Let's Retrieve Their Charity Along With Their Theology

No.104: April 22, 2022

Dear Friends,

I do not often wade into deep theological debates in this newsletter. I suppose there are reasons for that. For one thing, I want you to actually read it. Sometimes the raging debates of the day are not the sorts of things an average person would be or should be interested in. I recognize that average people like you actually have lives. For another thing, the state of theological debate in our day and age sends me into a deep oblivion of depression. Ever since I obtained some cheap spectator seats in the Twitter sandbox I have been observing the “hot theological topics” of the day and how they are being handled by the professorial class, and I don’t know how to express how it makes me feel except to say that it feels like my eyes are bleeding.

The level of ignorance, presumption, immaturity, and arrogance I see simply takes my breath away. Maybe it is just the medium. Twitter’s 140 character limit makes it a pretty poor place to have nuanced discussions of complicated things, to be sure. And I have no doubt that if I had had access to something like Twitter twenty-five years ago as a young twenty-something I would probably have relished spouting my own ignorance and presumption and immaturity and arrogance, too. So I can’t be too hard on the young whippersnappers who, with a very little theological knowledge, fling their anathemas all over the room.

But, sadly, it is not just the young whippersnappers. Many of the participants have Twitter handles with “Ph.D” after their names. Their selfies show them in their blazers and bowties and other modes of sartorial splendor. Their bios advertise the institution of higher learning at which they teach. Their “pinned” Tweets are links to their latest published books. Some of these people are even very well known and respected.

In other words, they should not be acting like juveniles in a sandbox. Alas. One thing I desire: that it be said of me, “When he was a child, he thought like a child and spoke like a child; but when he was no longer a child, by the grace of God he left childish things behind.” I’m a person on the journey of sanctification like anyone else, and I do believe that progress is being made. I’m not so certain that’s true of our current theological class and environment as a whole—there is substantial regress taking place. When I see what passes for thoughtful argument these days all I can think is, “Lord, have mercy.”

So what’s new in the theological world? What’s got the “Theobros” all hot and bothered? Something very, very old. It is radical new debate straight out of the Thirteenth Century. I am not kidding. There is a big brouhaha over whether and to what extent we should love and admire St. Thomas Aquinas. It’s controversial because Thomas is canonized in the Roman Catholic Church as their “Angelic Doctor,” so it is a bit weird to see a bunch of Reformed Protestants eager to “retrieve” him.

That, by the way, is an actual term denoting a movement these days: “theological retrieval.” I certainly don’t object to the idea. It’s a good thing to reach back into history and explore the relevance of books long buried in dust. (In fact, I’m embarking on a long season of doing just that.) It’s called honoring our fathers and mothers.

But just as mindless polarization has poisoned everything else in public discourse, so it has degraded this otherwise admirable retrieval project. On one side there are people who denounce the project and think that Thomas is simply irredeemable and irretrievable. So one particular young theologian has been taking to the Twitter town square and suggesting that reading and studying the Angelic Doctor is spiritually dangerous. You see, Aquinas believed in some bad things like indulgences and had a bad take on justification, so everything else is poisoned and you’ll be led astray. That strikes me as a bizarre kind of theological perfectionism.

On the other side are all the Aquinas fanboys who think that the Angelic Doctor said everything that can or should ever be said about anything. And if you find yourself saying something about, say, natural law or the eternal relations of the persons of the Trinity in ways that Thomas didn’t, then you’re outside the bounds of orthodox Christianity and you need to repent, say a few Hail Mary’s (oh, sorry; these are Protestants so leave that part out) and repeat over and over mantras like “Divine Simplicity’ or “Subsistent Relations.” These are people who think theological questions can be settled by just figuring out what Thomas said. I am barely kidding. They rarely, if ever, ask the question whether Thomas was right. It never even seems to occur to them. They think theology is historiography.

What in tarnation is so difficult about this? Thomas Aquinas was a brilliant theologian of the 13th century (but by no means the only brilliant theologian of that century—St. Bonaventure should get more than an honorable mention), and can be read with tremendous profit (even if I myself find him almost unbearably tedious). Retrieve away! And Thomas Aquinas was also a human being, finite and fallen. He got a lot of things right, but he also got a lot of things wrong. So figuring out what Thomas thought is an important and helpful enterprise that definitely aids the theological task. But it isn’t itself the theological task. For that, one must ask whether he was right, whether it accords with Scripture and whether it is faithful to the foundational creeds of orthodox Christianity. When it comes to those questions, I find the “retrievalists” pretty weak.

