Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 20, No. 4 (2022): 1207– 1230 1207 God, the Absolute Wise Man, and the Study of Religion Clemens Cavallin NLA University College Bergen, Norway Te Absolute Wise Man In the beginning of the Summa contra gentiles (SCG), Tomas Aquinas remarks that, according to the Philosopher (that is, Aristotle), the wise man orders “things rightly and governs them well.” 1 To do this, the wise man needs to pay attention to the proper goal of his activity, that is, the good toward which he is to order things. Tis means that there can be wise politicians, carpenters, and philologists; but Aquinas has primarily in mind “the absolute wise man” (simpliciter sapiens), who queries both the origin of the universe and its end: God. Moreover, not only does the absolute wise man contemplate the nature of God, the ultimate source and truth of the universe, but as even the high- est theoretical wisdom (in the Aristotelean sense of sophia) has a practical, ordering dimension, it is also proper for such a person to teach truth and oppose falsehood—in other words, to be a teacher. 2 Toward the end of the frst chapter of SCG, “Te Ofce of the Wise 1 Tomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles [SCG] I, ch. 1 (Summa Contra Gentiles: Book One: God, trans. Anton C. Pegis [London: University of Notre Dame Press, 2014]). See also Summa Teologiae [ST] II–II, q. 45, a. 3, on the gif of wisdom, and I, q. 1, a. 6, on whether sacred doctrine is the same as wisdom. 2 See Aristotle, Metaphysics 1.2.982a: “For the wise man should not be instructed but should instruct, and it is not he who should obey another, but rather the less wise should obey him” (trans. Hugh Lawson-Tancred [London: Penguin, 2004]). Te tension is between sophia and phronesis, theoretical and practical wisdom, which are distinct from each other and yet integrated. See, for example, Jason Baehr, “Two Types of Wisdom,” Acta Analytica 27, no. 2 (2012): 81–97.