Folia Theologica 21. (2010)
Barbour Hugh O.Praem.: The Cosmology of Catholic Communications: Postmodern Kerygma? A Reflection by a Disciple of SS. Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas
THE COSMOLOGY OF CATHOLIC 155 Sic igitur quanto corpus caeleste est superius, tanto habet universaliorem, diuturniorem et potentiorem effectum. Et cum corpora caelestia sint quasi instrumenta substantiarum separatarum moventium, sequitur quod substantia quae movet superiorem orbem sit universalioris conceptionis et virtutis; et per consequens oportet quod sit nobilior. Note how serenely St. Thomas enters into the world view of the pagans, and extracts from it just what is compatible with Christian revelation. Here is the union of faith and reason which does not fear the claims of reason without revelation, but assimilates them to itself. Nowhere is this more evident than when he deals with the question which was such a difficult one for St. Augustine, of the relation of human wills to the cosmic powers, and the freedom of Man's will from their influence. In the first part of the Summa Theologiae, question 115, article four on whether the heavenly bodies are the causes of human actions, St. Thomas has this to say in the response to the third objection which regards the predictions of human actions by the astrologers: Ad tertium dicendum quod plures hominum sequuntur passiones, quae sunt motus sensitivi appetitus, ad quas cooperari possunt corpora caelestia, pauci autem sunt sapientes, qui huiusmodi passionibus resistant. Et ideo astrologi ut in pluribus vera possunt praedicere, et maxime in communi. Non autem in speciali, quia nihil prohibet aliquem hominem per liberum arbitrium passionibus resistere. Unde et ipsi astrologi dicunt quod sapiens homo dominatur astris, inquantum scilicet dominatur suis passionibus. The majority of men follow their passions, which are movements of the sensitive appetite, in which movements of the heavenly bodies can cooperate: but few are wise enough to resist these passions. Consequently astrologers are able to foretell the truth in the majority of cases, especially in a general way. But not in particular cases; for nothing prevents man resisting his passions by his free-will. Wherefore the astrologers themselves are ivont to say that "the wise man is stronger than the stars" (Ptolemy, Centiloquium, proposition 5), forasmuch as, to wit, he conquers his passions. The deterministic world of an animate pagan cosmos is turned by St. Thomas into the intelligible, ordered world of the Christian cosmos. The unfriendly associations of pagan idolatry of the forces of nature and the consequent diminuition of human dignity and responsibility are set aside as St. Thomas takes the ambiguous scientific tradition of antiquity and renders it explicitly Christian. This is a work entirely in line with his desire to remove from the scientific reasoning of his day the opprobrium of infidelity. Similarly, the media of communications
