Our Scholars Have Forgotten Themselves

Thoughts on a Contemporary Movement that Contravenes Scripture

What if I told you, dear reader, that prominent members of the Protestant theological academy are enamored by someone whose writings commend the practice of idolatry? Scripture is clear that someone who promotes idolatry is a false teacher (Rev. 2:14, 20; comp. Num. 25:1-2; 31:16), and that such false teachers are wolves in sheep’s clothing (Matt. 7:15), who come disguised as angels of light (2 Cor. 11:14-15), and whose company ruins the good doctrine of those who associate with them (1 Cor. 15:33; comp. Prov. 13:20). It is clear as well that such people are known by their deeds (Matt. 7:16-20) and that their words betray the state of their hearts (12:33-37); that they have no inheritance in the Kingdom of God (1 Cor. 6:9; Eph. 5:5); and that they are not to be entertained for even a moment when their false teaching becomes known (Deut. 13:6-8). As such you would, I hope, recognize that such a teacher’s admirers were wrong to approve him, and in so doing had lost their sense and spoken unworthily of their positions and of their task of guarding and propagating sound doctrine (Acts 20:28; 1 Tim. 4:16; Tit. 1:9; 2 Jn. 8-9).

Alas, my hypothetical situation is actually the case at present. Here are two quotes from a currently-popular teacher promoting the worship of images of Christ:

The same reverence should be shown to Christ's image as to Christ Himself.

The Apostles, led by the inward instinct of the Holy Ghost, handed down to the churches certain instructions which they did not put in writing . . . among these traditions is the worship of Christ's image.

And two promoting the worship of the cross:

In each way it is worshiped with the same adoration as Christ, viz. the adoration of "latria." And for this reason also we speak to the cross and pray to it, as to the Crucified Himself.

By reason of the contact of Christ's limbs we worship not only the cross, but all that belongs to Christ. Wherefore Damascene says (De Fide Orth. iv, 11): "The precious wood, as having been sanctified by the contact of His holy body and blood, should be meetly worshiped; as also His nails, His lance, and His sacred dwelling-places, such as the manger, the cave and so forth.

That is idolatry, the giving of the worship due only to God to a material object (Ex. 20:3-5; Lev. 26:1). God says to “flee from idolatry” (1 Cor. 10:14), and “not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater” (5:11). So evil is idolatry that he commanded the ancient Israelites to execute anyone who so much as suggested it (Deut. 13:1-11). (The application of that principle for us in the present is avoidance, as shown in the verses quoted above: violence is not part of the new covenant in Christ [Jn. 18:36], and our warfare is spiritual, not carnal [2 Cor. 10:3-4].) Viewed from another angle, the proper role of God’s shepherds includes warning his sheep to avoid such people (Acts 20:28-31; Col. 1:28), as the Apostles did in their epistles cited above.

Yet that is not what some of our professors – many of whom are ordained as pastors as well – have been doing. They have forgotten the very concept of false teachers, and the commands that they are to be avoided (2 Jn. 10) and warned against, as well as that the sheep are easily led astray by such false teachers, whose cunning and ability to deceive are terrible (Matt. 24:11, 25). They have gone along with an intellectual fad and commended others do likewise, and have held forth a certain ancient false teacher as someone who should be ‘retrieved’ for today and read gladly.

The name of that teacher is Thomas Aquinas, and well might we ask such men what Paul asked the Galatians (3:1): “who has bewitched you?” An idolater is ipso facto not a representative of God, but has come forth to deceive. We may ask further: why have you allowed yourselves to be led astray, and for what cause do your ears itch (2 Tim. 4:3) so? Have you forgotten God’s pronouncement that “blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers” (Ps. 1:1)? Are idolaters no longer in the foremost ranks of the wicked, that you take one so eagerly as your master and guide, and even name a system of thought (“Thomism”) after him?

Ah, but someone will say that in many matters he adhered to the truth and explained it well. Even if this were so – and it is a point which is not here conceded – have you forgotten that sound doctrine that is abetted by falsehood or that issues as errant practice is useless? For “even the demons believe” (Jas.2:19), and yet they have no qualms using their sound knowledge to deceive the unwary all that much better. I hope, however, that you have not so much forgotten yourself, dear reader, and that you have kept discernment and good sense about you in these matters (Prov. 14:8; Matt. 24:4; 1 Thess. 5:21; 1 Jn. 4:1).

