“[W]e could be helped by some revival of the Victorine and Franciscan traditions, to be sure.”
That’s the viewpoint of the noted Thomistic theologian and philosopher, Fr. Thomas Joseph White, O.P. White says it would be good for the Church for there to be, not just further Thomistic revival (though he is certainly in favor of that), but revival of the Victorine-Franciscan theological and spiritual tradition.
White’s welcome Victorine & Franciscan theological advocacy comes in an interview in First Things by Sam Zeno Conedera, S.J., on the occasion of the publication of White’s Principles of Catholic Theology, Book 2: On the Rational Credibility of Christianity.
I’ve long been grateful for, and instructed by, Fr. White’s work, and I’d like to offer a few comments by way of concord and response. The context in which Fr. White makes this remark is adequately communicated by two questions of the interview:
Sam Zeno Conedera: Your writings are firmly grounded in Thomism while simultaneously engaging with a wide variety of religious traditions and philosophical trends. In what way does your work contribute to the progress of the Thomistic tradition of inquiry?
Thomas Joseph White: Thomism is grounded in a set of principles—those found in St. Thomas himself, many of which he draws from the Scriptures and Fathers, as well as classical philosophers such as Aristotle. Aquinas’s articulation and coordination of these principles leads to great insights about the nature of reality, both natural and supernatural, human and divine. There are many things he does not consider, but insights from more recent philosophy, theology, modern science, and natural history can be understood or placed in relation to the principles of this thought in ways that are convergent and mutually beneficial to each other. The aim in the end is not to follow any particular thinker but to understand the nature of reality, and Aquinas, doctor communis, is very helpful for this, though by no means alone in the project. No one is alone in the search for truth, and solitary projects always fail in the end.
SZC: Other great theological schools of thought (Bonaventurian, Scotist, Suarezian, etc.), which in the past have been partners in theological dialogue, have not experienced the revival that Thomism has undergone in recent decades. What advantages and disadvantages does this present for Thomists?
TJW: I think there are three things to note here: First, the re-discovery of Aquinas in our own time has also led to new interest in other scholastics, such as those you mention, as well as more recent figures, such as Matthias Scheeben and Charles Journet. So renewed interest in St. Thomas is probably beneficial for the recovery of other traditions.
Second, those who study Aquinas or promote some form of “Thomism” inevitably benefit from learned interlocutors and loyal critics of other traditions and schools of thought. There is a lot of convergence between Aquinas and Bonaventure, not quite as much between Aquinas and Scotus, though some. But in either case, the comparisons are illuminating and challenge us to think again about what we believe to be true about reality. That is precious and needed in the Church, so we could be helped by some revival of the Victorine and Franciscan traditions, to be sure.
Third, and cutting back a little against the grain of the last remark, there is something in the intellectual life akin to biological life. The healthier variants tend to preserve life and persevere over time. Better scientific theories gain traction because they afford a better window into the truth about material reality. St. Thomas has staying power and his principles exhibit vital growth (what Newman called “chronic vigor”) because his work is rife with insight, at once philosophical, theological, and mystical. This fruitfulness is something we can take forward into new conversations, with other major religious traditions, with contemporary naturalists, with alternative philosophical claims about human nature. That is something I try to undertake in this book.
First, I’d like to concur and underscore how absolutely true it is that Thomism hasn’t existed in a vacuum. It has had dialogue partners since the beginning, and they were early and late often conspicuously Franciscan, or even Victorine-Franciscan (if one accepts the argument of the title of this website). The very order and structure of Thomas’ Summa shows that he is thinking about the order and structure of the earlier Franciscan Summa of Theology, the Summa Halensis, and he’s making critical decisions about what to put where, what to include and not include, in addition to directly substantive decisions about his own positions in dialogue with the Franciscan ones.
And, when it comes to Summas, the Summa Halensis has it all! To study it and reflect on it as a (Franciscan) scholastic pedagogy (as Justin Coyle sagely regards it) is also to come to appreciate the breadth of the conversations happening among Friars at Paris. It gives a more fully orbed picture than one is able to have from studying, say, Aquinas’ Summa in isolation. Thomas is also, of course, thinking about and responding to positions found in Bonaventure’s Sentences commentaries.
And to take this point further, the key thing isn’t just to understand how Thomas himself is indebted to theological dialogue with Franciscans. This is just as clearly the case in subsequent Thomistic tradition. Thomists and Bonaventurians and Scotists (and Bonaventurian Scotists!) are always dialoguing with each other. Of course, Blessed John Duns Scotus was able to respond to Thomas’ concerns and positions in his own writings, since he wrote a bit later, and so he’s taking into account the moves of Thomas and other intervening figures. But the Thomists learn from Scotus and Scotists, and develop Thomism more fully and precisely on the basis of it, and in dialogue and disputation with it. One anecdote will suffice: when I first started studying Scotus on natural theology, I realized that I had already run into some of his argumentative forms and moves — in latter day Thomistic authors! So to grapple with and learn to think with even the Thomistic tradition, one must learn to appreciate what the Franciscans have been up to.
Second, Fr. White makes a valuable point in the sentence leading up to his commendation of the Victorines & Franciscans. He says that “the comparisons are illuminating and challenge us to think again about what we believe to be true about reality. That is precious and needed in the Church, so we could be helped by some revival of the Victorine and Franciscan traditions, to be sure.”
Amen.
