A Sermon Preached by Gregory Hall  at Clarence Presbyterian Church 

THOMAS AQUINAS AND THE UNITY OF TRUTH

In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.  He was in the beginning and all things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made.

            The day after reporting on a controversy among the faculty at Yale, the New York Times published an editorial, which contained the following words:

 No intelligent man in this age of the world will for a moment maintain that there is any truth in Christianity.

             What is interesting to me about this editorial is that it was not published this year or in 1980 but rather in 1880.   For more than a century, many people in America have believed that one’s faith has little connection with rational thought.  All too often we have lived with the assumption that there is no connection between science and religion, faith and philosophy, or the mind and the heart.  There has not been a consensus that there is a unity of truth.

             It is not only educated agonistics at Ivy League schools that have acted with these assumptions.  Most of what have been called fundamentalist Christians have shared these assumptions.  There are some Christian groups that have believed that education is evil.   They look at honest thought as being doubt; they have taught that the process of education as being one in which all people lose their faith.

             This explains one of the difficulties some young people encounter in going away to college.  In many universities of our country there is no room for a unity of truth.  Young people go to classes and participate in discussions in dining halls and dorms rooms that usually do no allow for an integration of their faith and the knowledge they are being taught.  There is a lack of support for reflection that wants to put it all together.  Many students receive the impression from both professors and the Christian groups on campus they must choose between a life of the mind or a life of faith.

             There is a figure in Christian history who can serve as a helpful model in learning how to live with these tensions.  The figure is Thomas Aquinas.  Thomas was born in 1225A.D. in a small town not far from Naples.  Against the wishes of his family he became a friar with no ambition except scholarship.  He made his way to Paris to study with the greatest teachers of the day. 

             If Thomas were living today we would consider him an egghead.  He often became lost in thought.  He was noted for his reserved manner, and when occupied with an especially difficult point he could readily become unaware of his surroundings.  There is a funny story told of a time he was invited to dine with King Louis IX of France.

 The prior took him to dine with the King, on a day when he was busy with the Summa.  In the course of the meal he forgot where he was and grew lost in thought.  The others were in the midst of conversation when suddenly he struck the table with his great hand, crying, “Ha! That settles the Manicheans” There was consternation, his prior jerked him by the shoulder, but the king who knew him, with royal courtesy called for a secretary to take down the thought lest it escape.

             There are several lessons that we can learn from Thomas.  The first is that God created objective truth. He was in the beginning and all things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made.  There are an increasing number of people today who believe all truth is subjective.

             Elizabeth Actemeier who taught at Union Seminary in Richmond Virginia was concerned that many people in the church had come to think all truth is subjective.  Shortly before her death she wrote an article for Presbyterian Outlook that began:

 Those who observe and study American society have long pointed out that we live in a post-modernist age.  By that, they mean that the age of objective reason, of the Enlightenment is over.  There is now no objective truth out there beyond us.  Rather, truth is entirely subjective and entirely relative to the individual.  Whatever the individual thinks is true, is true.  Whatever the individual thinks is false, is false.

             We believe in a creator God who has made this world.  It is a world outside us.  Truth can be discovered through observation and reason.  Truth comes from God, not from us.  We do not create truth-but rather discover God’s truth.

             A second lesson is that all truth is one.  In the first Chapter of John we read In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.  He was in the beginning and all things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made.   God created all that there is.  Everything visible and invisible is the result of the work of the word.  Since everything has a common source, there is not truth outside God.

             With this assumption, we cannot separate faith and reason, or science and revelation.    Thomas believed that different abilities were needed in various fields of study.  In many ways Aquinas laid the groundwork for modern science.   He believed that God created a rational world.  He taught that the observation of the material world through the senses could discover truth.  He knew that  data provided through the senses when interpreted by reason leads to knowledge.   Each part of creation has its own discipline that leads to truth.

             All of creation has a unity in God.  All things visible and invisible find their source in the word.  This understanding of the unity of truth was portrayed by the Scientist Robert Jastrow in his consideration of the Big Bang theory of cosmology.  Jastrow compared scientists to mountain climbers who, when they had climbed over the last ledge found the theologians sitting there waiting for them, All truth finds unity in God.