And to answer that question with which I began my rhetorical digression above, the present fascination with Aquinas is largely driven by a certain faction in the Roman communion. To be sure, such figures as R.C. Sproul, Norman Geisler, and John Gerstner – whose Protestant bona fides and general helpfulness speak for themselves – were quite approving of the study of Aquinas, but they have either passed, or else their works were of a previous generation. Gerstner’s article trying to claim Aquinas as a proto-Protestant came out in 1994, part of a larger issue about him, while Geisler’s Thomas Aquinas: An Evangelical Appraisal appeared in 1991.

Today’s movement to popularize Aquinas is largely a creature of Romanists, such men as Matthew Levering, Thomas Joseph White, and Reinhard Hütter. See, for example, this 2010 book, Ressourcement Thomism, which includes many of the major figures and gives an idea of the movement’s purpose and form, as in this statement from the description:

The essays highlight the importance of St. Thomas Aquinas in contemporary theology and exemplify how to draw upon the resources of the saint for contemporary purposes of appropriation and practice, rather than for strictly historical purposes.

The Catholic University of America Press is also publishing the “Thomistic Ressourcement” series, now totaling over 30 books on such topics as Aquinas’ reading of Job, his notions of transubstantiation, mystical elements in his writing, and various others.

Now one could say that the Protestant advocacy of reading Aquinas is a response to this that attempts to prevent Rome from laying sole claim to him. Rome has long done so, notably in Pope Leo XIII’s Aeterni Patris, an encyclical of 1879 that commended a renewed interest in Aquinas and called him “the chief and master of all towers,” and said “he is rightly and deservedly esteemed the special bulwark and glory of the Catholic faith.” In an interview at Credo, Prof. David Van Drunen of Westminster California, author of Aquinas Among the Protestants, answered the question “should we capitulate to Rome just because she claims Aquinas as her property alone?” by acknowledging Rome’s attempted monopoly on Aquinas (“it’s not just that Rome canonized Thomas; it proclaimed him the greatest of the scholastic theologians and held him up as the peerless guide for Christian thinkers”), but also by arguing that “we need to remember that Thomas was not a ‘Roman Catholic’ theologian” because “Roman Catholicism didn’t really come to exist until after the Reformation.”

But that much of the contemporary advocacy of Aquinas ultimately emanates from the Roman communion is acknowledged by some of the Protestant advocates of Aquinas. In that same issue of Credo, titled “What Can Protestants Learn from Thomas Aquinas?,” the Baptist Craig Carter speaks of “Thomas Joseph White and many others in the Thomistic Ressourcement movement (such as Gilles Emery, Matthew Levering, and Dominic Legge),” all of whom are Romanists, and three of whom are members of Aquinas’ religious order, the Dominicans (or Order of Preachers): Legge is also the director of the Thomistic Institute, whose translation of Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae I cited above (link to the relevant sections, articles 3&4, here). Carter nonetheless says “confessional Protestants need to learn from them,” a tacit admission that the initiative in the thing lies rather with them than in the Protestants who belatedly play second fiddle to their main efforts.  Thus also with that issue’s article on recommended books to understand Aquinas, which implicitly shows Rome’s predominance in this, since eight of the eleven recommended works are by Romanists. Actually, only one of those by a Protestant is both current and relevant (Van Drunen’s Aquinas Among the Protestants), the others being Geisler’s Evangelical Appraisal and Richard Muller’s Post Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, the latter of which the article admits is not directly about Aquinas.

Thus there is a twofold error in commending Aquinas: the immediate one being that he is an idolater, and the secondary one being it involves an implicit following of Rome’s lead, commending works by her members, and keeping a measure of company with her. Dominicans have been employed by Credo as teachers (here and here), and scarcely an issue passes without that magazine including articles or interviews with members of that communion, or commending works by them. (See for example my articles on Credo’s book awards and on its issue on the practice of lectio divina, esp. “Across the Tiber and Into the Cloister”.)

Such following Rome’s lead is wrong because Rome has not repented those errors of doctrine and practice that sparked the Reformation, and has in some cases stiffened her neck and made herself yet worse (e.g. Vatican I’s formalization of papal infallibility). To see this one need look no further than her celebration of Aquinas’ Triple Jubilee, currently ongoing to mark his birth, death, and canonization. While her theologians are holding Aquinas out as orthodox and the key to revitalizing sound doctrine, and are readily commending him to us, Rome’s ecclesiastical hierarchy is celebrating him with pilgrimages, indulgences, invocations of the saints, and other such superstition (see here, esp. the links), including parading a relic that they claim is his skull (see the National Catholic Register here).

