{"agent_id":"aquinas","agent_name":"Thomas Aquinas","slug":"faith-and-reason","label":"Faith and reason: is sacra doctrina a science, and does the Aristotelian apparatus serve revelation or subordinate it?","topic":"Faith and reason","question":"Is sacra doctrina a science, and does the Aristotelian apparatus serve revelation or subordinate it?","position":"Sacred doctrine is a science in the strict Aristotelian sense: it proceeds from principles, though its principles are known in a higher science, God's own knowledge, and are received by faith. Philosophy serves it as handmaid without ceasing to be philosophy.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"Sacred doctrine is a science in the strict Aristotelian sense: it proceeds from principles, though its principles are known in a higher science, God's own knowledge, and are received by faith.","n":[1]},{"t":"Philosophy serves it as handmaid without ceasing to be philosophy.","n":[2,3]}]],"texts":"*Summa Theologiae* I.1 (the nature and extent of sacred doctrine); I.12 (how God is known by us); II-II.1-7 (faith); *Summa Contra Gentiles* I.3-9 (the twofold mode of truth); *Commentary on Boethius's De Trinitate* qq. 2-3, 5-6. Reception: the 1277 Paris condemnations, several propositions of which touch his positions; Gilson's \"Christian philosophy\"; Van Steenberghen's denial that such a thing is coherent; the Radical Orthodoxy charge that he inaugurates the autonomy of the secular.","works":["*Summa Theologiae* I.1 (the nature and extent of sacred doctrine)","I.12 (how God is known by us)","II-II.1-7 (faith)","*Summa Contra Gentiles* I.3-9 (the twofold mode of truth)","*Commentary on Boethius's De Trinitate* qq. 2-3, 5-6"],"reception":"the 1277 Paris condemnations, several propositions of which touch his positions; Gilson's \"Christian philosophy\"; Van Steenberghen's denial that such a thing is coherent; the Radical Orthodoxy charge that he inaugurates the autonomy of the secular.","status":"The synthesis is either the great achievement of scholasticism or the moment theology surrendered its own grammar to a pagan one.","era":"1225-1274","discipline":"Philosophy, Theology","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Summa Theologica Part I, Prima Pars","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"Hence there is no reason why those things which may be learned from philosophical science, so far as they can be known by natural reason, may not also be taught us by another science so far as they fall within revelation. Hence theology included in sacred doctrine differs in kind from that theology which is part of philosophy. _______________________ SECOND ARTICLE [I, Q. 1, Art.","label":"Summa Theologica Part I, Prima Pars"},{"n":2,"work":"The Division and Methods of the Sciences, Boethius De Trinitate V-VI","page":"pp. 90–91","canonical":"","quote":"\"So the things also that are of God no man knoweth, but the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of this world, but the \" Aristotle, Metaphysics 6.1, 1026a20. By \"divine beings\" St. Thomas Aristotle, Metaphysics 2.1, 993b9-11.","label":"The Division and Methods of the Sciences, Boethius De Trinitate V-VI, pp. 90–91"},{"n":3,"work":"Summa Theologica Part I, Prima Pars","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"Therefore, besides philosophical science, there is no need of any further knowledge. *On the contrary,* It is written (2 Tim. 3:16): \"All Scripture inspired of God is profitable to teach, to reprove, to correct, to instruct in justice.\" Now Scripture, inspired of God, is no part of philosophical science, which has been built up by human reason.","label":"Summa Theologica Part I, Prima Pars"}],"answer":{"paragraphs":[[{"t":"Sacred doctrine is a science, though not every reader who hears that claim grasps what it requires.","n":[]},{"t":"The objection runs: a science proceeds from self-evident principles, but the articles of faith are not self-evident, since not all men hold them — \"for all men have not faith.\"¹ The objection is worth stating at full strength, because it points to the real question.","n":[1]}],[{"t":"There are two kinds of sciences.² Some proceed from principles known by the natural light of intelligence, as arithmetic and geometry do.","n":[2]},{"t":"Others proceed from principles established by a higher science: perspective takes its principles from geometry, music from arithmetic, and neither is thought less a science for the borrowing.³ Sacred doctrine is of the second kind.","n":[3,4]}],[{"t":"Its principles are established by the light of a higher science — the science God has of himself and of all things, which the blessed share in their beatitude.","n":[]},{"t":"The believer receives those principles on the authority of the one who reveals them, as the musician accepts on authority what the mathematician has demonstrated.⁴ That is not credulity; it is the proper posture of a subordinate science toward its superior.","n":[]}],[{"t":"Now the unity of this science.","n":[]},{"t":"The objection presses that God and creatures, angels and human morality, belong to utterly different subject-matters, and no one science covers such a range.","n":[]},{"t":"But the unity of a science is gauged not by the material diversity of its objects but by the formal aspect under which it considers them.⁵ Color is the formal object of sight, and sight reaches man, stone, and sky without fragmenting into three faculties.","n":[5]}],[{"t":"Sacred doctrine considers all things precisely under the formality of being divinely revealed, and so it bears, as it were, the stamp of the divine science, which is one and simple yet extends to everything.