For example, Thomas Aquinas woefully misunderstood Paul’s teaching about natural revelation in Romans 1. This is my own settled conviction, because I have studied Romans 1 itself at length and in depth, studied substantial amounts of scholarship on Romans 1, and I have read Thomas’s view of Romans 1. And his view is untenable. Paul does not teach a “capacity innatism”—that human beings are naturally capable of knowing God. Paul teaches that human beings naturally and inescapably do know God, full stop. And that has very substantial consequences for one’s understanding of epistemology, revelation, and the apologetic task. Yet if I were to step out into the Twittersphere and say that Thomas’s understanding of natural revelation and natural theology gets this wrong, I would be endlessly jeered at and mocked. By supposedly Reformed Theobros. I know this because I saw it happen just the other day. The cocky, arrogant “dunks” were shocking.

And when it comes to his Trinitarian theology, I admire Thomas’s efforts to delve into the mystery of the Godhead. But people have noticed for, oh, something like 700 years that his “answer” to the problem of how one unified, simple (non-composite), unchangeable and unchanging divine essence can be maintained alongside a distinction (of some sort) between three persons remains… opaque, at best. The idea that his articulation of simplicity or “subsistent relations” has ended the discussion for all time seems ridiculous to me. The Trinity, as every single orthodox theologian who ever lived has said, is mysterious. But woe betide the man who points out that Thomas’s view doesn’t quite live up to its billing. Peter Leithart? John Frame? Morons, obviously.

You know what? I’d like to do some retrieval of my own. While we’re at it, let’s ransack the Medievals for more than just their doctrine of God or views on nature and grace. Let’s retrieve their virtues, as well. These are the guys who can’t practically write a sentence without the word “charity” in it.

That’s what’s missing today. Charity. And another thing: humility.

Here’s what Peter Lombard (1096-1160) wrote in conclusion after his lengthy attempt to explain the distinctions between the three persons in light of God’s one, undivided essence:

We have already said many things concerning the mystery of the most high and ineffable Unity and Trinity; yet we profess that we have taught nothing worthy of its ineffability, but have simply professed that knowledge of it is too wonderful for us, and we are unable to grasp it. (Sentences XXXIV.)

Maybe all that is just pious and false modesty, but we could use more of it all the same. Too wonderful for us. Unable to grasp it. I did my best, and hope God is honored. Wouldn’t it be great, wouldn’t it be a better world if that were our attitude about ourselves, and others?

Or how about this wonderful passage from Richard of St. Victor (1110-1173), as he is about to embark on his attempt to reason through the Three and the One?

Now let him who will laugh at my plan of inquiry, and him who will jeer—and fairly enough. For, to own the truth, knowledge does not actually lift me up, so much as the ardor of a burning mind stimulates me to hazard the attempt. What if it is not given to me to arrive at the goal of my endeavor? What if I fail in my running? I shall rejoice nonetheless in seeking the face of my Lord, if I have always run, labored, sweated, according to my powers. And if I should happen to fail before reaching the too great things I seek, because of the great length, the difficulty, and the hardness of the way, I shall have done something if in fact I can say truthfully, I have done what I could, I have sought and I have not found him, and I have called and he has not answered me. (On The Trinity, 3.1)

That’s a guy who knew his limitations. And I can tell you that of all the cock-sure scoffers and mockers who’ve got it all figured out, not one of them is half as smart as Richard of St. Victor. They certainly don’t appear to have his humility.

So I call for a retrieval of basic Christian virtues. And since we’re all about the Medievals these days, that is going to sound a lot like faith, hope, and love. I don’t care if you’ve got a Ph.D in theology or not, but I do have to insist that those are the baseline qualifications required.

Miscellany

• I had some things to say about the current “retrieval” of what people call “classical theism” in this interview.

• And now might be a good time to remember this one: Doubting Thomas (Aquinas).

• I am still looking forward to the baseball season. One of these days my team will actually, you know, start hitting baseballs and running around the bases. But they haven’t yet.

Thank you for reading, and have a terrific weekend!