Excerpt from
Aquinas and His Role in Theology
Marie Dominique Chenu, O.P.; Translated from the French by Paul Philibert, O.P.
© The Order of St. Benedict, Inc., Collegeville, Minnesota. All rights reserved. No part of this may be reproduced by any means, without the written permission of The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota 56321.

Contents

Translator’s Introduction

The Friar Preacher

Master in Sacred Theology

The Contemplative

The Herald of a New Christianity

Imago Mundi

The Virtuous Life

The Fate of St. Thomas

The Works of St. Thomas

Bibliography of Works of and about St. Thomas

Illustrations

Translator’s Introduction

Through the centuries, St. Thomas Aquinas (ca. 1225–74) has been considered a key thinker for Catholic theology. He was canonized in 1323, just fifty years after his death; declared a Doctor of the Church in 1567; and proposed as a model exponent of Catholic theology by Pope Leo XIII in 1879. Aquinas and His Role in Theology is an important book by one of the greatest contemporary interpreters of St. Thomas Aquinas. Chenu himself said: “It is possibly the best thing that I have written,” most likely because he felt that here he had expressed his feelings for Aquinas more fully than in other, more erudite writings.[i] It is curious, therefore, that this rather small book has not been translated into English before this. But the intervening years since its publication in French in 1959 have done nothing to diminish its relevance. In fact, the reintroduction of Chenu’s voice into today’s discourse about Aquinas’s theology is important, in my view, precisely because of the extraordinary range of his perspectives on Aquinas.

As a young Dominican, Chenu completed his doctorate in Rome in 1920 with a dissertation entitled “A Psychological and Theological Analysis of Contemplation,” directed by the reputed Dominican theologian Garrigou-Lagrange. Following that, Chenu was appointed professor at the Saulchoir (the studium or seminary for the Paris Dominicans located in a village a half hour distant from Paris by train). At the same time he became a member of the Historical Institute of Thomistic Studies founded by Pierre Mandonnet, o.p. With his colleagues at the institute, Chenu became a pioneer in medieval studies just as this discipline was becoming significant as a result of the scholarly work of Étienne Gilson. In 1930, in cooperation with Gilson, Chenu founded the Institute of Medieval Studies in Ottawa (which later moved to Montreal).

Following his exile from the Saulchoir (the result of the first of several skirmishes with Roman authorities), Chenu moved to Paris where he was invited to teach at the Sorbonne (1944 to 1951) until he eventually took a post as professor at the Institut Catholique de Paris. It is fair to say that through his teaching, friendships, and writings, Chenu was known to and in dialogue with the world’s major medievalists and that he shaped many key questions in medieval studies through his unusual competence in three distinct specialties: the knowledge of the texts of St. Thomas, a solid professional grasp of Christian theology, and a formidable understanding of the historical, social, and cultural contexts out of which Aquinas’s writings emerged.

Chenu had a long influence and made a deep impression upon his students. Among those who knew him and studied with him were such well known figures as Yves Congar, Pierre-André Liégé, Edward Schillebeeckx, and later Gustavo Gutierrez—and hundreds of others who, like these, became important thinkers and writers in the Church. Chenu also was passionately involved in movements of popular catechesis and the evangelization of the working class. One of his most notable books was The Theology of Work.[ii] Cardinal Joseph Cardijn, the founder of the Young Christian Worker movement (and of similar apostolic lay groups), remembered Chenu in the 1940s teaching his leadership teams: “Human beings cannot live outside communities; so building vibrant communities is their most fundamental apostolate. People must learn that the profound significance of human work is that it can realize God’s plan for the world within our social experience.”[iii]

Chenu was a man of immense good humor, even in the worst of times. In the mid ‘50s, he gave a talk at a French regional seminary where the rector was a bit fearful that his influence on the faculty and students might be dangerous. He began his presentation with these autobiographical remarks:

People think there are two Chenus. One is an old medievalist (with a certain reputation, perhaps) who is all taken up in reading ancient manuscripts; he is erudite, but stuck inside a Christianity that’s centuries old and inside an old tradition that absorbs him even at present. But then there is also another Chenu—young, spry, all mixed up in contemporary issues, eager to get involved in the most sensitive pastoral problems of the world and of the Church—and because of that, suspect in the eyes of some and (who knows?) a bad choice for a talk at a seminary. You wonder which one of these two persons came today? Let me tell you the truth: There is only one Chenu—a person happy to bring to you tonight what is dearest to his heart: a conversation about the mutual engagement between the patient and scholarly pursuit of theology and the apostolic impatience of the Gospel.[iv]

Those words of Chenu are a good preparation for the pages that follow. You will see that Chenu would never tolerate the idea of Aquinas as an ivory tower theologian working in isolation from the burning questions of the people around him. You will also discover Chenu the storyteller who opens each chapter like a conversation, with an anecdote about the circumstances of St. Thomas’s life and work. All of St. Thomas’s writings were shaped by pressing academic, social, and pastoral concerns. Chenu allows us to see how apt St. Thomas’s vision and views still are for many contemporary problems in the world and the Church, even though (as Thomas O’Meara puts it) this is “not to imply that [Aquinas] knew about galaxies or viruses.”[v] A major feature of this book is Chenu’s selection of texts from the different writings of Aquinas that complete each chapter. The reader gets a feeling for the multiple styles of Aquinas who, after all, was not just the author of the Summa Theologiae, but of a great array of commentaries, sermons, and poems, as well as of scholastic exercises.

One last point must be made, I think, among the many that cannot be included here because of the brief nature of this introduction. St. Thomas was a theologian. To treat him as a philosopher and to attempt to distill a Thomistic philosophy from his writings through the use of interesting texts taken out of their theological context is a mistake. As Walter Principe wrote, “Divorced from its living theological context, such a desiccated body of doctrines loses the force and vitality of Aquinas’s thought and is at least partly responsible for the current neglect of his teaching in many quarters.”[vi]

Ultimately St. Thomas saw theology as having an eminently practical goal. Christian revelation is historical: God changed the whole of human history through the incarnation. Christian perfection is not about escaping from the world, but about becoming agents of its transformation. The point of the Church is not maintenance of creeds and formulas of faith, but mission that will engage the whole of society. Even eschatology—the study of our ultimate human destiny—is linked to human history and has to be concerned about our human predicament in a world that continues to change dramatically. All this is clear in the following pages and a valid theological message for the present.

Chenu was a vivid personality and a charming and fluent speaker. The French text of this book, St. Thomas d’Aquin et la théologie, is marked by the spontaneity and pedagogical brilliance of its author. That very fact made it difficult to translate, since so many of his sentences seem interminable in the original edition. I have had the providential assistance of Myriam Frebet, o.p., in creating the English text; her help has spared me making a number of mistakes of interpretation and nuance in translating. I happily thank Fr. Thomas O’Meara who encouraged me to undertake this translation. Finally, I am pleased to say that this was a work of love and gratitude for the life of Père Chenu whom I had the privilege to know. May his profound, creative, and contemplative spirit reach out through these pages to you who take up his book and read.

Paul J. Philibert, o.p.

Aquinas Institute of Theology

St. Louis, Missouri