             A third lesson Aquinas teaches us is that all truth must be rethought in each generation.   Thomas lived in a time of great change.  Europe was in contact with the Moslem world in Spain.   The Arabs made the works of Aristotle, which had been lost for years, available to the west.  The introduction of Aristotle to Europe changed people’s way of thinking.  The way people did philosophy and science was transformed.  Aquinas spent his life rethinking Christianity in terms of Aristotle.

             The same process is needed in every generation.  New discoveries reshape our understanding of truth.  This is not always easy for us.   We must be willing to entertain new ideas and give up old ways of understanding the world.  A valid search for truth forces us to give up old misconceptions and old ideas that are comfortable to us.

             Almost twenty-five years ago Studio Arena put on an original musical based on the life of Galileo.  The musical told the story of the great astronomer’s conflict with the authorities over his evidence that the Sun is at the center of the solar system.  You can just imagine the turmoil people experienced when Copernicus and Galileo discovered that the earth revolved around the sun and not the other way around.  Most people believed that the earth was the center of the universe.  It seemed the Bible taught this, they knew Aristotle, who had become the great philosophical authority, taught this, and it was all a comfortable worldview.  Now these new comers were telling them that the sun was the center of the solar system.  For many it his seemed to isolate humankind in the universe.  To give up this belief was painful, yet an honest search for truth demanded it.

             So again, and again an honest search for truth will force us to rethink old concepts and give up cherished ideas.  This is a painful and difficult process.  When we think we have all the answers and we discover that some are wrong, it takes courage to change.

             A final lesson from Aquinas’ life is that the search for truth leads us to Jesus. 

             Remember those often forgotten figures in the Christmas story.  Those latecomers we call the wise men.  The magi were astronomers who studied the heavens looking for truth.  They had seen a new star and so they left home and hearth to follow the star to find the new truth it would teach.  Their long and difficult journey came to an end in a shelter for animals.  The long search for the new truth ended at the manger.

             The same is true for us.  The search for truth is a journey towards Christ.  Not long after the fall of the Iron Curtain the Pope visited Lithuania.  During his tour, John Paul addressed members of the academic and cultural communities at the University of Vilnius.  He said:

 When man thinks, he experiences his own finiteness, becoming aware that he is not the truth and must even grope his way toward it.  At the same time he notices that his search cannot and will not stop at petty, limited goals, since he is powerfully driven ever higher toward the infinite.  The exhilarating adventure of human thought lies in this essential dynamic that situates man between his awareness of limits and the need for the absolute.  For this reason, when man ‘thinks’ deeply, with intellectual rigor and integrity of heart, he is on the way toward a possible encounter with God.

             When young people question everything, when they reject answers given by authority, when they seem to turn their backs on all that they have been taught, may we remember that the honest seeker moves every closer to our Lord.  This form of rebellion may actually be moving them ever closer to Jesus.

             This should also be a comfort to us when our search for truth leads to questions.  We too have experienced times when we questioned the reality of our faith.  We have times when we wonder, times when we question is God real, times when we live in the shadows.

             My friends, these times of questioning and doubt are not always moving us away from God.  They well may be a central part of our journey of faith.  The wise men had times when the hills and mountains and clouds obscured their vision of the star.  Yet they continued on seeking to follow the story.   So our times of shadows and questions are a part of our Christian pilgrimage.  We can be assured that a sincere seeker of truth, a person with honest questions is moving ever closer to the one born in Bethlehem.

            Thomas Aquinas was possibly the greatest scholar in Christian History.  He is the Christian writer who puts the greatest emphasis on the power of reason to grasp truth about God.  Yet Aquinas did not overlook the heart.  The goal of the intellect is to bring the total person, heart, mind and soul into a relationship with God.

             On December 6, 1273 at the age of 48, a year before his death, Aquinas was worshipping in a chapel of the Church of St. Nicholas when he was given a heavenly revelation.   The experience of God was so deep and profound that Aquinas put down is pen and declared:

 I cannot write; such things have been revealed to me that all that I have written seems to me as so much straw.

             Thomas’ long search for truth led him to experience the grace and presence of Christ in a way too deep for words. He came to experience a unity with the word through whom all things were made.

             Friends, Thomas Aquinas is a model for us.  If we believe in the unity of truth, if we truly are committed to a search for truth, that search will lead us back again and again to the one who said, I am the way,  the truth and the life.