The Thirteenth, Greatest of CenturiesWalsh, James J. (James Joseph)
History
The Thirteenth, Greatest of Centuries
Walsh, James J. (James Joseph)
Civilization, Medieval -- 13th century; Universities and colleges -- History
"A third disadvantage is that, owing to the infirmity of our
judgment and the perturbing force of imagination, there is some
admixture of error in most of the investigations of human reason.
This would be a reason to many for continuing to doubt even of the
most accurate demonstrations, not perceiving the force of the
demonstration, and seeing the divers judgments, of divers persons
who have the name of being wise men. Besides, in the midst of much
demonstrated truth there is sometimes an element of error, not
demonstrated but asserted on the strength of some plausible and
sophistic reasoning that is taken for a demonstration. And therefore
it was necessary for the real truth concerning divine things to be
presented to men with fixed certainty by way of faith. Wholesome,
therefore, is the arrangement of divine clemency, whereby things
even that reason can investigate are commanded to be held on faith,
so that all might be easily partakers of the knowledge of God, and
that without doubt and error (Book I. cix)."
A still more striking example of Thomas's eminently sympathetic
discussion of a most difficult problem, is to be found in his
treatment of the question of the Resurrection of the Body. The
doctrine that men will rise again on the last day with the same bodies
that they had while here on earth, has been a stumbling block for the
faith of a great many persons from the beginning of Christianity. In
recent times the discovery of the indestructibility of matter, far
from lessening the skeptical elements in this problem as might have
been anticipated, has rather emphasized them. While the material of
which man's body was composed is never destroyed, it is broken up
largely into its original elements and is used over and over again in
many natural processes, and even enters into the composition of other
men's bodies during the long succeeding generations. Here is a problem
upon which it would {278} ordinarily be presumed at once, that a
philosophic writer of the Thirteenth Century could throw no possible
light. We venture to say, however, that the following passage which we
quote from an article on St. Thomas in a recent copy of the Dublin
_Review_, represents the best possible solution of the problem, even
in the face of all our modern advance in science.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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