This volume is a summary of the Summa Contra Gentiles Books I-III (See Thomas Aquinas, On the Truth of the Catholic Faith, translators: Book I Anton, C. Pegis; Book II James Anderson; Book III Vernon J. Bourke [Garden City, NJ: Hanover House, 1956).

The reader should rightly ask how, at this turn of millennia, fairly and effectively to approach an early work of Thomas Aquinas (1225-1275) written over 700 years ago, for obviously we no longer live in his times. But it may be more helpful to make note of the fact that we no longer live in the modern rationalist era, either. We begin then by asking what this means, that is, what changes are taking place now, and how these enable us to draw new and relevant insights from this venerable text.

The following set of new sensibilities, like a new tooth, is emerging gradually but inexorably in the contemporary consciousness. It reorients and reshapes our human aspirations and our possibilities for cooperation between cultures.

1. Matter and Spirit: From Quantity to Quality. Economic and physical provisions for the people of this world are a basic need and of high value. It is possible, however, to focus upon them with such single mindedness that, not only are other dimensions of human life ignored, but the economy itself suffers. If the quality of life is not promoted — if social cohesion is diminished and the environment damaged — then whatever be the short range profits, a country is weakened and great and lasting damage in as yet unimaginable ways is ensured. Hence there is an emerging sense that both spirit and matter are strongly integrated. Physical and economic progress must be for goals which integrate the quality of personal life in community. Peoples tend to respond to leadership calls which reflect that integration and suspect, rightly unilateral calls, whether only to material progress or only to spiritual campaigns as being partisan, unbalanced and doomed to failure.

2. Freedom: From External Choices to Responsible Human Commitment to Life with Others. The recent tendency of assertions of freedom to devolve into selfishness, as reflected by corruption in economic and political life, are being challenged by a stronger sense of moral commitment to living well with others in building together a world with greater equity and progress.

3. Values and Cultures: From Arbitrary Impositions to Creative Human Responses to Present Challenges. The same awareness of interior human subjectivity which undergirds the sense of freedom and responsibility enables dramatic new appreciation of values and cultures. Values receive new attention; cultural traditions are no longer seen as arbitrary choices made in the past and simply handed down as obligatory in the present. Rather, they represent the cumulative creative freedom of the community in its effort to live together with decency. Now such traditions challenge us to transform them into platforms on which life today can be lived with equal or greater dignity.

4. Religion: From Tolerance to Integration. Religion is the ultimate human commitment, the key to transcending self horizontally to community and vertically to spiritual values. The separation of religion from the public life has sapped enthusiasm at the local and national level from drawing on the spiritual heritage of the country and enabling it to continue to play its role in national life as a source of values, morality and public commitment. People now seek appropriate ways to refound the values and insights of the various cultural heritages in their religious roots and to appreciate the positive relations between the religions.

5. Complementarity: From Private Values to Civil Society. The term values can ring of private personal concern; instead, today there is a broad search for new ways to promote the whole range of intermediate structures: family, neighborhood, school, church, trade, etc. In this, the concern is for the ability of persons and groups to play a more active and responsible role in the community and in the nation as alternatives to intervention by larger, more remote and impersonal groups.

6. Rights and Responsibilities: From Individual Interest to the Common Good. Individualism is being tempered by much stronger senses of relatedness to others, of community, of cooperation and of civic duty. The emphasis in public debate is shifting beyond the abstract assertion and legalistic defense of universal rights. These must be guaranteed and defended, but they are not sufficient; left by themselves they can be anarchistic and destructive. Instead, the focus becomes the implementation of rights as part of a concrete effort to build the nation. Beyond the minimal prohibition of violations of rights, there is a new appreciation of a diversity and pluralism which draws each group more fully into the effort to face common problems and build their nation.

7. Patriotism: From Ideology to Ideals. The sense of community extends as well to nation. Patriotism is coming to be seen not as jingoism for manipulating people into exploitive adventures for special interests, but as the mode in which all — both individually and in various groups — relate to the common good of the nation as a whole.

