Philosophy and Scholasticism

St. Thomas Aquinas – The Angelic Doctor

If you’ve ever talked to a recent graduate from High School, you’ll realize how intellectually bankrupt our society has become. Our education is completely shot. Pretty much everything that I’ve learned, has come from reading after University. The enemies of God are having a tremendous amount of success promoting evil since the current generation doesn’t know how to think critically.

Not long ago, I was talking to my mother about the degradation in western education. Knowing that she had graduated high school 35 years before me, I asked if her education was pristine or if it had been corrupted. She said that it was better than my education but that it had already been corrupted at that point. Sometime before my mom had gone to school, the education system had been corrupted. When did this happen?

After some discussion and analysis, we had a pretty good idea where it had come from. At some point, they took philosophy out of schools and replaced it with cheap pseudo-science. I had actually heard this in the past. The West traded philosophy for science because it was afraid of losing the cold war on the scientific level. After all, the Soviets got into space before the West did.

Philosophy was exchanged for science. But at least we got science, didn’t we? Actually no we didn’t. We got cheap pseudo-science and scientism.

With philosophy out the window, rational thought followed closely. Even in the Catholic Church, things fell apart. Priests no longer studied Scholasticism, which was the peak of Christian theology and philosophy. From about 1350 AD to about 1950 AD, St. Thomas Aquinas was the object of study for every Catholic Priest. Sadly now, few priests study his works, even though they’ll all pay lip service to him as they greatest Christian mind of all time.

Over the last few years, I have immersed myself in Scholasticism. After reading several books by top Neo-Scholastic theologian Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, I started to read the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas himself who is known as the Angelic Doctor in the Catholic Church. His works are still the primary study in Traditional Catholic seminaries.

Scholasticism is the antidote to modernism in the Church and our society. Many people think that this method of thinking is outdated or lacks a mystical element. Both of these critiques are absolutely false. Scholasticism is often mocked by non-Catholics, especially Calvinists. They tend to use this as a staple of the middle ages and what the “reformation” needed to replace. In more recent years, modern Calvinists like RC Sproul have come around and started to admire St. Thomas and in cases, even tried to claim him as their own. At least the message is getting around.  I don’t care if a Calvinist wants to claim St. Thomas as his own.  That way, he’ll at least be reading the right literature.

Every group that calls itself Christian needs to embrace the scholastic mindset if the West is to be retaken. The West will collapse financially and morally very soon. We can just listen to the news to see signs of this. When this happens, the West will need to be rebuilt.

The best way to do this would be to teach our youngest generation to think clearly. The best way to do that is through Philosophy and Scholasticism. Only then will the West be great again.

The writings of St. Thomas can be found online.

To get started, the Summa Theologica can be found here: http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1.htm

Also, the Summa Contra Gentiles can be found here: http://dhspriory.org/thomas/ContraGentiles.htm