Tòmas Aquinas (1481-82), is dòcha le Botticelli
Seasamh sintéiseach feallsanachd Thòmasaich agus bristeadh na sintéise seo le nomanalas an sgolàstachais anmoch.
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The synthetic standpoint of Thomistic philosophy and the disruption of this synthesis by the nominalism of late scholasticism.
To gain an insight into the basic structure of the cosmonomic idea of Humanistic thought we must go back to the period of the origination of the latter. I treated the genesis of the Humanistic outlook in detail in my study-series entitled, In den Strijd om een Christelijke Staatkunde (In the struggle for a Christian Politics)(1). Here I described the way in which the religious starting-point of Humanism was gradually applied to philosophic thought in the basic structure of a new cosmonomic Idea. Consequently, I shall now confine myself to a very short sketch of the main lines of this historical development.
The Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy and medieval culture.
The Renaissance, which displayed such a varied picture in the different countries, began as a spiritual movement of a modern Humanistic character. It began when the medieval ecclesiastically unified culture(2) had collapsed. The latter had found its best philosophical expression in Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy.
Following his teacher ALBERTUS MAGNUS, THOMAS AQUINAS sought to adapt to Christian doctrine the speculative Aristotelian philosophy in interrelation with neo-Platonic, Augustinian, and other philosophical motives that had already become the common property of Christian thought in the patristic period. He sought to effectuate this accomodation by curtailing the excessive pagan branches of speculative Greek philosophy. By so doing he followed the example given by AVICENNA and MAIMONIDES who similarly sought to effect a synthesis between Aristotelianism and the doctrines taught in the Koran and in the Old Testament, respectively.
In his transcendental basic Idea, the "lex aeterna", with its subjective counterpart in the "lex naturalis", Christian and pagan Ideas were brought to a seemingly complete convergence. Through the "lex naturalis", the creation, in its essential nature, has a subjective part in the eternal law of reason of the divine worldplan.
The integral and radical character of the religious ground-motive of creation, the fall and redemption in the Biblical sense.
In order to enable the reader to understand that this convergence is not actual, it is necessary to give a more detailed account of the integral and radical character of the central ground-motive of the Christian religion in its Biblical sense, the motive of creation, the fall into sin, and the redemption through Jesus Christ in communion with the Holy Ghost. To this end I may first recall the chief points of the explanation devoted to this subject in the Prolegomena.
As the Creator, God reveals Himself as the Absolute and Integral Origin of the "earthly world", concentrated in man, and of the
world of the angels. In the language of the Bible He is the Origin of heaven and earth. There is no original power which is opposed
to Him. Consequently, in His creation we cannot find any expression of a dualistic principle of origin.
The integral character of the Biblical motive of creation is superbly expressed in the majestic 139th psalm:
"Wither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?
If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.
If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;
Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.
If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me.
Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee."
This is certainly the radical opposite of the Greek dualism of the form- and matter motive.
In the revelation that God created man according to His image, He discloses man to himself, in the religious radical unity of his created existence, and in the religious solidarity of mankind, in which was integrally concentrated the entire meaning of the temporal cosmos.
The integral Origin of all things according to God's plan of creation has its created image in the heart of man participating in the religious community of mankind. The latter is the integral and radical unity of all the temporal functions and structures of reality, which ought to be directed in the human spirit toward the Absolute Origin, in the personal commitment of love and service of God and one's neighbour.
This Christian view cut off at the very roots the religious dualism of the Greek motive of form and matter, which came to a head in anthropology in the dichotomy between a material body and a theoretical rational substance of a pure form-character.
Moreover, the creation implies a providential worldplan, which has its integral origin in the Sovereign Will of the Creator. We have indicated this world-plan in the transcendental Idea of the cosmictemporal order. Naturally, Divine Providence is not restricted to the law-side of the temporal world. However, in so far as it embraces also the factual side, this Providence is hidden from human knowledge, and therefore not accessible to a Christian philosophy.
The revelation of the fall into sin is inseparably connected with that of creation. Sin, in its radical Biblical sense, does not play any role in the dialectical basic motives of Greek and Humanistic thought. It cannot play such a part here, because sin can only be understood in veritable radical self-knowledge, as the fruit of Biblical Revelation.
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(1) I began this series in the first issue of the review „Anti-Revolutionaire Staatkunde" (published by the Dr A. Kuyper foundation). The gradual clarification of my insights in this study will not escape the reader. I am no longer in complete agreement with what I have written in the first part of this study; it is too strongly under the influence of TROELTSCH'S and DILTHEY'S view of the Middle Ages and the Reformation.
(2) This term is frequently used by TROELTSCH ; it designates the period in which the Church directed all human activity in the family, political life, science and art, school and business. It refers to the period in which all of culture bore an ecclesiastical stamp.
(Herman Dooyeweerd, New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Vol I, pp 172-174)
