In his Commentary of the Gospel of Matthew, St. Thomas Aquinas makes the following comment about the Pharisees:
The Pharisees going out took counsel, that is among themselves, namely stupid counsel, how to capture him in his speech. And this was stupid because he was the Word of God, and the Word of God cannot be caught [literally, “comprehended”].
Stupid is not a word St. Thomas uses often or lightly. For him, it has a precise meaning. This is not a case of his merely expressing exasperation or disgust at the Pharisees’ malice. He was describing their action using the word he thought most appropriate. We can be sure he does so carefully. He was not one to use language loosely or crudely.
So were the Pharisees stupid? What could he mean? They were certainly learned and clever and even crafty. They even sent Herodians who held the opposite view of theirs about the paying of taxes with coins engraved with a little idol of the “Divine Caesar.” The Pharisees would want Our Lord to say “no” and so invite trouble with the occupying authorities and their allies, the Herodians. The Pharisees would want Our Lord to say “yes” and so offend their own party and other observant Jewish nationalists. They thought they had him in a bind. Either way he answered, they would have him with a malicious “Gotcha!”
Our Lord, however, shows himself to be much more clever than his enemies, as we might expect, and he answers in an unexpected way. In doing so, the Savior reveals the deeper question about the management of human affairs. He calmly asserts the absolute supremacy of God and the relative supremacy of the civil sovereign. Our Lord, after all, was not only clever in debate, but wise. A wise man sees the order of things from the highest vantage point. He understands questions in the light of the deepest principles that underlie the things discussed.
This does not surprise us, because Our Lord is the Incarnate Wisdom of God, who judges all things in the light of his perfect comprehension of them in their source, which is the creative power of God’s goodness. He called himself “the Truth.” The truth cannot be deceived or deceive others. The Pharisees were both deceiving and deceived. Thus, the Savior sternly addresses them as the hypocrites they are.
St. Thomas defines stupidity as the ignorance or the lack of consideration of the highest principles. A person is stupid only if he is ignorant of the most important and powerful truths. This is true of knowledge in general and of knowledge in a particular field. For example, an architect would be a stupid architect if he were ignorant of or ignored the laws of geometry and proportion. A musician would be stupid if he didn’t know the musical scale, and so on.
A man is stupid most of all if he denies the first cause and final end of all things, saying that the universe is random and without purpose; as the psalmist says, “The fool says in his heart there is no God.” The Pharisees were stupid, and their plottings were stupid because they were trying to trap the very Word of God in his words—a ludicrously impossible task!
Stupidity is thus the opposite of wisdom. Now, for Thomas, wisdom is a special kind of Christian knowledge. It is a knowledge that comes about through a union in love with God who is truth. Wisdom is a kind of unfailing instinct in judgment because its source is the Source himself. This implies that stupidity in the sense of a misjudgment of the very highest things has a moral quality. The wise man savors and loves and lives with the truth. The stupid person cannot see the Truth when he stands right before him.
The usual uncharitable and childish use of stupid as a term of abuse usually refers to small matters: social awkwardness, clumsy speech, ignorance of details of sports or fashion or the news. For Thomas, a man could be supremely wise and yet seem stupid according to these worldly standards. Our present society is rife with real stupidity. The most apparent and universal realities, like the objective nature of humans as male and female, or the obligation to tell the truth and never to lie, or the requirements of gratitude, are ignored or denied, and most of all God’s existence or his power is often questioned.
Thomas says this worldly stupidity is the mirror opposite of wisdom. Stupidity comes about when hearts and minds are bound only to earthly things, to physical pleasure and human opinion, a union with the lowest things. Wisdom is poured into hearts and minds by the gift of the Holy Spirit, which comes from the Heart of the Word of God, the very one whom the Pharisees stupidly thought to overcome in the war of words.
In the midst of all this, the Catholic Christian must cling to the supreme source of truth, the Word of God, by living a life of loving union with him. The less immersed in earthly things our minds and hearts are, the wiser we will be.
We are reminded of one great way to overcome our foolishness and become truly wise: by meditating on the mysteries of the life, ministry, passion, and glory of the Savior found in the holy rosary. This is a prayer that will unite us to the Word of God and thus keep us from being stupid.