Bertrand Russell on Thomas Aquinas:
“There is little of the true philosophic spirit in Aquinas. He does not, like the Platonic Socrates, set out to follow wherever the argument may lead. He is not engaged in an enquiry, the result of which it is impossible to know in advance. Before he begins to philosophize, he already knows the truth; it is declared in the Catholic faith. If he can find apparently rational arguments for some parts of the faith, so much the better; if he cannot, he need only fall back on revelation. The finding of arguments for a conclusion given in advance is not philosophy, but special pleading.” [History of Western Philosophy p. 453]
Of course, Anthony Kenny countered Russell’s assertion by humorously noting, “ It is extraordinary that that accusation should be made by Russell, who in the book Principia Mathematica takes hundreds of pages to prove that two and two make four, which is something he had believed all his life” (Aquinas on Mind, 11).
Russell also misunderstands much of Thomas’s project in this quotation. To my knowledge, Thomas never claimed to be doing philosophy (at least not according to the modern understanding of it); most of his work is theology that happens to have philosophical implications. But as Thomas notes in the opening articles of the Summa Theologica, theology as a scientia takes divine revelation as its first principles and makes rational deductions on the basis of that deposit of revelation. Importantly, however, it pursues its ends using particularly theological methods and criteria, some of which overlap with philosophical methods and criteria, while others do not.
But the starting point of theology is Anselm’s “Credo ut intelligam,” not Descartes’s Cogito. To imagine that theology is just some poorly-conducted version of philosophy is fundamentally a category error.
So theology need not make any rational sense whatsoever? It is more an affirmation/fiction/opinion that represents the authors’ own intuitions about divine matters, or perhaps proceeds from a survey/study of previous hierology/sacred texts? Is an experience of personal revelation therefore necessary to study the subject? You believe a man must believe in a (presumably exclusively Christian?) God, as defined in canonical scriptures, as interpreted by the Catholic church, to study or rationalise about theology? Augustine defined ‘theologia’ as: "…reasoning or discussion concerning the Deity..." - but he got the ‘rationem’ bit wrong? Aristotle must also have been a misguided old fuddy-duddy when he stated that there were three aspects of theoretical philosophy: mathematics, physics and theology - or rather he didn’t mean theology as you define it, but instead something more akin to metaphysics? Thomas Aquinas defines theology as: ‘…what is taught by God, teaches of God and leads to God’ - this seems much closer to what you suggest? A person must first believe, and then an understanding, or more knowledge, of the nature of a god, that you already believe in, will more likely accrue to the initiate after appropriate study, but only given that prior belief? Would you agree with Thomas Paine:
“The study of theology, as it stands in Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authorities; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no conclusion. Not anything can be studied as a science, without our being in possession of the principles upon which it is founded; and as this is the case with Christian theology, it is therefore the study of nothing.”
…or Protagoras: "Concerning the gods I cannot know either that they exist or that they do not exist, or what form they might have, for there is much to prevent one's knowing: the obscurity of the subject and the shortness of man's life."
…understand that might be a bit heavy duty/tough ask for a HN comment - but I am genuinely interested if you can point me to useful passages/sources/help me understand Aquinas’/your ideas better…
“…Hence nothing prevents those things which may be learned from the philosophical disciplines, so far as they can be known by the light of natural reason, from being considered by another science according as they are known by the light of divine revelation. Hence theology included in sacred doctrine differs in kind from that theology which is part of philosophy…”
Theology is to philosophy what alchemy is to chemistry. Sure, it’s not technically a poorly-conducted version of the other, that would be a category error, but you can’t really ignore their relationship either.
Aquinas is still highly regarded. Virtually every philosophy department in the Western world still teaches him.