Engaging with Aquinas, Leonardo de Chirico

T. M. SUFFIELD

Eucharisma 2, (Winter 2024), 77-81.

Recently there has been an upsurge in interest in Thomas Aquinas among evangelicals; perhaps most notably from the ‘retrieval’ movement popularised by Matthew Barrett and Credo Magazine. Leonardo de Chirico’s new book Engaging with Thomas Aquinas: An Evangelical Approach is attempting to do two things: firstly, to provide an engagement with Aquinas for evangelicals and secondly, to offer a note of caution into an evangelical discourse that is increasingly positive about Aquinas’ work.

De Chirico spends the first two chapters exploring Aquinas’ life and thought. The next two chapters explore Roman Catholic and Protestant readings of Aquinas over the last five hundred years. The final two chapters outline de Chirico’s concerns with the architecture of Aquinas’ thought and how evangelicals should and shouldn’t appropriate it. 

 This is not a review of the book for how accurately it summarises Thomas’ thought, for I am no expert in Aquinas. Instead, I’m writing as someone who, partly inspired by the enthusiasm for all things Thomas that’s in the water at the moment, has read the Summa Theologiae and was left fairly cold. The Summa is obviously monumentally important for historical theology¹—Aquinas is, in de Chirico’s own words, a ‘theological giant’ (1). Yet I struggled to see why I should be reading it myself. So, I would seem to be the perfect audience for this introduction and critique. 

The book is clearly written and as easy to grasp as anything dealing with the details of scholastic theology can be. As an engagement and overview of Aquinas’ thought from an evangelical point of view, I think this book is successful. It would serve students studying him for the first time well, although it isn’t a full introduction or survey, and it isn’t thorough enough to be an evangelical companion to reading Aquinas. As de Chirico highlights, that hasn’t yet been written (164).

It’s as an entry into the ongoing conversation over Aquinas’ use in evangelical theology that I intend to review the book, both because that will be of more interest to readers of Eucharisma and because I am more equipped to do so. I may not be an expert in Aquinas, but I am keen on theological retrieval—as is this journal, as its name is supposed to signify—and I have read widely, for a charismatic Pastor, in modern interpreters of Aquinas (from the Nouvelle Theologie, to Radical Orthodoxy, to the various strands of evangelical retrieval).

Towards the end of the book de Chirico highlights five contours for evangelical engagement with Aquinas, which seem to be the best way of framing my review.

1. Tradition under scripture

De Chirico’s concern is that, while he affirms the importance of tradition for theology (157), we should remember that we’re Protestants. The Bible is the final interpreter of all theology, including Aquinas. He can only serve as an authority insofar as he interprets the Bible well. 

De Chirico is concerned that Aquinas’ system puts Aristotelian philosophy on a parallel with scripture, suggesting that for Aquinas, ‘the well-developed biblical insights and themes seem … to enter structures of thought that result from a complex process of integration between different factors’ (42). The Bible is the primary source used to fill a framework taken from Aristotle. The charge is that the shape of the system of thought is not derived from the Bible so we should not appropriate his ‘architecture.’

2. Eclectic Appropriation

De Chirico spends most of his fourth chapter exploring the early Protestant use of Aquinas (94-120), summarising their use as ‘eclecticism’ (109). Aquinas was their primary opponent on issues where the Reformers differed with Roman Catholicism and yet they often used his working approvingly in matters of metaphysics as related to the doctrine of God (110).

In essence, the Reformers and Protestant Scholastics used Aquinas when he was useful, and argued against him when he wasn’t. De Chirico is concerned that modern evangelical appropriation of Aquinas swallows his thought systemically rather than eclectically.

3. The System is Problematic

De Chirico’s most sustained criticism of Aquinas, and in my view his most important, is over his doctrine of sin. Aquinas’ view of sin is described as ‘optimistic’ in comparison with Augustine’s ‘tragic’ view of sin (52). Because nature is always ‘”open” to grace and capable of being raised in its entirety,’ (53) Aquinas is more hopeful about our fallen nature’s ability to do good. De Chirico picks this theme up throughout Aquinas’ thought, but methodologically he sees it primarily in Aquinas’ view of human reason and natural theology. De Chirico argues that sin exercises a ‘marginal weight’ in Aquinas’ overall thought (57). He argues that for Aquinas, humanity’s problem is ‘not so much sin as a lack of grace’ (66), we are wounded rather than suffering ‘a radical breach’ (133).

