N.O. Do you have definitions of scholastic terminology.
For instance, and I do understand this, Saint Thomas speaks often of "accidents" of the "species" when speaking of the Eucharist, does that mean the Sacraments get in car wrecks. And he keeps saying God is "simple" but I thought He was smart. 
I have known people with a very solid Catholic sense who
want nothing to do with philosophy almost entirely on the
grounds of the terminology, so you are wise to be cautious
here. This one word, "accidents," has sent many students
packing who may have been able to study the subject well
had it not been for their frustration over that one word.
Therefore, it seems to me that any good
philosophia
perennis course will spend the first day of class on
vocabulary, or maybe the second day after making a brief
introduction the first day.
It may be useful to know that whenever St. Thomas is
referring to St. Paul he says, "the Apostle," and likewise,
whenever you see St. Thomas refer to "the Philosopher"
he is talking about Aristotle, the famous philosopher
from ancient Greece (384 - 322 B.C.) ......
Statue of Aristotle, at Stagira, Greece
Photo by Cynthia Freeland
Imagine the intellect of a man whose prolific and abundant
thoughts and natural reasoning were such that they would
endure for 3,500 years, and still have no end in sight. For
a man of St. Thomas' stature to refer to him as
"THE
PHILOSOPHER" and we are still quoting him as such today,
is a phenomenon that speaks for itself. Compare that to a
man today who may be remembered long into the future
as "The Politician" or "The Banker" or "The Environmentalist"
or "The Rock Star" or "The Movie Actor" or "The Used Car
Salesman" or "The Football Player." (Yes, that was a joke.)
It is largely his system of philosophy that St. Thomas took
and used to build the framework of philosophical thought that
would work with the divine revelation of Our Lord in the New
Testament. He was the first saint of the Church to put it all
together, but he "stood on the shoulders of giants" to do so,
meaning he would never have been able to do it alone without
the Fathers and Doctors of the Church.
Among the systems adopted from Aristotle ("the Philosopher")
is his famous Ten Categories of Accidents, which provide detail
and specificity for a thing about which we are talking.
I found
a website that has the following portion of an article
on "Substance and Accident" that seems to be well written,
(if you can look past the typos -- but he's Dutch, so there are
a lot of differences he must grapple with) and culminates with
the Philosopher's list of the 10 Categories.
I am not putting this paste-in here because I agree with, or
recommend, the entire website (which is pretty large relatively
speaking, and he heavily promotes 'evolution' and therefore
possibly errors of modern philosophy too), but because the
author, Jaap Bax, of Holland, seems to give a colloquial and
easily worded approach to this particular topic, at hand. To
make it a little more readable I repaired a few typos and
broke up one long paragraph into several.
(Please keep in mind while reading such sites that the very
root of Modernism is in the statement of a philosopher saying
that "God is immanent." Three little words establish the root
from which the synthesis of all heresies then grows.) :
The System of Categories (Substance and Accidents)The (type of) metaphysics, here developed, is a contemplation from the point of view of the
in the real world existing individual uniform thing (first substance). Such a first substance shows, i.e. implies, several ways of being which can be denoted by
Second Substance (a first way of being), and the
Accidents (several other ways of being).
When we ask questions concerning the
what-about of these ways of being, it is possible to give more and more generalized answers. For example: when we ask, "what is (being) red?" (what does it mean that this individual thing -- pointing to it with my finger -- is red?), we can answer, "a color"; and when we ask, "but what is a color?", then we can give some more general answer [etc.]. This process can go on, but not indefinitely. We will arrive at a highest concept, in this case the concept of
Quality. The same applies to other items : When we ask, "what is (being) 1.50 meters long?" [and follow repeatedly with subsequent questions of a more and more general nature], we will [eventually] end up with the concept of
Quantity. And when we ask, "what is (being) Socrates?", we ascend from man to mammal to vertebrate to animal to organism to ....
Second Substance. [And when we ask, "What is (being) God?", we ascend from
from First Cause to Pure Act, which is really no change at all,
because both are unique to God alone and there are no parts
in God (which is what we mean by saying
"God is simple") and
there is no way to make God more specific or more general.
He is Who is Being itself, and He told St. Catherine of Siena,
"I am He Who is, and you are she who is not." Jaap Bax
would no doubt turn himself into a pretzel over that one!), etc.
