Scholasticism

Overview

Faith and reason can look at the same world. An act is judged by its aim and by what else it brings about; a good aim does not erase a chosen harm.

Scholasticism is the method of Europe’s medieval schools and universities: pose a question, set out the arguments on each side, then answer them. Thomas Aquinas is its best-known voice. He holds two lights up to one world. Reason can know a great deal about what is, including a moral order it did not invent. Faith, for him, is not a command to stop looking. A truth reached by a sound argument and a truth held by faith are not enemies because they arrived by different roads. Where they seem to clash, he treats that as a reason to look again, not as a prize for whichever side shouts.

Where it answers

Key terms

Natural law

Moral principles that human reason can read in human nature.

Double effect

An act with a good and a bad effect may be allowed if only the good is intended, the harm is not the means to it and the harm is proportionate.

Analogy of being

Words like “good” apply to God and to creatures neither in the same sense nor in unrelated senses, but by analogy.

Faith and reason

Two sources of truth that, rightly used, cannot contradict each other.

In their words