I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory.
Psalm 63:2
Thomas Aquinas was one of the greatest thinkers of thirteenth-century Europe. An Italian Dominican, he was the foremost figure in Scholastic philosophy and theology. His prodigious work championed both faith and reason. In terms of influence, he ranks with Augustine and Luther. Aquinas was a heavyweight of spiritual commitment and intellectual force.
But something happened that upended his life. Alban Butler’s Lives of the Saints relates the account:
On the feast of St. Nicholas [in 1273, Aquinas] was celebrating Mass when he received a revelation that so affected him that he wrote and dictated no more, leaving his great work the Summa Theologiae unfinished. To Brother Reginald’s (his secretary and friend) expostulations he replied, “The end of my labors has come. All that I have written appears to be as so much straw after the things that have been revealed to me.” When later asked by Reginald to return to writing, Aquinas said, “I can write no more. I have seen things that make my writings like straw.”
Aquinas discovers what many intelligent people discover about God: encounter obliterates analysis. Philosophy, theology, and doctrine—even if true—collapse in the face of divine presence. Job finds this out and exclaims, “I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.” The Apostle Paul (another intellectual powerhouse) learns this for himself on the road to Damascus and later writes: Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? Paul dismisses even the Mosaic law—of which he was an expert—as a mere shadow of the things to come. The reality, he now insists, is Christ. Everything else is chaff.
This is a lesson some of us are slow to learn. We can think of the gospel as a collection of bullet points to be made or that the power of the good news is in superior arguments or reasonable conclusions. But no one encounters God through debate or doctrine. The scriptures themselves are devoid of divine presence. As Jesus tells the Jewish leaders, “You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and These are the very scriptures that testify about me.” The presence of God shows everything else for what it is: just so much straw.
The only thing that Christians have to offer the world is our testimonies. It’s not sound arguments or the four spiritual laws but, as John tells us, what we have seen and heard. It’s fine for us to share what we believe, but the power is in sharing what we have actually experienced. The world needs our actual witness not our biblical hearsay.
This is, of course, exactly what God has always had in mind. “You are my witnesses,” declares the Lord through Isaiah, “that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he.” Upon his resurrection, Jesus reminds his disciples of all that has transpired, then tells them, “You are witnesses of these things.” And just before his ascension, he promises his assembled followers, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses.” Paul understands his whole ministry as a testimony, that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. Paul is a witness because he himself has experienced reconciliation with God through Jesus, whom, by the way, Paul had previously been persecuting. Demonstration disarms dogma.
Whether or not others believe our testimony is a different matter. They have a testimony too. Their experiences are just as real and they are witnesses just as Christians are. The prophet Isaiah actually invites them to testify: All the nations gather together and the peoples assemble . . . Let them bring in their witnesses to prove they were right, so that others may hear and say, “It is true.” This is not about who has the strongest argument, but about who has seen and heard the truth.
Sometimes the testimony about Jesus is welcome, sometimes not. The world may distort the facts of the gospel in order to refute it (the straw man fallacy) and often may attempt to discredit or silence the testimony altogether. But those, like Aquinas, who have experienced the presence of the living God will be his witnesses, confirmed by the Holy Spirit, and vindicated upon the return of Christ. The rest of it, including our own lives, is but straw.
“I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God.”
John 1:34
