Nichols on Lossky and St Thomas

"The original Scholastic movement had not made the sharp distinction between personal experience and dogmatic theology which Lossky attacks.  St Thomas specifically says that the same understanding which the theologian gains by reflecting on sacra doctrina exists in a non-theologian through the 'connaturality' or sympathy with God which charity brings about.  In other words, an experimental intimacy with God, on the part of the saint or the lover of God, leads to an intuitive grasp of what the theologian comes to understand in a more roundabout way.  In the Secunda Pars of the Summa Theologiae, Thomas's account of the theological virtues and of the Gifts of the Holy Spirit sets out to show in some detail how this can be so.  Furthermore, the whole character of theology as a science in St Thomas is linked to the notion that by faith we have a share in the absolutely certain and manifest knowledge which God has of himself and which the blessed have of him by participation.  However, a good deal of later Scholasticism, without necessarily denying ex professo these convictions of St Thomas, was cast in a strict deductive mould, dependent on a somewhat narrow propositionalist view of faith, differing markedly from Aquinas' own.  A certain kind of neo-Scholasticism, accordingly, had difficulty coping with the contemplative, and subjectively engaged, aspect of historic Thomism. In brief, a breach had opened between theology and Christian experience."

Revd Dr Aidan Nichols OP, Light from the East