Either/Or

 

In my first Systematic Theology course in grad school, my professor introduced himself as a "filthy Thomist." I didn't know what a Thomist was, but as a sinner saved by grace I knew what it meant to be filthy, and putting two and two together the implication was that he was a respected member of the largely left-leaning faculty but a bit of an outlier because of his Neo-Scholastic foundations. 

It's not hard to see why Neo-Thomism is hardly the leper-in-the-room in orthodox Catholic circles today, but rather given pride of place. If you're a twenty-something traditionalist, your sharpest chisel in the pouch to carve a name for yourself is the Summa. Want to get mad subs as a YouTuber? Start a channel called "Pints With Aquinas." Want to get blotted? Take a shot with your buddies every time Fr. Ripperger begins a sentence with "St. Thomas says..." in one of his conferences and you'll be wishing you chose a different drinking game before the night is over. 

It's not hard to see the appeal of classical Thomism. The world is a mess, confusion reigns, relativism is King, and the air of post-modernity is what we all breathe. For Catholics who seek clarity and truth in a world gone mad, why wouldn't you turn to the reigning heavyweight champion of the Christian intellectual tradition, the Angelic Doctor himself? 

I'll be the first to admit that I have never read the Summa, never identified with Neo-Scholasticism, and would never identify as a Thomist. Not because I don't respect the formidable intellectual tradition or the good saint Thomas himself, but because I would be nothing but a complete poser for even wading into these deep waters and purporting that I knew what I was talking about.  I'll leave that work to groups like the Thomistic Institute, who are doing fantastic work in forming and exercising the intellectual muscle of ordinary Catholics with their engaging and accessible videos and workshops. 

I'll also admit in full discloser that the biggest influence in my ruddy spiritual and theological formation and writing was not even a Catholic, but a melancholic 19th century Danish philosopher named Søren Kierkegaard who personified a kind of anti-Thomism. 

Whereas objectivity epitomized St. Thomas' thought and work, Kierkegaard was a staunch subjectivist, for "Subjectivity is truth, and truth is subjectivity" (Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments). While St. Thomas wrote categorically, illuminated by the lamp of reason, Kierkegaard bore his conjectures from under the shade of existential doubt. 

For St. Thomas, one could know the Truth because it could be observed outside of man; for Kierkegaard, the only truth worth knowing came from within. St. Thomas' scholasticism promises formulaic understanding and assurance. Kierkegaard sacrifices such divine assurance on the Abrahamic altar of the absurd, with no possibility of redemption until, by faith, one fully commits to burying his knife to the hilt in the heart of one's proverbial only son.

These two men are not equal in standing. St. Thomas' theological, philosophical, and intellectual history is near-timeless. He stands as a Doctor of the Universal Church, and his personal sanctity is beyond reproach. 

Kierkegaard, on the other hand, never transcended the sickness unto death. He was a gaunt, awkward melancholic who fixated obsessively on an unrequited earthly love. His personality inspired no one and his work was largely only recognized posthumously. His legacy as the "father" of existentialism was earned, but rather than raising up saints it bore the atheistic step-children of Absurdists like Camus and Nihilists like Nietzsche. Whereas in Holy Scripture we read that justice and peace shall kiss (Ps 85:10), in the world of Kierkegaard it is faith and doubt that live in eternal and tormented embrace, for "doubt is conquered by faith, just as it is faith which has brought doubt into the world" (Journals and Papers, p. 399)

While I respected my "filthy Thomist" professor in grad school, I could never sit down and wax about the Summa with him, or talk classical theology, because I was out of my depth, though I do wish I had more of a foundation in theological scholasticism the way Picasso trained as a formidable Realist before immersing himself in the world of abstractionism.

When I sat with my ex-girlfriend's father (who was a Philosophy professor at a small Catholic college and who wrote his dissertation on Kierkegaard) on his back porch, though, it felt like an ocean of potential conversation. What is faith? How do we exercise it? What do we risk to live a life of integrity? What do we do with doubt? If we are called to give up everything to follow Christ, doesn't that entail what we believe about him--that is, the roles we assign him as earthly king and victor? It's as if the scholastic theologians lived in the light and assurance of the historical and soteriological Resurrection, while Christian existentialists endure the unbearable tension of the three days in the tomb between hope and despair, triumphalism and abject failure.

Of course, I wouldn't have become Catholic if I weren't at least on some level indebted to the scholasticism of St. Thomas and invested in its magisterial legacy--a solid rock on which to build an objective faith. But there is a part of me that is also wary of the "x plus y always equals z" approach to faith and reason lived out, and that everything always has an answer or makes sense. 

That is why I can appreciate novels like Shūsaku Endō's Silence or Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory. It's why I love the book of Job, the righteous man of God who rejects the pat reasoning of his friends Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. It's why Abraham Lincoln was my favorite President, because the weight of his melancholy and subjective suffering did not break him, but instead transformed a nation. It's why I try to enter into the mystery of paradox in scripture, which is the thread Christ uses to weave the tapestry of his public ministry, and why the yuródivyy (holy foolishness) asceticism of the Orthodox makes room for mystery in how faith is lived out with divine integrity--even when it looks absurd to the world.

Like everyone, I'm tempted to make sense of my suffering, and I want to know beyond a doubt that God exists and prove it to all my friends. I want to have a left-brained faith that is neat and tidy and ordered and objective and watertight, and envy people who do. I want to be an eternal optimist, a cheery idealist. I wouldn't mind being an intellectual heavy-weight. 

Instead, my scales tend to weight in favor of the subjective. I know God because I have experienced Him, not because I read a proof of His existence. I am obnoxiously right-brained--emotive, messy, vacillating, despairing while simultaneously bursting with hope. I have had to fight to live and trust in Love to keep breathing. I can't prove anything-in fact, the longer I live, the less I feel like I know for sure. That doesn't threaten or undermine my faith in Christ or his Church. But it does bring me closer to Him in the sepulcher when I'm not sure if my all-chips-in wager is going to pay off. 

In a postmodern world, we crave certainty and the assurance of knowing our faith, because the lived alternative to this point has been, let's face it, cacophonic. Black and White, like cheap grace, is in high demand today; shades of grey, passé. But Reason is a good. The Natural Law is a good. God is an objective reality, testified to by faith. 

But faith is also a wager, and grace is not cheap and tidy. Presumption is an ever-present temptation and snare of the elect. And doubt is not necessarily the death-knell of belief, a line destined to snap. Instead, it holds tension that to lose life is to find it (Mt 16:25); to die is to gain (Phil 1:21); the kingdom of God is within us (Lk 17:21); and to lean not on our own understanding (Prov 3:5-6). It cries out in anguish with the Son to the Father who holds back His arm and remains silent: ‘Eloi Eloi Lama Sabachthani’…”My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

I'm not a mystic, nor a theologian, and not a Thomist either. I think, though, the more we learn to live with this tension, the more we enter into the dark night of true faith, holding the hand of the Savior to guide us even as we don't know where we are going, or by what way, or to what fate--that's enough for me to go on right now. This sickness will not end in death (Jn 11:4).