⁶ Creatures enter not as a second subject alongside God, but only as they are referable to God as their beginning or end.⁷ On the question of whether the Aristotelian apparatus serves revelation or subordinates it: I used that philosophy *in obsequium fidei*, as a handmaid of theology, never placing it ahead of the Catholic faith.⁸ The handmaid image is about order, not contempt.","n":[6,7,8]}],[{"t":"An argument does not become weaker for serving a truth it did not discover.","n":[]},{"t":"What I refused, and refuse still, is the double-truth: where the Philosopher and the faith appear to conflict, I go back and ask whether he has been read correctly.","n":[]},{"t":"Often he has not.","n":[]},{"t":"There is a further reason why revelation was necessary even for truths reason could in principle reach.","n":[]}],[{"t":"The truth about God that reason could discover would be known only by a few, and after a long time, and with the admixture of many errors.⁹ Man's whole salvation depends on knowledge of this truth.","n":[9]},{"t":"It was therefore fitting, and more than fitting — necessary — that men should be taught divine truths by divine revelation, so that salvation might be brought about more fitly and more surely.¹⁰ Philosophy serves that end.","n":[10]},{"t":"It does not set the end.","n":[]}]],"refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Summa Theologica Part I, Prima Pars","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"For every science proceeds from self-evident principles. But sacred doctrine proceeds from articles of faith which are not self-evident, since their truth is not admitted by all: 'For all men have not faith' (2 Thess. 3:2). Therefore sacred doctrine is not a science.","label":"Summa Theologica Part I, Prima Pars"},{"n":2,"work":"Summa Theologica Part I, Prima Pars","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"We must bear in mind that there are two kinds of sciences. There are some which proceed from a principle known by the natural light of intelligence, such as arithmetic and geometry and the like.","label":"Summa Theologica Part I, Prima Pars"},{"n":3,"work":"Summa Theologica Part I, Prima Pars","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"There are some which proceed from principles known by the light of a higher science: thus the science of perspective proceeds from principles established by geometry, and music from principles established by arithmetic.","label":"Summa Theologica Part I, Prima Pars"},{"n":4,"work":"Summa Theologica Part I, Prima Pars","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"So it is that sacred doctrine is a science because it proceeds from principles established by the light of a higher science, namely, the science of God and the blessed. Hence, just as the musician accepts on authority the principles taught him by the mathematician, so sacred science is established on principles revealed by God.","label":"Summa Theologica Part I, Prima Pars"},{"n":5,"work":"Summa Theologica Part I, Prima Pars","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"The unity of a faculty or habit is to be gauged by its object, not indeed, in its material aspect, but as regards the precise formality under which it is an object.","label":"Summa Theologica Part I, Prima Pars"},{"n":6,"work":"Summa Theologica Part I, Prima Pars","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"sacred doctrine bears, as it were, the stamp of the divine science which is one and simple, yet extends to everything.","label":"Summa Theologica Part I, Prima Pars"},{"n":7,"work":"Summa Theologica Part I, Prima Pars","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"Sacred doctrine does not treat of God and creatures equally, but of God primarily, and of creatures only so far as they are referable to God as their beginning or end.","label":"Summa Theologica Part I, Prima Pars"},{"n":8,"work":"Commentary on the Gospel of John","page":"pp. 14–15","canonical":"","quote":"he never put this philosophy ahead of his Catholic faith. Rather he used that philosophy in obsequium fidei (Phil 2:17), as a 'handmaid of theology.'","label":"Commentary on the Gospel of John, pp. 14–15"},{"n":9,"work":"Summa Theologica Part I, Prima Pars","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"the truth about God such as reason could discover, would only be known by a few, and that after a long time, and with the admixture of many errors.","label":"Summa Theologica Part I, Prima Pars"},{"n":10,"work":"Summa Theologica Part I, Prima Pars","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"in order that the salvation of men might be brought about more fitly and more surely, it was necessary that they should be taught divine truths by divine revelation.","label":"Summa Theologica Part I, Prima Pars"}],"generated":"2026-09-22T00:38:33+00:00"},"siblings":[{"slug":"analogy-and-divine-simplicity","label":"Analogy and divine simplicity: if God is wholly simple and unlike creatures, can anything we say of God be literally true?"},{"slug":"the-eternity-of-the-world","label":"The eternity of the world: can reason demonstrate that the universe had a beginning, or is that known by faith alone?"},{"slug":"natural-law","label":"Natural law: are the moral precepts derived from human nature genuinely universal, or is the derivation smuggling in conclusions it wants?"}]}