Para além dos fantasmas: o rapto de Paulo e os limites do conhecimento humano na Suma Teológica de Tomás de Aquino

Abstract

Thomas Aquinas maintains that it is impossible for the human intellect, in the state of the present life, to understand actually without turning to phantasms. This thesis, which marks the necessity of the convertio ad phantasmata in intellectual operations in via, is stated and defended in the Prima Pars of the Summa Theologiae and has important consequences for the limitations of human knowledge in Aquinas’s philosophy. Indeed, if every act of understanding takes place by reference to phantasms derived from sensible experience, then even our knowledge of what is purely intelligible or spiritual can occur only in the same way. With respect to immaterial and purely intelligible realities, we can attain only a kind of knowledge that has its roots in material and sensible things and that always refers back to them through the convertio ad phantasmata. It follows, therefore, that such knowledge will always be imperfect, mediated, and relatively inadequate when compared to what these invisible realities truly are in themselves. The thesis of the necessity of the convertio, therefore, establishes limits to our knowledge of purely spiritual realities, and these limits are repeatedly affirmed by Aquinas throughout his entire work. Despite this, Paul was able to state in his Letter to the Corinthians that he had seen the “third heaven,” which the tradition understands—and Aquinas likewise in the Secunda Secundae—as meaning that the Apostle had an essential vision of God. Like Moses, Paul was raptured to the vision of the divine essence, which, however, cannot occur through any mediation whatsoever, phantasms included. The aim of the present study is to understand how Aquinas explains Paul’s rapture, that is, a direct vision of the essence of God, in light of the necessity that the intellect has, in the state of the present life, to understand by turning to phantasms. To this end, (i) we present the thesis of the necessity of the convertio, deepening its foundations and consequences; (ii) we present the principal articles of the question concerning spiritual rapture; and (iii) finally, we seek to relate them.