8. World: From Competition to Cooperation. This must extend to the fulfillment of a role in global affairs which reflects not merely self-interest, but the ideals and traditions of humanity. The international posture of a people is now challenged to be not merely a matter of self-interest or of strength for self-assertion. There is ever greater recognition of being part of a worldwide community. The peoples of the world are not merely competitors in a race between the strong and the weak or the wealthy and the needy; they are brothers and sisters whose welfare is the concern of all. Hence, the international agenda is not only one of trading opportunities or even human rights, but of building a community of nations inspired by justice, concern, and love.

In sum, the new sensibility is practical and enabling for life. Its thrust is characteristically outward to concern for others at home and abroad, and upward to enrich the quality of life. Its effect is to inspire the hope, courage and magnanimity of spirit needed in a time of great change.

What unifies all of these and constitutes the pervasive present concern is a shift from the private possession of external things or objects to the development of inner human consciousness and creativity or, as is sometimes said, a shift in consciousness and concern from "having" to "being".

The implications of this for opening new possibilities for cooperation between the Islamic and Christian tradition needed for our time is exceedingly great. Rather than these being thought of — and indeed thinking of themselves — as simply economic or political blocks after the manner of S. Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations, it is now possible to grasp these forces more deeply in terms of the inner spirit which inspires them and which can, and indeed must, be shared. For whereas money cannot be transferred without being lost to its owner, knowledge and commitment are reinforced in being shared.

As was seen above, attention and motivation is moving from matter to spirit and from things to values. Correlatively, it now becomes possible for cultures and civilizations to envisage not merely dialogue as if between contrasting positions, but complementarity and cooperation on shared problems, and to move fundamentally on the great mysteries of the meaning of life.

This has important implications for hermeneutics or the interpretation of texts from earlier times. It is now appreciated how reality moves forward with the progress of human consciousness. Thus, if the human role has always been described as that of a Vice Regent of God, the emphasis now shifts, from returning to the past, to drawing therefrom principles for cooperating dynamically in the ongoing work of creation.

A teenager goes through a period in which the internal process of the establishment of personal self-identity often generates some tension with others in the family; but in time this enables the person to relate to parents and siblings with much greater openness and responsibility. Analogously, the progress of the human consciousness, borne forward by a cultural tradition, can make it possible for new and richer meaning of classic texts to unfold. This, indeed, is the function of a Supreme Court in some political systems or of specialists in Fiqh or in Torah, namely, to interpret the laws. They must be faithful to the law, but to the law as a living reality across time. Their work is not to replicate by-gone times and circumstances, but to unfold the richer meaning of the texts as this becomes available with the development of a people’s self-awareness and for that reason becomes newly important for their humane well-being.

The New Significance of the Summa Contra Gentiles

This is particularly significant with regard to the Summa contra Gentiles and to the present summary. The title reflects the earlier context of the Middle Ages when there was indeed a clash of civilizations. The front line then was in Andalusia; the Christian troops in the culture war were the Dominicans, officially and rightly named the Order of Preachers. Being at the center of the reception of Aristotle into Christianity — extensively via Islamic sources — Thomas Aquinas undertook to write this work for the use of his Dominican confreres in Spain.

Though the times were long before the present ecumenism, he did not, however, write a polemical text; that would have begun from the differences. Rather, he carefully sorted out the materials and wrote the first three of the four books on the points shared — if not always interpreted in the same way — by Islam and Christianity. What was distinctive of Christianity was reserved for the last or fourth book. Hence the title of the English translation, On the Truth of the Catholic Faith, communicates better the positive purpose and tone of the work. Though not without brief passages which reflect the misinformation and polemic prejudices of the time in which it was situated, its structure is highly adapted to the work of comparative philosophy and ecumenical comparison. It focuses on the common issues and especially on shared vision. It proceeds not upon a prior and specifically Christian faith commitment, but on the basis of universally available human reason initiated by the Greeks and of the highest interest both to Islamic and to Christian thinkers at that time.

