Monday, March 25, 2013

"catch[ing] up, by the laborious path of learning and argument acquired by study, to the wisdom the unlettered charwoman already possesses as a free gift of God."

"The theological master simply strives to make explicit, to recapture in modo cognitionis, what the faithful heart of any old woman already knows."

     Bruce D. Marshall, "Quid scit una uetula:  Aquinas on the nature of theology," in The theology of Thomas Aquinas, ed. Rik Van Nieuwenhove and Joseph Wawrykow (Notre Dame, IN:  University of Notre Dame Press, 2005):  26 (1-26), with reference to the Collationes Credo in Deum:  "Despite all of their effort, none of the philosophers before the coming of Christ was able to know as much about God, and about what is necessary for life, as one old woman [uetula] knows by faith after Christ's coming.  Hence it is said:  'The earth is full of the knowledge of God' [Isaiah 11:9]" (1).  The title is from p. 25.

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