No captain would knowingly go near submerged reefs and no farmer would permit space to be taken up by a fruitless tree. Yet that is precisely what the theological academy has been doing for some time now. It has been pointing us to Barth, the impenitent adulterer; to Yoder, the abuser of women; to a bevy of Germans who seem to have never met an orthodox doctrine they did not see fit to change; and now to Aquinas, the idolater. On behalf of many of the sheep in the pews permit me to say to this idea of returning to scholasticism and Aquinas – ‘no thank you.’

Previously we considered Craig Carter’s recommended revival of scholasticism. Now we finish our consideration of his claims and offer a rejoinder. He says “I am convinced that we need to recover and revitalize scholastic realism if we are to recover and revitalize classical orthodoxy after the disasters of the last two centuries.” He says this because he believes that in order to return Nicene Trinitarian and Chalcedonian Christological orthodoxy to “the forefront of Christian dogmatics again” means “we are going to need to go back to the last period in history when Enlightenment rationalism and naturalism had not yet corrupted Christian theology.” On his view that is “the period of post-Reformation scholasticism.” He believes one of the strengths of this period was its “catholicity, that is, its deep roots in the best of medieval scholasticism and the early church fathers.” He believes that the reformers anti-scholastic rhetoric “should be understood as directed against” “late medieval voluntarism and nominalism” and asserts that “many of the best Protestant theologians” employed Thomistic theology “extensively and with profit,” and, after some further elaboration on this point, says that this is where “we find the metaphysical and dogmatic foundations of Reformed scholasticism, or as one could also put it, classic reformed theology.”

One, “Reformed scholasticism” is not a synonym for “classic reformed theology.” There is much that is Reformed that is not scholastic: indeed, criticism of scholasticism was strong among some theologians of the period. Hence John Owen could say:

Some learn their Divinity out of the late, and Modern Schools, both in the Reformed and Papall Church; in both which a Science is proposed under that name, consisting in a farrago of Credible Propositions, asserted in termes suited unto that Philosophy that is variously predominant in them. What a kind of Theology this hath produced in the Papacy, Agricola, Erasmus, Vives, Jansenius, with innumerable other Learned men of your own, have sufficiently declared. And that it hath any better success in the Reformed Churches, many things which I shall not now instance in, give me cause to doubt.[1] 

Two, as for Protestant scholasticism’s catholicity consisting of its “deep roots” in the medieval scholastics and the early church fathers, consider what Owen says as he continues the section above:

Some boast they learn their divinity from the Fathers, and say they do not depart from their sense and idiom of expression in what they believe and profess . . . While men are thus pre-engaged, it will be very hard to prevail with them to think that the greatest part of their divinity is such that Christian religion, either as to the matter, or at least as to that mode wherein they have imbibed it, is little or not at all concerned in it; nor will it be easy to persuade them that it is a mystery laid up in the Scripture; and all true divinity a wisdom in the knowledge of that mystery.[2]

Modern paraphrase: ‘Some people are so enamored by their study of the early church fathers, some of whom made serious errors, that it is nearly impossible to get them to realize that a true knowledge and service of Christ has little if anything to do with their vain studies; true knowledge of Christ that is pleasing to him is found in understanding scripture’s testimony about him correctly (comp. Eph. 3:1-6).’ Such remarks, including as they do the ‘Reformed scholastics,’ do not seem limited to “late medieval voluntarism and nominalism.”

Three, on the Protestant view theology has been ruined by many others besides Enlightenment philosophers: Rome, various early heretics, and many of the scholastics have done so too. Hence Owen elsewhere says:

I could wish he [Fiat Lux’s author] would take a course to stop the mouths of some of his own Church, and those no small ones neither, who have declared them to the world, to be a pack of egregious Sophisters, neither good Philosophers, nor any Divines at all; men who seem not to have had the least reverence of God, nor much regard to the Truth in any of their Disputations, but were wholly influenced by a vain Re­putation of Subtility [cunning], desire of Conquest, of leading and denominating Parties, and that in a Barbarous Science, barbarously expressed, untill they had driven all Learning and Divinity almost out of the World.[3]

If that is a fair appraisal of scholasticism, then it seems Prof. Carter would have us discard Enlightenment rationalism by going back to something equally bad.

Four, why not return to non-scholastic Reformed theology, or better yet, to scripture? We confess that it is sufficient and perspicuous, “profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16-17). It will not suffice to combat aberrant theology on its own terms, for our own thought does not carry with it that power which scripture has. Consider its testimony of itself – “the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Heb. 4:12) – or what God says of it: “Is not my word like fire, declares the Lord, and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces?” (Jer. 23:29) and “it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose” (Isa. 55:11).

If we are serious about reforming theology we must recognize that such an undertaking cannot be performed by merely human learning, no matter how polished or extensive: God himself must work reformation in the study of the knowledge about him, and if he does so it will only be because we humbly submit ourselves to his word and look rather to it and to his mercy than to our own learning. In the words of Isaiah, “to the teaching and to the testimony!” (8:20) – naught else will suffice to impart a true knowledge of God, and any who attempts to renovate theological studies will find he is building upon a house of sand if he does not ground his efforts on God’s own revelation of himself.

