Aquinas Sums Up
Jan. 20th, 2008 11:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloThere's a story they tell about St Thomas Aquinas. I don't have a text to hand and I'm probably misremembering but it goes something like this. Late in life he had a direct experience of the Divine. These things are impossible to communicate. If they weren't we'd all be enlightened by word of mouth and the spiritual life would be a doddle- which it isn't. Anyway that didn't stop the brothers from pestering him to tell them what it was that had happened to him. So he sat in his chair- he was a very large man- and he scowled and he ruminated and finally he nodded towards the massed volumes of the Summa Theologica- his life's work- one of the foundation stones of Western philosophy- and said, "Put it this way, if I'd known then what I know now I wouldn't have bothered."
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Date: 2008-01-20 03:31 pm (UTC)A doddle is something ridiculously easy. As in "that exam was a real doddle". :)
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Date: 2008-01-20 03:41 pm (UTC)Thank you, I guess if I were from England, knowing what a doddle is would be a doddle.
See LJ wingfoldchatter (today's entry) for more glorious....
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Date: 2008-01-20 04:29 pm (UTC)Is that your translation?
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Date: 2008-01-20 04:35 pm (UTC)