Thomas Aquinas and Contemplation by Rik van Nieuwenhove

Abstract

Reviewed by: Thomas Aquinas and Contemplation by Rik van Nieuwenhove Bernhard Blankenhorn O.P. Thomas Aquinas and Contemplation. By RIK VAN NIEUWENHOVE. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. Pp. ix + 220. $85.00 (cloth). ISBN: 978-0-19-289529-5. A medievalist and systematician already known for his scholarship on Flemish mysticism, Rik Van Nieuwenhove has brought together a series of eight philosophical and theological essays on contemplation in Aquinas that make for highly stimulating reading. The resulting collection takes ongoing intra-Thomist debates further in important ways, and also opens up new interpretative as well as speculative questions on fascinating themes such as the seven gifts of the Spirit or the ways in which grace can (and cannot) stretch the human being’s cognitive capacities before the divine mystery. The author sets a difficult task for himself, as he tackles a wide range of issues closely linked to the theme of contemplation, such as the metaphysics of the transcendentals, the relation of philosophy and theology, and the limits of discursive knowledge in the higher types of graced contemplation. The choice of this breadth of topics enables the pursuit of a panoramic approach to Aquinas’s thought, a breadth that hardly excludes in-depth analysis of several key texts in Aquinas’s vast corpus. One of the book’s many strengths is surely its fresh engagement in the well-trodden territory of question 180 of the Secunda secundae and similar texts. One of its weaknesses is a lack of engagement with recent Aquinas scholarship on some of the more crucial issues raised. The ultimate aim of the book is not so much to present an exhaustive account of the nature of contemplation in Aquinas’s thought as to offer a rich sketch that invites completion. After (1) a substantial introduction that forms the book’s opening chapter, the reader is treated to seven beautiful essays that treat the following themes: (2) some key epistemological issues such as the intellect’s three acts (apprehension, judgment, reasoning), the role of phantasms in human understanding, and the nature of the mind’s simple gaze; (3) the contemplation of the transcendentals; (4) thirteenth-century mendicant debates on the active and contemplative life; (5) the relation between faith, theology, and contemplation; (6) the link between charity and contemplation; (7) the role of the Spirit’s seven gifts in contemplation; and finally, (8) happiness and the beatific vision. [End Page 153] The introduction may exaggerate somewhat the extent to which scholars of Aquinas have neglected the theme of contemplation in recent decades. The book does not mention the ground-breaking study by Cruz-Gonzalez Ayesta on the gift of wisdom in Aquinas, nor Daria Spezzano’s magnificent work on divinization and wisdom. The fifth chapter does not mention the recent historical monographs on sacra doctrina in Aquinas by francophone scholars such as Henry Donneaud and Adriano Oliva (though the author does mention some of Oliva’s other articles). As I will argue below, a deeper engagement with these and other voices would have helped the author to avoid some interpretive missteps. Van Nieuwenhove’s preferred interlocutors include Bernard McGinn and Simon Tugwell (though he ultimately transcends the limits of the latter’s problematic reading of contemplation in Aquinas, done in complete abstraction from the theology of the seven gifts). Setting these difficulties aside, we should note that the introductory (first) chapter nicely anticipates chapter 5, as the author clearly and ably situates Aquinas’s approach to theological contemplation in relation to philosophical and beatific contemplation. Along the way, he convincingly compares and contrasts Aquinas’s way to the more charismatic style of Bonaventure’s theology (though one does wonder if Aquinas’s understanding of the ideal theologian as a studious man of prayer radically open to the Spirit’s movement in the seven gifts and charisms is somewhat obscured). The book’s second chapter sets forth some of its more controversial claims. The author helpfully reads Thomas in contrast to Bonaventure on the relation between certain knowledge and human access to the divine ideas. He then interprets Aquinas’s vision of the mind’s three basic operations in light of his angelology. The presentation of Aquinas’s...