Kevin Vost - How to Think Like Aquinas: The Sure Way to Perfect Your Mental Powers

Kevin Vost, Psy.D.

How to
Think Like
Aquinas

The Sure Way to Perfect
Your Mental Powers

SOPHIA INSTITUTE PRESS
Manchester, New Hampshire

Copyright 2018 by Kevin Vost

Printed in the United States of America. All rights reserved.

Cover design by LUCAS Art & Design, Jenison, MI.

On the cover: Saint Thomas Aquinas by Carlo Crivelli, 1426.

Illustrations by Ted Schluenderfritz.

Scripture quotations have been taken from the Catholic Edition of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible (RSV), copyright 1965 and 1966 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Excerpts from the English translation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church for use in the United States of America, copyright 1994 by United States Catholic Conference, Inc.Libreria Editrice Vaticana. Used with permission.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Vost, Kevin, author.

Title: How to think like Aquinas : the sure way to perfect your mental powers

/ Kevin Vost.

Description: Manchester, New Hampshire : Sophia Institute Press, 2018.

Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018029093 ISBN 9781622825066 (pbk. : alk. paper) ePub ISBN 9781622825073

Subjects: LCSH: Thomas, Aquinas, Saint, 1225?-1274. Thought and thinking.

Classification: LCC B765.T54 V67 2018 DDC 230/.2092 dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018029093

To all Thomists of every stripe, who through prayer,
study, reading, teaching, preaching, writing, or one-on-one conversation strive to share with others the
heavenly wisdom of the Angelic Doctor

Contents

Introduction:

Part 1

Part 2

Introduction

Why You Should Think Like Aquinas (and How)

He alone enlightened the Church more than all other doctors; a man can derive more profit from his books in one year than from pondering all his life the teaching of others.

Pope John XXII

The human soul is the highest and noblest of forms. Wherefore it excels corporeal matter in its power by the fact that it has an operation and a power in which corporeal matter has no share whatsoever. This power is called the intellect.

St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica , I, Q. 76, art. 2

Why Should You Think Like Aquinas?

We should all strive to think more like Aquinas, but only if we desire to know what is true, to love what is good, to grow in happiness and holiness while wayfarers on earth, and ultimately to share in eternal beatitude with God and the communion of saints when we arrive home in heaven. You see, in all of human history, St. Thomas Aquinas (12251274) was among the very best guides to fulfilling these desires. Dozens of popes have sung his praises as philosopher and theologian, the Catechism of the Catholic Church abounds in references to his writings, and even secular scholars have acknowledged his monumental contribution to the field of philosophy.

Of course, by thinking like Aquinas I do not pretend to possess the keys to thinking as well as St. Thomas (as much as I wish I did!). Thomas was gifted with a uniquely powerful intellect and was quite aware that God gives some of us more powerful potential for greater depths of thinking than He gives others: Experience shows that some understand more profoundly than do others; as one who carries a conclusion to its first principles and ultimate causes understands it better than one who reduces it to its proximate causes.

Many centuries later, groups of modern psychologists have concluded repeatedly that the capacity for higher-level abstract thinking (the stuff of first principles and ultimate causes) is a fundamental hallmark of human intelligence. So, Thomas truly understood the nature of thinking and the habits required to perfect it . He was blessed with a uniquely powerful intelligence able to fathom the most ultimate of causes and principles. Further, he possessed the capacity to enlighten others by making the abstract more concrete, by capturing lofty truths and bringing them down to earth, so that the average person could grab onto them firmly and be raised up by them.

Regardless of how you might think of yourself as a thinker, Thomas is a most trustworthy guide for helping you to maximize your unique God-given capacities to think and reason about the things that matter most to you. Further, whoever has the capacity to read and understand these pages has the capacity to improve greatly his powers of thinking indeed, to grow adept at that most unusual hobby and think more like Aquinas!

Perhaps more than ever, we need to develop our capacities for clear thought on the things that always matter the most, such as the existence and the nature of God and how we should live our lives and relate to our Church, families, neighbors, and fellow citizens.

We live in a day when many young people declare themselves nones (people with no religious affiliation) amidst a barrage of propaganda that people who value thinking should choose reason and science over faith and religion , with the latter presented as matters of blind belief, sentimental tradition, and remnants of primitive superstition.

In our time, St. John Paul II stated elegantly how faith and reason, properly understood, are not at all opposed, but are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth. Nearly eight centuries ago, St. Thomas Aquinas, the Angelic Doctor, showed us many ways to obtain maximum lift from both of those wings, and that is what this book is about.

As for what we might call the wing of reason, Thomas knew well that the powers of thought that arise from our human nature are also aided by art and diligence. In other words, intelligent thought and accurate thinking are not just capacities that you and I have in some fixed measure but are flexible potentials that can be built, improved, and actualized by training and practice (diligence) in the right methods (art being short for artificial or man-made). Your powers of memory, for example, or of logical reasoning, are fluid capacities that you can build and improve by using them in the right ways . As we proceed through this book we will learn the ways provided in the writings of St. Thomas and practice them as we go!

As for the wing of faith, Thomas knew as well that grace does not destroy nature but perfects it; natural reason should minister to faith as the natural bent of the will ministers to charity.

Clearly then, Thomas knew that God gave us reason for a reason to find truth in the world around us and to serve the faith that will guide us to Truth in eternity. It is up to us, then, to build on our natural thinking capacities both by developing and practicing the arts that perfect them on a natural plane, and by becoming more open to the graces from above that will raise them to heavenly heights.

How Can You Think Like Aquinas?

We can all come to think more like Aquinas in three steps:

1. By reading and reflecting on what he wrote specifically about thinking, study, and the nature of perfection of the human intellect

2. By observing the methods of thinking St. Thomas employed in his great writings, such as his over-three-million-word Summa Theologica and many others