Christian History Home > Issue 73 > A Mingling of Minds
A Mingling of Minds
Why was one of Christianity's best thinkers so ready to learn from a Muslim and a Jew?
David B. Burrell | posted 1/01/2002 12:00AM
The work of Thomas Aquinas may be distinguished from that of any of his contemporaries by his attention to the writings of Moses Maimonides (1135-1204), a Jew, and Avicenna, (980-1037) a Muslim. His contemporaries, especially in Paris, were responsive to the work of another Muslim, Averroes (1126-1198), for his rendition of Aristotle, but Aquinas's relation to Averroes and to those who took their lead from him was far more ambivalent.
Aquinas respected Rabbi Moses and Avicenna as fellow travelers in an arduous intellectual attempt to reconcile the horizons of philosophers of ancient Greece, notably Aristotle, with those reflecting a revelation originating in ancient Israel, articulated initially in the divinely inspired writings of Moses. So while Aquinas would consult "the Commentator" (Averroes) on matters of interpretation of the texts of Aristotle, that very aphorism suggested the limits of his reliance on the philosophical writings of Averroes, the qadi from Cordova.
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