James G. Williams, Professor Emeritus of Religion at Syracuse University writes:
“Thomistic (Thomas Aquinas) reflections on vice, virtue and the moral life are without parallel; tragically, the insights of the good doctor rarely make their way into evangelical thought and life. Frequently overlooked by most Protestants is the fact that the great scholastics were motivated to clarify the meaning of fides quaerens intellectum.
It is scarcely any wonder then that late–twentieth–century evangelical Protestants are rarely found among ethicists, moral philosophers, or policy analysts.”

Ah, Professor Williams, I am afraid, is very correct. Evangelical Christians are both uninformed about the towering achievements of Thomas and woefully unprepared to effectively debate about and combat the downward slide of American ethical thought. The thing to be aware of is that these two facts are interrelated. In other words, because evangelicals know virtually nothing about Aquinas’ moral writings, we have no solid footing from which to debate secularists. All evangelicals are left with is our default position which is to declare, “Well, the Bible says…” However, few, if any secularists accept the Bible as a document worthy of moral consent. Aquinas, on the other hand, practically invented the whole field of natural law for Western Civilization. He not only was a master of Scriptural interpretation, but he reasoned out every conceivable moral dilemma using arguments grounded on common sense. Again, unfortunately, many evangelicals are adverse to the use of common sense, fearing that somehow this discredits God. They seem to ignore such passages as:

Romans 2:14-17 14(Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, 15since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them.)
Romans 1:18-20 18The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

Natural law appeals to the common knowledge of God and His just requirements that can be discovered by reason from nature and from man’s own inner witness of conscience. It is time for evangelicals to awaken to this rich and wonderful body of Christian moral teaching.

Almost everyone I know has heard of Thomas Aquinas. They know that he was some medieval monk or priest that developed a few proofs for the existence of God. They may also know that those proofs are taught in Bible Colleges and seminaries and that modern science and physics have shown his proofs to be silly and are to be thrown on the ash heap of history.

Most of this, of course, is nonsense. Thomas only devoted a little over two pages of text to his proofs for God’s existence. That is 2-3 pages out of, literally, thousands of pages of text holding highly compact arguments for a huge array of questions and insights. Additionally, Thomas' arguments for God are still on the philosophical cutting edge, largely because they synthesize hundreds of years of theological reflection going back to Aristotle, Plato and Socrates. For instance, Aristotle made a very simple statement that I have yet to see anyone, with intellectual honesty, gainsay. He merely suggested that "that which does not exist cannot be the cause of anything." This statement poses a grave difficulty for atheists since it is the basis for a uniform and stable universe that can be empirically studied and observed. The problem, then, is how can someone both embrace Aristotle's axiom and yet hold to a spontaneous (miraculous?) eruption of a universe out of ABSOLUTE nothingness. Usually, what we hear about are phantom universes and parallel universes, etc. This strikes me as having as much reasonable credibility as the when little Johnny's mom discovers a bunch of cookies missing and Johnny has crumbs all over his face. That is when Johnny says, "But, mommy, there must have been a ghost who came and stole the cookies." Sure, that makes sense.

However, my real reason for writing about this subject is to get at Thomas' most interesting proof for the existence of God. He actually writes about this many times and in great detail. It is what I call the "buyer's remorse proof" of God's existence. Time and again, Thomas notes that humans are never satisfied with what they attain, there never seems to be any permanent sense of happiness. The contemporary verbiage for this is buyer's remorse. For instance, someone will spend months reading about, dreaming about, and planning the purchase of some big ticket item. First, comes the day of the purchase and then comes the day after the purchase. It is the day after when buyer's remorse often sets in. It is the nagging feeling that no matter how wonderful the object, it is not quite as good as we imagined or anticipated. At that point we can even wonder if it was actually worth all the effort and expense to purchase the object.

Thomas explains (as does Aristotle) that nothing in nature exists without a purpose, and that the sense of buyer's remorse is that it was implanted in our nature because we have both the capacity for and the intellectual need for the infinite--which is God. Nothing but infinite good can satisfy our thirst for more. Thomas saw this natural longing for the infinite as tangible proof for an infinite "end" which is God and a final state for mankind, which is happiness.

At a practical level, I have found this argument to not only be one of the most interesting proofs for the existence of God, but to be a proof that very often leads seekers on a journey to discover Him.

I am writing a book on the classic Christian virtues and how evangelical Christianity has lost touch with a whole wonderful history of moral teaching. In our quest for a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ, we have failed to avail ourselves of a rich tradition in both early and medieval Christianity. This tradition expressly sought to assist the average believer live his or her life in a manner that would bring about ultimate happiness. Unfortunately, in the evangelical quest to be faithful to the Scripture, we have often allowed ourselves to be fragmented into a sort of "every man did what was right in his own eyes" approach to interpreting Scripture.

This blog is dedicated to mining the rich veins of theological tradition for insight and truth that will assist the "regular" Joe or Jane live a fulfilling and God-honoring life. This, by the way, is not so much a "Purpose-Driven" approach, but, rather a purpose-chosen approach. More on that later.