Five, it is not scholasticism that we fear, but God, who will judge us if we yield to the excesses of any merely human school of thought. We do not wish to be like those people whom Paul would say “have wandered away into vain discussion, desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions (1 Tim. 1:6-7). If a given school leads us into sin – as scholasticism does at sundry points, not least in Aquinas’ teaching that it is proper to worship the cross – then we ought to keep aloof from it.

Six, if scholasticism is the method of the schools, i.e., academic theological study, then it must be admitted that there already is a modern strain of it that predominates theology at present. This contemporary scholasticism operates by the same methods as secular research: it will study anything to find formative influences, not merely for cautionary or polemic purposes; it requires its proponents to participate in its system and receive doctorates by researching internal technical matters related to theology itself (e.g., “God’s Being-in-Reconciliation: The Theo-Ontological Basis of the Unity and Diversity of the Doctrine of the Atonement in the Theology of Karl Barth”[4]) rather than “rightly handling the word of truth” (2 Tim. 2:15); it discusses its materials in a detached, unemotional spirit utterly unlike the urgency and emotional fervor one finds in the prophets and our Lord; it makes inquiry its guiding principle rather than faith; it studies its own number with greater zeal than scripture, thus elevating secondary sources above primary; and by its love of esoteric terminology it has made theology a pursuit of an initiated few rather than a service to the church and her people.

The consequences of such an approach are apparent. Compare the following two passages.

[N]ot a few of the advocates of philosophic studies, when turning their minds recently to the practical reform of philosophy, aimed and aim at restoring the renowned teaching of Thomas Aquinas and winning it back to its ancient beauty.

And

Since they thought Thomas was one of the most brilliant theologians the church has produced, they did not hesitate to benefit from him in innumerable ways—from his epistemology to metaphysic, from his Christology to ethics.

One passage is from Credo’s Aquinas issue, the other from Aeterni Patris, the encyclical commending Thomism. If your ideas about whom it is appropriate to study put you in the same position as the pope – whose office Protestants have historically confessed to be antichrist (2 Thess. 2:3-4) – then you have adopted the wrong practical position. There are grounds of agreement between us and Rome, especially regarding Christology and theology proper; but the question of adopting one of her own number as a positive source of our own thinking is not one of them.

If it be objected that Rome advises studying sources that we also use let it be rejoined that though she uses them they are not properly her own as are those things that have arisen within her midst during the time of her corruption. Some things in the early fathers have parallels in Rome’s thought, such as Augustine’s ecclesiological ideas, but it is hard to see where any of the early fathers is Roman after the fashion of the medieval scholastics: their position before a long process of corruption, even one they in some cases inadvertently started, means that they are fundamentally different from those who arose later after that process had advanced very far.

In summary, we should not return to scholasticism. To do so would entail exposing ourselves to the bad as well as the good in it; and while theologians like Prof. Carter may be able to take an eclectic approach in which they keep certain teachings while discarding others, it must be remembered that most of the church’s members are not theologians. Members sometimes have much difficulty distinguishing between false and true doctrine. It is a predicament best avoided where possible.

Also, we already have a contemporary scholasticism by which we have been ill-served, not least since it has spread this idea among us, that there is something useful to be learned in practically everyone. That is contrary to scripture. It does not deal with false teaching in a detached manner as do our contemporary theologians. On its view false teaching arises because of the bad character of those that teach it. It does not take a nuanced approach to them, trying to retain the good while shedding the bad; rather it says that people who teach false doctrine constitute a class that is to be avoided. Jude 12-13 says that:

These are hidden reefs at your love feasts, as they feast with you without fear, shepherds feeding themselves; waterless clouds, swept along by winds; fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead, uprooted; wild waves of the sea, casting up the foam of their own shame; wandering stars, for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever.

No captain would knowingly go near submerged reefs and no farmer would permit space to be taken up by a fruitless tree. Yet that is precisely what the theological academy has been doing for some time now. It has been pointing us to Barth, the impenitent adulterer; to Yoder, the abuser of women; to a bevy of Germans who seem to have never met an orthodox doctrine they did not see fit to change; and now to Aquinas, the idolater. On behalf of many of the sheep in the pews permit me to say to this idea of returning to scholasticism and Aquinas – ‘no thank you.’

Tom Hervey is a member of Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Simpsonville, S.C.

[1] Vindication of Animadversions Upon Fiat Lux, 212-13

[2] Ibid., 213. Spelling, punctuation, and diction somewhat modernized. Original available here: https://ota.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/repository/xmlui/handle/20.500.12024/A53737

[3] Animadversions Upon Fiat Lux, 122-23

[4] The Ph. D. thesis of Adam Johnson, professor at Biola.