In taking up this medieval text today we do not abandon the newly emerging ecumenical sense that we must — and now can — work on the relations between our cultures in richer and more effective ways. Nor did Thomas and the Islamic figures in taking up Greek philosophy, especially that of Aristotle, abandon their Islamic or Christian religious cultures — Thomas, as he was to prove, certainly was no Latin Averroist. Instead, both Islamic and Christian thinkers took up the work of Aristotle in order to develop the competencies of reason and its service to the life of faith. For both the context is religious and they are able to draw richly upon their scriptures to express this munificently. Professor Kenny has done us all a great service in bringing forward the parallel texts in the Qur’ân in order to make this shared context be visible and evident.

Thus, we find Thomas at the beginning of the work discussing the relation of faith and reason in the conviction that as both come from the same source they cannot be contradictory. His search then is for their complementarity.

Book I, God (see Appendix I for Thomas’s introduction to this Book), after the discussion of faith and reason turns first to the existence of God and begins by reasoning on the nature of motion. He proceeds from the obvious fact of motion to its need for a cause able to explain this phenomenon and which therefore must not itself be in motion i.e., an unmoved mover.

In a retrospective reading of this text in the light of the ancient and medieval cosmology which considered matter to be eternal and envisaged planetary beings which were material but unchanging, it could be said that the effective conclusion of Aristotle’s Physics brings the reasoner to a reality not subject to motion or change, that is, to an unmoved mover(s), but that this could still be a finite, contingent and even multiple being(s). In Thomas then overstepping the bounds of this reasoning then when he says: "This we call God" (I 13, 3)? Some would say — Professor Kenny among them — that the reasoning depends on the reigning Ptolemaic cosmology, and lost its force with that cosmology. But this would appear overly to restrict Aquinas’s reasoning. Thomas notes that if the conclusion of the Physics is to reality that is not moving, there remains the question, taken up at this point in the Metaphysics XII, of whether this being is necessary of itself or of another. In his third proof Thomas treats the issue at great length, differentiating Aristotle’s argumentation in the Physics and in the Metaphysics in order to come to the same conclusion reached by Xenophanes and Parmenides before Aristotle, namely, that no being is possible unless there be being which is necessary of itself rather than by reference to another, repeating again "This we call God" (I 13, 28-35).

One might ask then whether the long discussion about the physical order of changing being is superfluous. Quite the contrary! That might be the case were God to be able not to exist as well as to exist, and the search were simply to decide between the two. But, of course, such a "god" would be no God at all. Rather, Thomas is concerned at the beginning of this work, as also of his Summa Theologica, to answer Aristotle’s first scientific question, namely, whether the subject of the science exists. He wants to do this in an a posteriori fashion that relates all things to God first by way of their efficient cause. Further this reasoning is being carried out by the human person who is a physical being working not only by intellect, but also from the sense contact with the physical universe. It is important then, both from the point of view of the object and of the thinker, that God be seen as cause of the entire physical universe.

It is characteristic of both the Islamic and the Christian traditions that they are not only other worldly, but this worldly as well. Indeed as religious their concern is to relate or "bind back" (re-ligio) all things to God. Their concern is that all reality, including our own physical body and that of our world, be seen in their ultimate, that is, divine origin, as sharing in that divine perfection, and as directed to that divine end. This is the basis of the ability of reason to assist faith in articulating the way to live for its investigation of the existence and characteristics of the divine is always in terms of its being the source, exemplar and goal of all beings.

In part II, Creation (see Appendix III for Thomas introduction to this Book), the orientation is inverted and the procedure is not from the effect to the cause, but from the cause thus attained to its effect. Here again it is characteristic of Thomas that he should argue at the greatest length and detail to conclude to the autonomy of creation. It had been thought in Christian and Islamic circles that, in order to preserve the infinity and power of God, creatures — humans in particular — needed to possess some divine seeds in order that they be able to generate new life or that they needed some special illumination of the mind by God in addition to their nature in order that they be able to know.

Over a century later Thomas, working with the sense of existence developed in the early Christian context, was able to resolve this issue by elaborating an understanding of the one human soul with properly intellectual capability but being also the form of the body. This philosophical development of the understanding of the unity of body and spirit in the proper identity of the human person founded the sense both of the spiritual dignity of the human body and of the worldly engagement of the human spirit; both these dimensions of the one human nature are fully and properly human. This is key not only to protecting human dignity in the face of present day multiple technological and ideological threats, but also to engaging human persons creatively in their physical and social environments.