Aquinas’ famous phrase ‘grace does not destroy nature, but perfects it,’ is, for de Chirico, to be read in the same vein. This is too positive about our fallen nature; de Chirico instead points to Bavinck’s formulation that grace ‘restores’ nature. While I am persuaded about Aquinas, I think de Chirico has missed why this phrase has become so popular among evangelicals grappling with the ontology of male and female in light of modern understandings of gender and sexuality.² And here is a theme to which I’ll return: de Chirico doesn’t explain why Aquinas is becoming popular with evangelicals.

De Chirico has two other concerns that I’ll briefly mention. First, the ‘Pax Thomistica’ between theology and Aristotelian philosophy (or faith and reason) that typifies Aquinas’ thought (35, 149-150). He describes this as ‘epistemological and harmartiological semi-Pelagianism’ (150)! Second, Aquinas’ doctrines of analogy and participation (141-145) which, de Chirico argues, leave too great a similitude between the creature and Creator, and he goes on to connect this theme to the inclusivism of Vatican II (145-149). De Chirico highlights the differing Protestant views on the usefulness of Aquinas’ doctrine of God (162-164); however the choice of John Frame as his evangelical author opposed to Aquinas—when Frame is already famously opposed to elements of classical theism—makes it read like a short overview of differing views on classical theism rather than on Aquinas’ account of the doctrine of God. 

4. Roman Catholicism necessarily grows from the framework of Aquinas

Throughout, de Chirico establishes the profound impact of Aquinas on Roman Catholicism; an indisputable point. What would, however, be widely disputed is that Roman Catholic theology naturally arises from Aquinas’ thought: but this is exactly what de Chirico claims. His concern is that uncritical adoption of Aquinas will cause us to swim the Tiber. De Chirico certainly demonstrates the way that Roman Catholic reception of Aquinas has ‘hardened’ Thomism and Thomas has become the greatest ally in anti-Protestant polemic (68-86).

Aquinas is closer to Tridentine Catholicism than the Reformers on both the doctrines of Scripture and Justification (169). Yet, some of de Chirico’s critiques sound a little like ‘he’s not a Protestant’ (e.g. 158), for, while the triadic view of revelation common to post-Tridentine Roman Catholicism (Scripture – Tradition – Magisterium) is built on Aquinas’ thought, it’s also not Aquinas’ own view. 

The continuity and discontinuity between the Reformers and the Mediaeval tradition is debated among Protestants. Matthew Barrett’s recent Reformation as Renewal, for example, is a notable work which sees significantly more continuity than de Chirico.

5. We need mature readings of Aquinas

Thomas wears ‘neither a Black hat nor a white hat, but a grey hat’ (159).³ As such we need to read him critically as part of the historical development of theology: neither as an ally nor an enemy. I doubt any evangelical reader of Aquinas would disagree; the question that continues to be debated is whether those who are more positive about Aquinas than de Chirico are reading Aquinas critically or not.  De Chirco’s concern is that they are not reading Aquinas critically enough.

An agreement

De Chirico’s critique is at its most penetrating when he is engaging with Aquinas’ view of sin. What he calls the ‘tragic’ view of sin, associated with Augustine, is vital to evangelicalism. This is a critique we need to hear, because, I fear, evangelicals’ view of sin is becoming less tragic, and therefore we are becoming less likely to react to reading this in Aquinas. 

While doing more than asserting this would take another essay, my concern is that too small a view of sin is endemic in evangelicalism. I suspect we don’t read ‘grace doesn’t destroy nature, it perfects it,’ and immediately want to turn to Ephesians 2 to refute it by reading that we are ‘dead in sin.’ We see this, to take three examples, in our adopting of softer language—like the ubiquitous ‘brokenness’—to replace sin; in our adoption of the wisdom of the world without considering how the noetic effects of sin have distorted it;⁴ and in our approach to concupiscence.

On the last of these, I suspect most evangelicals are becoming more comfortable with Aquinas’ view of sin⁵—that doesn’t locate sin in desires but in acts⁶—as many recent evangelical treatments  of concupiscence seem to have more in common with Trent than with the Reformers!

A Concern

I have two concerns: one small and one substantive.

