Tuesday, July 31, 2018

A Thomism as free of Thomas as Thomas himself was

"St. Thomas' doctrine is a doctrine indefinitely progressive, and free of all save the true, free with respect to itself, to its own imperfections which need correcting and its own gaps which need filling, to its formulators and its commentators, and even to the very master who founded it; I mean, free of him as he was himself, and ready, like him, for the changes and remodelings required by a better view of things, and for the enlargings and deepenings demanded by an inquiry that is always going forward."

     Jacques Maritain, The peasant of the Garonne:  an old layman questions himself about the present time, trans. Michael Cuddihy and Elizabeth Hughes (New York:  Holt, Rinehart and Winston), 80 (italics in the first paragraph mine), 130-131, small caps mine.  Maritain had earlier (128 ff.) spoken of Thomas' prodigious humility.

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