theLiber de Causis , a Latin work of considerable importance in the Christian West based on an Arabic reworking of Proclus, (Kitab al Khair ,The Book of Pure Goodness ), on which Thomas wrote a commentary at the end of his life.[^11] Their philosophy exercises a considerable and positive influence on the development of his theology throughout the whole course of his work.
Sacra Doctrina and the Relationship of Faith and Reason
What account, then, does Aquinas himself give of the relationship between theology and non-Western philosophy? At the beginning of theSumma Theologiae Aquinas definessacra doctrina as a science that takes the articles of faith, the revelation received from God, as its principles.[^12] Sacra doctrina is probative (argumentativa ), working from these principles to demonstrate other things, both through the exercise of human reasoning and the use of authorities, namely Sacred Scripture, the doctors of the Church and those philosophers, who have come to knowledge of truth by natural reason.[^13] For Aquinas the shape of such reasoning and the nature of the authorities appealed to depends on what those involved have in common, what principles drawn from revelation or human authorities they can agree on and hence reason from. Because Jews accept the Old Testament, discussion with them can draw on this part of revelation as well as human reason and philosophical authorities. In the case of Muslims, there is no shared revelation and so discussion is limited to reasoning and use of philosophical authorities alone.[^14]
Thus, Aquinas develops a scheme in which engagement with non-Western philosophy has a place within theology as the science ofsacra doctrina. This clearly does not make Aquinas an advocate of a liberal theology or a pluralist theologyavant la lettre . In his account Islamic thought is given the same status as Greek philosophy, part of natural human philosophy.[^15] His comments about Muhammad reflect the extreme negativity of his time.[^16] Moreover, in his discussion of the probative work ofsacra doctrina the emphasis is on disputation and the refutation of the views of others. However, Aquinas’ actual use of Muslim or Jewish philosophy testifies to the importance they did have for his own theology. Aquinas does not, in fact, just set out to refute what Muslim or Jewish thinkers have to say. He also agrees with many of the points he finds in their accounts. Muslim and Jewish philosophy helps to shape and clarify his Christian theology as it develops and matures. Their commentaries and independent works themselves become authorities to which he refers and with which he reasons as he constructs a Christian theology.
Aquinas’ Engagement with Islamic and Jewish Philosophy
The American Thomist, David Burrell C.S.C., is one of the leading advocates of Aquinas as a model for a contemporary Christian theological engagement with non-Western philosophy.[^17] He has made clear both the extent of Aquinas’ engagement with Muslim and Jewish thinkers, especially Avicenna (Ibn Sina) and Moses Maimonides, and the way such non-Western philosophy makes a positive contribution to his theology. Aquinas treats Muslim and Jewish thinkers as fellow travellers and as interlocutors into common theological concerns, especially the desire to find the right relationship between what they maintain on the basis of faith and what can and should be said by the reason found in Greek philosophy:
Aquinas’ intellectual inquiry bridged the divide initially posed by alien faiths, allowing him to discover and exploit cognate strategies for explicating shared perspectives on creation, providence, and often parallel trajectories towards the goal of human fulfilment[^18]
Burrell follows Louis Gardet’s characterisation of Aquinas’ approach as one in which Muslim philosophy is seen as a resource to be mined for ‘conceptual strategies.’[^19] He also notes that Aquinas appropriates and transforms the ideas he finds in this philosophy as he thinks it to be useful and necessary for the development of his own theology determined by the principles of Christian faith, just as he does with Aristotle and other Greek thought.[^20]
Thus, in order to express the distinction between God as creator and created being Aquinas takes from Avicenna the distinction between essence and existence as a useful conceptual strategy for distinguishing creatures, in whom there is composition of essence and existence and hence dependent being, from the creator, whose existence is his essence. Yet he rejects the implication he finds in Avicenna that existence should be classified as a form of accidental being that comes to an essence and instead recasts the distinction as being one between the potential and the actual being of a substance. In his mature theology the simple non-compositeness of essence and existence in God’s unique case continues to be affirmed, while his final expression of creation is as the production of the whole being of a thing, wherein ‘being created’ is the relation of a substance has as a whole to the creator.[^21]
Likewise, it is an Islamic rendition of the Neo-Platonic work, theLiber de Causis , which provides Aquinas with conceptual strategies for articulating thesui generis relation of creation. TheLiber de Causis is a source for some of Aquinas’ most distinctive ways of depicting creation, such as the idea of God as the first and universal cause of the being of all things and the idea of creation as the emanation and participation in being. In his mature work on creation Aquinas continues to depict creation as the emanation and participation in being. At the same time, Aquinas consistently rejects Muslim acceptance of secondary creators from the Neo-Platonic scheme.[^22]
In common with the Jewish philosopher, Moses Maimonides, Aquinas endorses a generally apophatic approach to knowledge of God, yet he rejects Maimonides’ negative understanding of divine predication, instead developing his account of analogy. With Maimonides Aquinas accepts that unaided human can establish that the world is created, but not that it has a beginning, as revelation informs us. On this question Aquinas refers to and considers the different Muslim views that developed as they inform the discussion, noting, for instance, that they felt it reasonable to affirm both the eternity of the world and its createdness.[^23]
Non-Western philosophy, then, is clearly important to Aquinas as a resource for reasoning about faith, in the engagement between theology and philosophy. Later Christian tradition has received and accepted this engagement as making a legitimate contribution to the expression of Christian faith. Aquinas takes it for granted both that the reasoning found insacra doctrina is conditioned by the articles of Christian faith and the authorities of Christian tradition and that human reasoning can cross cultural boundaries. Aquinas unbending commitment to the objectivity of truth encourages such openness, while also, and along with his commitment to the truth of Christian revelation, leads him to critically appraise Jewish and Muslim philosophy as a conceptual resource for acceptance, rejection, appropriation and transformation.