My small concern comes from having noticed a small mistake, which I’m reticent to point out because of the likelihood of me making a similar mistake myself. When discussing the modern uses of Aquinas in the nouvelle theologie that influenced Vatican II, de Chirico cites The Mystery of the Supernatural as the English translation of Henri de Lubac’s Surnaturel (132 n.10). Surnaturel (1946) is famously untranslated, The Mystery of the Supernatural is a translation of Le Mystere du Surnaturel (1965) which builds on the earlier more controversial work.

This is not in and of itself a huge deal and is an understandable mistake for someone unfamiliar with de Lubac. I happen to be much more familiar with de Lubac than I am with Aquinas; his opposition to a dualism between the natural and the supernatural is worthy of consideration by charismatics in my opinion.⁷ Yet this small mistake does raise the questions of whether there are other mistakes in matters with which I am less intimately familiar.

My more significant concern, however, is that I think de Chirico fails to explain why there has been a  Protestant resurgence of interest in Aquinas. At times it feels like he is against classical theism, which dilutes his argument against the use of Aquinas in retrieving classical theism for evangelicals. More clarity here would have been helpful.

Similarly, he is concerned by the Platonic elements in Aquinas, adopted for Aquinas through Aristotelean thought. De Chirico highlights the Platonic view of history as cyclical (exitus-reditus) which is found in Aquinas as contrary to a more Biblical linear view of history (56). This would have benefited from more thorough engagement with the history of Christian Platonism, including in the Fathers.⁸

The author’s own views here are not clear, but he does seem uneasy with the resurgence of realism to answer anthropological questions. I appreciate the implied concern that in appropriating historical theology we haven’t fully understood in order to solve contemporary problems, we can end up importing foundational problems in our thinking.  Again, I think more clarity on the question would have been helpful, especially since realism is on the rise as a response to gender ideology.

In sum, this is a useful book. I think its argument will be unconvincing to any who are keen on retrieving Aquinas because I don’t think they will feel like they’ve been understood before being critiqued. However, I would encourage the retrieval movement to pay particular attention to de Chirico’s warnings on Aquinas’ view of sin. We are dead in our sins, and we do need resurrection.

1. To the extent that of all written texts, only the Bible has received more commentaries (57). ↩︎
2. Bavinck’s formulation also serves as well in those same debates so is to be preferred. De Chirico’s concern about porting in categories that lead in the wrong directions by not fully understanding a concept that’s being used because it’s useful is particularly apt here. Or, if I may be as bold to suggest an alternative, I wonder if grace ‘resurrects’ nature. ↩︎
3. De Chirico is positively quoting K. S. Oliphant, ‘Aquinas: A Shaky Foundation’, The Gospel Coalition (7 November 2012): https:// www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/aquinas-a-shaky-foundation (accessed 25 August 2023). ↩︎
4. I mean our ‘plundering of the Egyptians,’ especially with regard to church growth techniques without considering that the Egyptian gold was used both for the furniture of the tabernacle and the plating of the golden calf. I’m aware that Augustine was pro-‘plundering’ arguing that ‘all truth was God’s truth,’ but he takes great effort to discern truth from error rather than just adopting what works. ↩︎
5. See e.g. ST I–II, q. 85, a. 1, where Aquinas speaks of sin ‘diminishing’ the natural inclination to do good, ST I–II, q. 85, a. 3 where sin is a wound, and ST I–II, q. 109, a. 2, where the noetic effects of sin are minimised. ↩︎
6. See e.g. ST I–II, q. 84 a. 1. ↩︎
7. De Chirico highlights the nouvelle theologie as making Aquinas’ excesses worse (132-133). This may be true, but I think evangelical readers could do with more sense of why de Lubac in particular has been picked up by three strands of related Protestant thought: the radical orthodoxy of Millbank et al, Hans Boersma’s ressourcement of Platonism, and the (more evangelical) political theology of James Wood and Peter Leithart. This is perhaps out of the scope of this sort of book, but the reader is left with the impression that there would be no sane reason for a Protestant to interact with these thinkers. ↩︎
8. ually, I’m unconvinced that the Platonist view is as far from the Biblical one as de Chirico claims. Not only does exitus-reditus have some features in common with a Biblical exile-exodus (or death and resurrection) framing—though this similarity could be vastly overstated— but describing the Biblical story as ‘linear’ misses its inherently chiastic shape. History is shaped like dying and rising. ↩︎