Now maybe some of Rome’s popularizers of Aquinas disapprove of some of the actions being taken to celebrate him, and wish to see the church reform in a more proper, scriptural way on that point. I’m not aware of any evidence this is the case, especially in the case of those who are Dominicans, but even if it is so, they have made no appreciable headway with many of their co-religionists, who persist in their ancient errors of indulgences, relics, etc. Indeed, it would appear that Rome is content for her theologians to go forth and focus on the ‘ecumenical’ aspects of Aquinas’ teaching – creation, theology proper, Christology, etc. – and thus present a good front, while at the same time carrying on the same old sins of yesteryear that she has never once repented since 1517.

This is in many ways the error of Rome at present, and one of the foremost proofs that she is not worthy of a serious consideration when she feigns a more humanitarian stance toward us than she did for most of the previous five centuries. She speaks out of both sides of her mouth; her “yes” is not “yes,” and her “no” is not “no” (Matt. 5:37). In one breath at Vatican II she says that Protestants are “separated brethren,”[1] but elsewhere in the documents of that council she speaks of Trent’s enduring relevance (“the dogmatic principles which were laid down by the Council of Trent remaining intact,” point 55 here). Trent pronounces an anathema upon various Protestant beliefs about justification.

Laying aside whether those anathemas were curses pronounced against everyone who adheres to such beliefs, as we have historically understood them – on which compare Aquinas: “the Church curses by pronouncing anathema” (Summa, IIa, IIae, Q. 76, art. 1) – or whether Trent simply meant ‘those who believe such things are liable to a special form of excommunication that no longer exists,’ as at least one Roman apologist argues, and ask: if people who believe justification is by faith alone adhere to a doctrine so erroneous that it justified an anathema (whatever that meant) in the 1500s, how can they be deemed brethren today? If the thing was false and worthy of anathematization then, it is so now; and no definition of anathema correlates with those who are anathematized (actually or merely potentially) being brothers of any degree. Even if anathema meant only ‘liable to the most solemn form of excommunication,’ a person who deserved such a sentence could not be deemed a fellow believer at all, irrespective of whether or not that sentence of anathema was actually carried out. This is only modifying a past statement to make it more palatable in the present, and that for reasons of ecclesiastical-political advantage.

All of which is to say that it is not right to commend the general reading of Aquinas for most people. It is a very different thing between quoting someone occasionally in a measured way that is balanced out by frequent criticism in many other places, and recommending someone for general devotional reading. The former was sometimes done by some of our forebears viz. Aquinas,[2] but the latter is done by many at present, whose advocacy is a bit long on zeal and too little moderates itself with admissions of Aquinas’ many faults. There is a difference too between reading someone for historical or polemical reasons and doing so for devotional ones, as well as a difference between recommending a past thinker on his own teaching and keeping company with present thinkers who similarly commend him but for their own, often very different or contrasting reasons. The Aquinas craze was never right, owing to his idolatry and other false teachings, but that it has led to a mistaken cooperation with Rome, whose impenitence and keenness on taking us back to herself are so obvious, is a further mark against it. For “bad company ruins good morals” (1 Cor. 15:33), and Rome has shown by her deeds (Matt. 7:16) that she is very bad company indeed.[3]

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[1] Notably in Unitatis Redintegratio (“Decree on Ecumenism”), a document from the second Vatican Council, available here.

[2] Hence J. H. Thornwell (p. 584): “The scholastic Theology received a fuller development at the hands of Lombard, the Master of the Sentences, and its final consummation in the great work of Thomas Aquinas. These productions of the Middle Ages are not without their value, and he who applies to them with a discriminating search will find many a jewel in the heaps of rubbish which cover it” (emphases mine). Or Zanchi: “Thomas Aquinas, a man of some genius, and much application; who, though in very many things a laborious trifler, was yet, on some subjects, a clear reasoner, and judicious writer” (p. 85 here; emphases mine).

[3] About one-sixth of Rome’s approximately 194 American dioceses have gone or are going bankrupt, primarily due to payments to victims of priestly rape. A miserably rotten fruit indeed.