The Point of Fury
For Thomas Aquinas, the primary architect of Scholasticism, morality was never meant to be passive. He argued that while excessive rage is a vice, the total absence of anger in the face of evil is also a vice. He categorized this indifference as a failure of justice. To be a good person, according to him, your heart must be capable of breaking for others.
Even for Michael Ramsey, Christian morality in the framework of historic catholicity and thinkers like Thomas Aquinas is never a purely passive state of rigid compliance. Instead, it requires an active, living response of the whole person—mind, will, and affections—engaged dynamically with God's grace and the demands of love rather than settling into mere legalism or inert acquiescence.
Moreover, for Rowan Williams Thomas Aquinas represents the gold standard of classical Christian metaphysics and Christology. In works like Christ the Heart of Creation, Williams treats Aquinas as a central hero who successfully maps out a non-competitive, harmonious relationship between the infinite God and finite creation.
He emphasizes Aquinas's view that esse (the act of being) is not a static "thing" or object, but the active, foundational reality by which anything exists. In Christology, Jesus's human agency and identity are entirely bound up with the personal esse of the divine Word without losing their distinct human integrity. Today we are often told to prioritize our own peace above all else. Aquinas challenges that comfort.
Williams reads Aquinas to argue that God's infinite action does not crowd out or compete with finite creaturely freedom. Rather contrary, the infinite utterly sustains the finite in an asymmetrical relationship where creation remains fully itself while entirely depending on God. In this sense Rowan Williams even uses Thomas Aquinas to critique later Reformation thinkers.
He's against the idea that Aquinas is an overly dry or abstract philosopher, and argues that the dense metaphysical scaffolding preserves the actual, concrete narrative of Jesus in the Gospels—an "uninterrupted performance" of divine love in ordinary human history. Indeed, if your tranquility is more important to you than the suffering of your neighbour, you have forfeited your own moral standing.
In exploring medieval psychology and ethics (such as in The Wound of Knowledge), Williams highlights how Aquinas links understanding (intellectus) and will together, finding their ultimate maturity in caritas (love)—a bridge over the metaphysical gulf between Creator and creation. Righteous anger is then righly regarded as the fuel of reform. If you do not feel it, you might want to ask yourself why.
[media=https://youtu.be/_oISZCXHhp4]
Even for Michael Ramsey, Christian morality in the framework of historic catholicity and thinkers like Thomas Aquinas is never a purely passive state of rigid compliance. Instead, it requires an active, living response of the whole person—mind, will, and affections—engaged dynamically with God's grace and the demands of love rather than settling into mere legalism or inert acquiescence.
Moreover, for Rowan Williams Thomas Aquinas represents the gold standard of classical Christian metaphysics and Christology. In works like Christ the Heart of Creation, Williams treats Aquinas as a central hero who successfully maps out a non-competitive, harmonious relationship between the infinite God and finite creation.
He emphasizes Aquinas's view that esse (the act of being) is not a static "thing" or object, but the active, foundational reality by which anything exists. In Christology, Jesus's human agency and identity are entirely bound up with the personal esse of the divine Word without losing their distinct human integrity. Today we are often told to prioritize our own peace above all else. Aquinas challenges that comfort.
Williams reads Aquinas to argue that God's infinite action does not crowd out or compete with finite creaturely freedom. Rather contrary, the infinite utterly sustains the finite in an asymmetrical relationship where creation remains fully itself while entirely depending on God. In this sense Rowan Williams even uses Thomas Aquinas to critique later Reformation thinkers.
He's against the idea that Aquinas is an overly dry or abstract philosopher, and argues that the dense metaphysical scaffolding preserves the actual, concrete narrative of Jesus in the Gospels—an "uninterrupted performance" of divine love in ordinary human history. Indeed, if your tranquility is more important to you than the suffering of your neighbour, you have forfeited your own moral standing.
In exploring medieval psychology and ethics (such as in The Wound of Knowledge), Williams highlights how Aquinas links understanding (intellectus) and will together, finding their ultimate maturity in caritas (love)—a bridge over the metaphysical gulf between Creator and creation. Righteous anger is then righly regarded as the fuel of reform. If you do not feel it, you might want to ask yourself why.
[media=https://youtu.be/_oISZCXHhp4]
