Jaarboek Thomas Instituut 2006 - Thomas Instituut te Utrecht

NICHOLAS OF CUSA 39
Readers of this yearbook will be aware of the fact that this threefold
pattern in our knowing God - affirming because of God's creation of
all things, removing because of the infinite distance between God and
creatures, being aware of God exceeding all created things - has been
interpreted differently in the history of Thornism. One of the
consequences of a 'negative reading' of Aquinas' God-talk is that it
stresses Aquinas' awareness of the peculiar nature of our knowledge
of God as a form of knowledge that is utterly dependant on God's
will to reveal Godself. Therefore, Aquinas characterizes theology as
sacra doctrina, holy teaching in which we receive our teaching from
God - or Christ as God incarnate - through Scripture, and transmit
this teaching to others. This explains why Aquinas may use sacra
doctrina and sacra Scriptura as synonyms, and why Scripture and the
tradition of the Church are so important as sources of theological
reasoning.l"
In the first question of his Summa Theologiae in which
Aquinas discusses the nature of sacra doctrina he refers to Dionysius
and his 'negative theology' once more when he writes about the
reasons for metaphorical language in Scripture. The second of these
reasons is interesting since it might give us a hermeneutical insight
about the role of religious others in our approach to God.
As Dionysius says in The Celestial Hierarchy, it is more
fitting that divine matters should be conveyed under the figure
of lowly bodies than of noble bodies, and this for three
reasons. First, because by this human minds are the better
preserved from error; for it is clear that these things are not
literal descriptions of divine matters, which is something that
might have been open to doubt had they been expressed under
the figure of noble bodies, especially for those who could
think of nothing nobler than bodies. Second, because this is
more appropriate to the knowledge of God that we have in this
life; for what God is not is clearer to us than what God is.
Therefore likenesses drawn from things farthest away from
God fOTTnwithin us a truer estimate that God is above
whatever we may say or think of God. Third, because in this
10 See Wilhelmus G.B.M. Valkenberg, Words of the Living God: Place and
Function of Holy Scripture in the Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas, Leuven
2000,8-18.