Towards Authentic Humanism Starting from Authentic Christianity. The Approach of St. Thomas Aquinas

Abstract

1. The incarnation of Christ is the deep root, the sound foundation and the ultimate apex of Christian humanism. God was made man. In the fact of the Incarnation is the supreme and universal reason for new humanity, for what humanity is, what humanity wants to be in its noblest wishes and what it will be. The single truth about man revealed by Jesus Christ, `the way, the truth and the life' (Jn 14:6), and the `eldest – born among many brethren' (Rm 8:29) – makes the dignity of the human being, created in the image and likeness of God (por. Gen 1:26), shine forth in its fullness.
2. The Holy Father John Paul II, often recognised as Defensor hominis, has appreciated and developed in a forceful way the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas in the spirit of Vatican Council II (OT 16, GE 10). He himself gave the Angelic Doctor the new title of Doctor Humanitatis, a title added to Doctor Divinitatis and Doctor Communis Ecclesiae. As a philosopher of the person, the Pope had already drawn up his philosophical approach which was deeply rooted in Thomistic metaphisics and anthropology, from which arises the need for ethics and aesthetics. In the encyclical letter Fides et Ratio (43-45), the perennial newness of the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas is offered at the dawn of the third millennium as a proven path of Catholic philosophy and theology.
3. St. Thomas Aquinas demonstrated humanism to us as a philosopher and even more as a theologian; as a man, as a Christian, and as a religious. The concept of the `person' in Thomistic doctrine reflected one of the fundamental new features of Christian thought. In addition, by specifying the relations that exist between philosophy and teology, St. Thomas also provided the principle for the solution to the problem of Christian humanism. Basing the mystery of man in the actus essendi, and recognising his natural capacity to know truth, he embraced the mystery of integral humanity in its opening to transcendence and the absolute, in its theological being, capax Dei.
4. At the dawn of the third millennium the need urgently presents itself for the promotion of genuine Thomism, open to dialogue with the world and able to engage in a discussion with today's various philosophical currents; a Thomism that in its recta ratio is directly nourished by the gospel spirit of the Holy Angelic Doctor. The spirit of Thomistic balance should be promoted, on a pilgrimage amongst the peoples of the earth and participating in the new evangelisation.