St. Thomas Aquinas on Reason as the Root of Human Flourishing

Faith pertains to the good of human beings, and, says Aquinas, "the good of human beings stems from reason as its root"--that is to say, from human understanding as dependent upon sense and ordered to the understanding of the physical [1] environment surrounding us. And, he adds (my italics),

Since the good of human beings stems from reason as its root, this good will be the more perfect to the extent that it can be derived from consideration of the many things appropriate to human flourishing. Whence no one doubts that it pertains to the perfection of moral good that our outward actions be directed through the rule of reason ... in accordance with what is said in Psalm 83:3: 'My heart and my flesh have rejoiced in the living God': where by 'heart' we are to understand the intellectual appetite, and by 'flesh' the sensitive appetite. [2] [...]

The notion of what constitutes sin itself St. Thomas assimilates to his notion that reason is the root of the good of human beings:

If anyone says that something is sin because it offends God, the thinking falls short. For God has so created human beings that it is impossible for us to offend God except by acting contrary to the human good. [3]

One of the most interesting consequences of Aquinas' doctrine of creation, in which "possible essences" are nothing more nor other than the extrinsic ways in which the infinite divine perfection can be finitely "imitated" or "participated", is to make nonsense of the standard refrain that "God can do anything because He is omnipotent, all powerful". It is true that there are no extrinsic limitations on the divine power, but there are intrinsic limitations in the nature of finite being on ways in which the divine perfection is imitable. Thus, contrary to Descartes, to some earlier Latins before Descartes, and to the late-modern "divine command" theorists of our day, good and evil, for example, are not reversible should God choose "so to will".

On the contrary, good follows from the positive ways in which the divine perfection is extrinsically imitable, just as evil follows from the negative ways in which finite being measures up to its possibility for good. "Right" and "wrong", thus, are not matters of "command", but consequences of being. [4] Just as "as a being is, so does it act", so also "as a being is, so does what is good or bad for it follow". This theme is one of the most difficult and interesting of the themes developed among the late Latins, and Poinsot in particular developed it profoundly. Genovesi, rightly, in my understanding, remarks that "our whole perspective on God and sin would change" if the human good were commonly understood in the perspective that Aquinas presents, inasmuch as "we would understand that nothing is or becomes evil because it is forbidden by God's law", but rather the converse. Just as not even God can restore lost virginity or make a square circle, so not even God can make something "sinful" that is in line with the human good.

Yet this all makes perfectly good sense considering Thomas's contention that, since truth is one, faith goes beyond, but cannot go contrary to, truths demonstrable by reason. Hence the development in the pursuit of truth tends to suggest as true the very ideas that faith properly embraces, truths revealed by God to supplement and elevate and encourage the exercise of reason in the pursuit of truth and spirituality.

Source: John Deely, "Taking Faith Seriously," presentation at Center for Thomistic Studies of the University of St. Thomas, Houston, 12 October 2010; Rev. Roum. Philosophie, 55, 2, p. 391–415, Bucureşti, 2011, 399/9-401/11.

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Notes:

1. Deely 2001: 382: "The reader should take note of the following. The prospectively infinite reach of human understanding is what lay behind the medieval fondness for the formula that 'the intellectual soul is capable of becoming all things' ('anima est quodammodo omnia', to quote exactly). The infinite reach of understanding is also behind the use, little understood today, by some of the best Latin authors of the term 'physical' to apply to whatever exists in the order of being as it exhibits an existence independent of the finite mind. In modern usage, 'physical' tends to be a synonym for 'material', in contrast to 'spiritual'. But in Latin philosophy, 'physical' extends equally to material and spiritual substances and to the esse divinum itself, even to the discussion of grace among the theologians. Modern ignorance on this point means that the student should note that 'physical' among the Latins can be extended also to spiritual being insofar as such being is cognition-independent. An angel would be no less 'physical' than a rock."

2. Aquinas 1266/1273: Summa theologiæ I-II, q. 24, art. 3 corpus (Busa ed. vol. 2 p. 388): "cum enim bonum hominis consistat in ratione sicut in radice, tanto istud bonum erit perfectius, quanto ad plura quae homini conveniunt, derivari potest. unde nullus dubitat quin ad perfectionem moralis boni pertineat quod actus exteriorum membrorum per rationis regulam dirigantur. ... secundum illud quod in Psalmo LXXXIII, dicitur, cor meum et caro mea exultaverunt in Deum vivum, ut cor accipiamus pro appetitu intellectivo, carnem autem pro appetitu sensitivo."

3. Aquinas, 1259/1265: Summa contra gentiles III, cap. 122 (Busa ed. vol. 2 p. 100 n.2): "Non videtur esse responsio sufficiens si quis dicat quod facit iniuriam Deo. Non enim deus a nobis offenditur nisi ex eo quod contra nostrum bonum agimus."

4. There is no question of "dichotomy" here: God can create or not create, but what is good for the being created follows from its being, and no "command", not even an imagined "divine command", can change the "good" for that being into "evil", or conversely. As "agere sequitur esse", so does "bonum sequitur esse".