When many people start to get into Catholic theology and philosophy, they gravitate (and sometimes gravitate very hard indeed) toward St. Thomas. And the reasons for this are obvious and not bad at all: he’s called “common doctor,” and there are many gifted expositors of his thought and extenders of his perspective. Fr. White is excellent in both those ways. These and many others are good reasons to take Aquinas seriously. It is great to be, not a nihilist, but a hillbilly Thomist! Yet to think about God and reality in conversation with, say, both Aquinas and Bonaventure, here another level of richness is possible, as we think about the different ways in which often shared principles and received patristic views are held, applied, and used. Or for another example, it is often noticed that the way intellect and will relate feels to most interpreters quite different in Aquinas and Scotus. There are manifold subtleties in how one brings that out and appraises it. But the differences in perspective that seem to arise as a result are not shallow: they’re stunning. Each side has polemical takes on the other’s way of seeing it. But it is excellent to be able to see that both of these ways of seeing it have been embraced by very many thinkers — not just Aquinas and Scotus but those after each of them. Both paths result in, profoundly different, utterly Christian & Catholic ways of seeing. (Or at least apparently and arguably so — until or unless the disagreement is clarified by the magisterium, the eschaton, or an online apologist who finds the difference intolerable.)
But instead of advocating for a Thomism-in-an-echo-chamber, White affirms the value in such deep probing and considered reflection on fundamental philosophical questions and perspectives: such is “precious and needed in the Church”: such makes for better, deeper, more considered Thomists, and better, deeper, more considered Scotists.
Three cheers for that.
Third, I’d like to reflect a bit on Fr. White’s third point, which he says is “cutting back a little against the grain” of his second remark, which he’s just concluded by advocating for Victorine & Franciscan revival.
He says, “The healthier variants tend to preserve life and persevere over time. Better scientific theories gain traction because they afford a better window into the truth about material reality. St. Thomas has staying power and his principles exhibit vital growth (what Newman called “chronic vigor”) because his work is rife with insight, at once philosophical, theological, and mystical. This fruitfulness is something we can take forward into new conversations….”
It is certainly the case that St. Thomas’ work has staying power, and the kinds of insight that Fr. White says. And to an extent the import of this remark is that Thomism, just as it isn’t healthy when locked into its own echo chamber, also shouldn’t be locked into an echo chamber in which only Victorines & Franciscans & Thomists are present: it should engage present, current, new interlocutors outside its old dialogue partners and haunts. Agreed. But is Fr. White also contrasting Thomism to the Victorine-Franciscan tradition in this remark? I don’t know. [Update: Dear Reader, please see the added footnote * below, which clarifies that Fr. White is not aiming at the Franciscans.] But I’ll proceed a bit further on the supposition that some Thomist somewhere might do so: some imagined Thomistic partisan might take the vigor of, say, the Eastern Province Dominicans and the Thomistic ressourcement underway in recent decades as positive sign that Thomism has a kind of Newmanian chronic vigor, in contrast to (let us say) Franciscan approaches, because of the evolutionary advantage (as it were) of its truthfulness: Dominicans bury their opponents (while saying the funeral prayers of course, pace Darwin).
In response to such an interlocutor, it is worth noting that Thomism and the Franciscan schools have both suffered their intellectual collapses now and again. There are times in the memory of the old folks when there wasn’t an avid Thomistic ressourcement underway, and when such an imagined Thomistic partisan’s remark wouldn’t have had much purchase on the appearance of truth. And, gosh, let us just say: the times of Franciscan missionary and theological excellence are not small times in history. And if a Thomistic partisan might complain that the wrong kind of Franciscan theology sometimes gains sway in Franciscan circles, well, too, there have been times when the wrong kind of Thomism held sway (and once a patristic ressourcement resulted in response, and got control of an ecumenical council).
For my part, I am grateful for the Thomistic ressourcement underway through theologians like Fr. White and Dr. Levering and my own first Aquinas seminar teacher, Dr. Reinhard Huetter: what a robust and beautiful clarity of thought one gains from learning to think with the common doctor, to catch glimpses of what he saw.
And it is worth recalling that one of the properly intellectual and scholastic reasons for the ongoing worth of reading Thomas Aquinas — and as a Victorine-Franciscan thinker I share Fr. White’s gratitude to not be in a single-tradition-echo-chamber — is that Thomas’ Summa is a marvelous teaching text. Even non-Thomistic theologians need to begin to gain the skills of scholastic rigor from someone, and who better. Aquinas’ Summa is much more streamlined in organization and argument than the overflowing and overgrowing fecundity of the Franciscan Summa Halensis: but the Church and the world need the seeds of growth from the Summa Halensis too (and I suspect now more than ever)! And Aquinas’ Summa operates at an easier level of argument than, say, Scotus’ Ordinatio, and I’m very glad to have encountered Aquinas first. But I’m also very glad to have encountered Scotus eventually! — and I’m quite confident the Church is poorer where Scotus’ perspective doesn’t exist.
In closing, I’d like to encourage those who study theology — and in particular those who are drawn to the conversations around Aquinas — to both enrich themselves by getting their heads around the Victorine-Franciscan theological tradition, and to consider it as a theological school of spiritual and vocational worth in its own right.
You can read the good interview with Fr. White in its entirety here.
https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2024/04/recovering-our-christian-intellectual-tradition
In the meantime, just remember, that a leading Thomistic theologian just called for a Victorine & Franciscan theological revival.
* Fr. Thomas Joseph White, in kind correspondence, confirms that he’s not aiming at the Franciscans in his third point, and underscores that he wishes Alexander of Hales and St. Bonaventure were more central in contemporary theology, and expresses admiration for Bonaventure’s Disputed Questions on the Mystery of the Trinity in particular. Thanks Fr. White!
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