Thomas begins Book III, God (see Appendix III for his introduction to this Book), by an affirmation of teleology. Nothing has been more central to the reductionist mechanistic character of the modern understanding of human life than the rejection of teleology or purpose; nothing is more important at this juncture in the new development of human consciousness than its rediscovery. This appears in the new appreciation of the role of subjectivity even in the physical and social sciences. It is especially so in terms of values where human purpose emerges as central to the development of cultures and hence to their cooperation in broader, even global, contexts.

But in this issue of the goal of life lies the most fundamental issue regarding the relation of faith and reason. Just as the efficient cause of all was the first issue in the Summa Contra Gentiles, so the final cause is the culmination and crown of this work. Aristotle in his ethics was able by philosophy to identify the goal of human life as contemplation, i.e., the exercise of the highest human power, the intellect, regarding the highest reality, the divine. All life is directed thereto and all has meaning as it relates to that project.

Faith, however, as belief is required because we know from the Judeo-Christian and Islamic scriptures that our goal transcends this world and what can be accomplished by the work of simply human powers culminating in contemplation. That goal is life with God in which he is seen not mediately, as described in Book I through his creatures ("as in a glass darkly" writes St. Paul), but by vision face to face. This further inspires and enlivens all human acts and implies a higher, "supernatural" or graced order.

The heart of the issue of the relation of faith and reason is then that of the relation between contemplation and vision: do they constitute two goals or one? If one then either faith or reason is reduced to the other. But if two, then does one compete with the other in such wise that the person must flee the world in order to avoid being distracted by it and that reason is inimicable to the life of faith? Or are they related in such wise that service in the world is an authentic way to God. If so then the work of reason can be a significant, indeed essential dimension of human service in the realization of God’s designs in creating rational beings and appointing them to the special position of his Vice Regents on earth? The impact of religion is at stake here: is it an opium of the people in life which is to be understood as class warfare, as said Marx; or is it a motivation to the service to others in the world, even to the loss of one’s life. Indeed, the Gospel says that one who claims to love God, but hates his neighbor, is in fact a murder (I John 2-3).

This is the challenge which Thomas takes up in this third Book crafting an elegant philosophic-theological solution in such wise that vision of God is a higher, but not contradictory fulfillment of the natural human goal of contemplation, thereby integrating the philosophy of Aristotle with the Christian Platonism of Augustine. This synthesis is analyzed in detail by Gerald Stanley in Appendix IV below.

In this light the overall sense of this work emerges afresh in terms of our new sensibility to human subjectivity and the new challenges this entails to develop cooperation rather than conflict between cultures and civilizations The exercise by each people of their freedom as they seek their goal — natural/supranatural — must be diverse according to the physical and social circumstances in which they live. In interaction with nature and other peoples they shape their proper sense of values and develop their own distinctive set of virtues. Together these constitutes cultures which are good ways to cultivate the human spirit. Passed on through time, these generate in turn traditions, each of which is, in fact, the basic and proper pathway of a people to its ultimate goal of contemplation and vision.

Here the image of Isaias (27:13) comes to mind, namely, that of all nations proceeding each along its own path to the Holy Mountain. Today, rather that it being thought that there could be but one path to God, the truth of the Prophet emerges, namely, that there are many paths, but one way, or of the Vatican II document, Nostra Aetate, 2, which urges Christians to "acknowledge, preserve, and promote the spiritual and moral goods found among these (other religions) as well as the values in their society and culture." To this it adds specially its esteem for Moslems to whom it appeals to "make common cause of safeguarding and fostering social justice, moral values, peace and freedom" (n. 3). This opens dialogue and even cooperation, rather than conflict, as the mode of relations between religions, cultures and civilizations.

We turn then to the first three books of this early Summa of Thomas now not as "contra" or against or even as a dialogue between contrasting Christian and Moslem cultures, but rather as a summing up of shared intellectual resources in the hope that together we can cooperate in helping humankind face the difficult issues of the new millennium.