I defer to the first volume of the
Summa Theologiae. The author of this website conspicuously avoids that, as
"irrelevant material."]
All these questions concern a particular first substance, and the answers are given in terms of second substance and
accidents in their most generalized form. In this way, we arrive at the most general concepts concerning the being of a thing. Those concepts form a logically irreducible diversity.
But because the items which are signified by those concepts are all united in an individual (that means, every time in one and the same individual, for example Socrates), they must somehow form a unity. And because Metaphysics is primarily about existing individual beings (uniform things), and only secondarily about concepts (which is the domain of Logic), Metaphysics says that those items, signified by those concepts [secondarily considered], severally, but also together, form an
analogical unity.
Analogical because 'being', which is convertible with unity, is predicated of them differently. For example a color, say 'red', is only in an analogical sense called a being; [for] it always exists in something else which is being in a primary sense (this is the first substance).
[When St. Thomas speaks of this, he says that accidents are
contingent beings. But then again, man himself is a
contingent being, as he is dependent upon God for his very
existence. The author of this website I am quoting here
seems to be atheist, so he isn't going to get into these
matters to which I relate here.]
It's now time to sum up the basic questions about a first substance -- the Subject -- leading to Aristotle's famous 10 Categories (the examples are his) :
What the Subject is :
SECOND SUBSTANCE , for ex. it is (a) human, (a) horse.
What the measure of the Subject is :
QUANTITY, for ex. it is 2 or 3 yards.
What the disposition of the Subject is :
QUALITY, for ex. it is white, skilled in languages.
To which the Subject stands in relation with:
RELATION, for ex. double, half, larger.
What the Subject has:
HABIT, for ex. having shoes on, being armed.
When the Subject is:
POINT OF TIME, for ex. yesterday, in the year before.
Where the Subject is:
PLACE, for ex. in the Lyceum, on the market.
What the inner orientation of the Subject is:
ORIENTATION, for ex. lying, sitting.
What the Subject is doing:
ACTION, for ex. it cuts, burns (something else).
What the Subject undergoes:
PASSION, for ex. it is being cutted [it seems he means "cut"], it is being burned.
[This essential list has been re-arranged by others over
the centuries, but the core principle of each has been
maintained and no one has been able to identify an 11th
accident category, or show how there really ought to be
9 for whatever reason. This list has stood the test of
ages, IOW.]
Also, what is your opinion on his teaching on the Immaculate Conception?
Did he teach error or was he simply unable to reconcile the fact that all are conceived in Original Sin and that none can be cleansed of it apart from the merits of Jesus Christ and the fact that Mary was indeed conceived and that Jesus had not merited salvation from the cross yet?
St. Thomas was a busy guy, pulling together a lot of theory and
thinking from many centuries. Among them was the prevalent
scientific axiom of
"the ensoulment" of the body, which they
thought did not occur until 32 days or so for a boy and for 62 or
so days for a girl. Therefore, logically, it seems to me that, he
would have been torn between the growing embryo in the womb
of St. Anne being "immaculately conceived" or NOT, when to be
free from sin,
'it' would have had to have had a SOUL.
So it would seem he was making an innocent error with this.
In his
uninformed attempt to make sense out of nonsense, I
would cut him a lot of slack, and expect that he would have
certainly submitted his theological opinion to the authority of
Holy Mother Church had there been a dogmatic definition in his
time. But there was not. Ironically, he would have been one of
the first experts the Pope would have consulted before defining
this very thing!
The same applies to other theological speculations, for even
today there are many who think they are doctrinal, when they
are in fact entirely open to discussion and debate -- just as the
Immaculate Conception was open to discussion and debate in
the 13th century, along with
EENS and papal infallibility and the
Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary body and soul into
heaven: the reason being, that they had not been dogmatically
defined yet at that time.
I highly doubt that the Angelic Doctor would have had any
problem with the doctrine of Our Lady receiving the singular
grace of her preservation from original sin in ANTICIPATION of
Our Lord's salvific work of shedding His Blood, even if it had
been in His circuмcision, which occurred many years before His
Passion and Cross.
Some of course use that to say we can't trust anything he writes. :devil2:
I would like to body-slam those people.
You're not the only one!! HAHAHAHAHA
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Topic: Does anyone want to help explain St Aquinas (Read 994 times)