Rivelazione delle verità divine naturali. Indagine su un’interpretazione di san Tommaso d’Aquino

Abstract

Paul Synave, in his famous article on the revelation of the natural truths (1930), indicated a path of interpretation of the thesis of St. Thomas on the necessity of the revelation of these truths. This thesis was very successful in conciliar magisterial documents like Dei Filius and Dei Verbum. Paul Synave read the texts of St. Thomas with the intention to show that the truths about God that can be known rationally are also revealed necessarily by a supernatural revelation. This article aims to challenge Synave’s thesis with a new interpretation of the texts of St. Thomas. This new interpretation of the thesis of the revelation of natural divine truths is based on chronological reading of the texts of St. Thomas, and not as Paul Synave does, on the “mature thought” of Aquinas. We will prove – reading the same texts as Paul Synave – that the thesis of the revelation of the natural truths does not derive from the reading of those texts. St. Thomas holds a more moderate thesis which does not include the necessity of revelation, that is, that the truths about God that can be known rationally, and that some philosophers demonstrate, are proposed to others as an act of faith in view of eternal salvation.