Aquinas Returns

After twenty-some years of reading Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica, each year’s reading highly anticipated and ultimately revelatory and rewarding, I’ve been disappointed the last couple of years. My first pass through the tome was guided by Mortimer Adler’s schedule, provided with the Britannica Great Books set. My second pass through it, during the first ten-year reading plan that I drew up on my own, got me through all parts of the work but skipped certain sections, leaving something like 15-20% to be completed later.

It seems that I did a good job seventeen years ago in picking out the highlights to read first. Covering the basics of the virtue of justice was super-interesting a few years ago. Now filling in the gaps and reading this year (in a section on sins opposed to justice) about the difference between backbiting and tale-bearing: not so much.

But the experience this year didn’t disappoint as much as it had in other recent years. The ethics of trial advocacy, for instance, really piqued my interest. For example, Aquinas says that a judge must decide according to what is proven by evidence. If he privately knows some piece of evidence to be false, he must use legal means to sift it and try to reject it. If he cannot do this legally, he must judge according to what has been proven by the legal procedure, even if he knows it is wrong. He is bound to try every legal avenue he has to keep an innocent person from suffering capital punishment. I don’t know if you agree with Aquinas’s take on this issue; I like his respect for the system and the rule of law.

Other intriguing points in this section deal with wasting the court’s time and resources in unjust causes. One who accuses falsely, for instance, and fails to prove his case is rightly bound to the punishment he sought for the other party. Accepting that rule in this country might limit the number of frivolous torte cases seeking millions! Similarly, although a losing defendant has a right to appeal (Christians may appeal without concern that they are disrespecting authority), one who loses an appeal should be punished for the appeal itself as well as for the crime or civil injury he has been convicted of.

I’m actually taking a break from Aquinas now for three years. In his place, I’ll read some other medieval theologians: Abelard, Peter Lombard, and Albertus Magnus. In my fourth ten-year plan, though, I’m going to fill in every nook and cranny of the Summa!

(That phrase reminds me of a joke – if it doesn’t exist, it should – about the Dickensian woman who ran a generous soup kitchen frequented by pick-pockets and poor girls looking for day work caring for children: she filled every crook and nanny!)