I suppose theology is the study of what God is and isn’t. I’ve never looked into Thomas Aquinas, but am grateful for an excerpt from Why Rousseau Was Wrong*:
Its positive attitude reminds me of a quote from Thomas Traherne recently published on this blog†. The excerpt above came from a summary‡ of how St Thomas Aquinas “tries to capture God’s essence” in his great work Summa Theologica.
How do Aquinas and Traherne arrive at these joyful expressions which seem to have no shadow? Not through the profound study of earlier texts, even though Aquinas spent most of his efforts reconciling Aristotle with the Bible. No, it was an ecstatic sense of blessedness, however caused, which determined their theological approaches. In twentieth-century India, Ramana Maharshi seemed to have reached similar heights, without trying; but expressed in the language of advaita, by cultural osmosis—Upanishads etc.
Such is my subjective interpretation. Frances Ward and John Hughes were both priests in the Anglican Church, an institution which permeated my childhood without ever making me a Christian; but left me permanently tuned to mysticism. Ward is now retired and Hughes was killed in a traffic accident at 35. I especially like this from his obituary in the Church Times:
John’s enthusiasm for women, for one thing, as a sort of mystical wonder, was not lost on anyone who knew him well.
Indeed. For me Woman, one in particular, is proof enough of God.
* Quoted from John Hughes (see below) in Why Rousseau Was Wrong: Christianity and the Secular Soul (2013) by Frances Ward
† “Outreaching”
‡ In Theological Critiques of Capitalism (2007), by John Hughes. It’s not available cheap but see this précis by Eve Poole.
a wayfarer’s notes 