Lesson 2a-2d (St. Thomas Aquinas)

• St. Thomas Aquinas


  Italian philosopher who produced the major work Summa Theologica, an attempt to synthesize Aristotle's philosophy and Christian writings
• Thomas Aquinas

  • Hailed as a doctor of the Roman Catholic Church
  • One of the figures who have fundamentally shaped the way we understand the Christian faith
  • A Dominican friar who has become the preeminent intellectual figure of the scholastic period of the Middle Ages
  • Contributed to the doctrine of the faith more than any other figure of his time, and perhaps even in the whole history of the Church
• Summa Theologiae


  Aquinas's magnum opus, a voluminous work that comprehensively discusses many significant points in Christian theology
• Thomas Aquinas was canonized in 1323

  
• The fundamental truth maintained and elaborated by Aquinas


  The promise right at the center of the Christian faith: that we are created by God in order to ultimately return to Him
• The Christian life


  About developing the capacities given to us by God into a disposition of virtue inclined toward the good
• Conscience


  A sense of right and wrong in us that we are obliged to obey, and this sense of right and wrong must be informed, guided, and ultimately grounded in an objective basis for morality
• There have been various thinkers and systems of thought emerging throughout history that could be said to present a natural law theory, with the one we will be focusing on being the medieval thinker Thomas Aquinas
• Aquinas's natural law theory is part of a much larger discussion, which is his moral theory taken as a whole, which in turn is part of a larger project, which is Aquinas's vision of the Christian faith

  
• Aristotle's philosophy


  Aquinas attempts to unify the Christian themes and concepts with Aristotelian ideas
• Subject


  The various powers and potentialities, not yet updated
• Form


  In the subject matter, organizes and gives it its true essence and existence
• Aquinas goes beyond the purely Aristotelian and posits the existence, under which an act is reality
• In God, existence and essence coincide, but in individual substances including humans, essence and existence are different
• Distributive justice


  That which divides the honors, riches, according to the qualities of each
• Commutative justice


  The rule that economic exchanges under the equal proportion principle
• The fundamental truth maintained and elaborated by Aquinas is the promise right at the center of the Christian faith: that we are created by God in order to ultimately return to Him
• The structure of Aquinas's magnum opus Summa Theologiae follows the trajectory of the Christian story
• Thomas Aquinas

  • Born in 1225 in Italy
  • Received instruction in liberal arts, literature, and catechism as a boy
  • Commenced undergraduate studies at the University of Naples at age 14
  • Earned the nickname "dumb ox" as a quiet and studious pupil
  • Granted special permission in 1256 to take a chair in theology at the University of Paris

  
• Thomas Aquinas was completely detached from all his work, all his writings, all his life, and asked the Church to decide what is worth saving and what should be discarded
• Thomas Aquinas


  • A man of palpable holiness, humble, obedient, and selfless in seeking the kingdom of God
  • Composed a magnificent Office for the Feast of Corpus Christi, containing hymns which are counted among the most beautiful specimens of medieval poetry, full of unction and tender devotion
• Synthesis of reason and faith


  Sacred theology, while based firmly on the word of God, employs truths known by reason in order to understand more deeply the mysteries God has revealed and to refute errors concerning them
• Sin damages human nature, but it cannot corrupt its essence - "nature is wounded, not destroyed"
• The grace of God does not work by external imposition but by a renewal of the inner man and all his faculties
• Imago Dei


  The image of God in man, which grace confers new sanctity and confirms old sanity, joining man to God and restoring man to himself
• The Summa Theologiae

  • Comprises some 3,122 articles or specific queries on doctrine, grouped into thematic questions
  • The first part speaks of God, the second part deals with man or the dynamic of human life, and the third part focuses on Jesus as our Savior
• The Christian life is about developing the capacities given to us by God into a disposition of virtue inclined toward the good
• Aquinas puts forward that there is within us a conscience that directs our moral thinking, which must be informed, guided, and ultimately grounded in an objective basis for morality
• The moral theory of Aquinas requires the judicious use of reason, grounding one's sense of right and wrong on human nature itself
• Neoplatonists like Plotinus


  Continued the Platonic idea of the good from the Classical Greek era into the Christian Middle Ages, inspiring later thinkers and allowing it to be thought anew in a more personal way as a creative and loving God
• Plato: 'The idea of good is the cause of science, and of truth in so far as the latter becomes the subject of knowledge; it is more beautiful than either truth or knowledge'
• Plotinus: 'The Good must be grasped cleanly standing to itself, not in any combination, the un held in which all have hold; for no other is such, yet one such there must be'
• Good


  Real and not something that one can pretend to make up or ignore
• The Platonic idea of the good would continue from the Classical Greek era well into the Christian Middle Ages, inspiring later thinkers and allowing it to be thought anew in a more personal way as a creative and loving God
• Plotinus: 'So do not, I urge you, look for The Good through any of these other things; if you do, you will see not itself but its trace: you must form the idea of that which is to be grasped cleanly standing to itself not in any combination, the un held in which all have hold; for no other is such, yet one such there must be.'
• We cannot possess ourselves of the power of this principle in its concentrated fulness: so to do one must be identical with it
• Any being we can see around is corporeal, possessed of a certain materiality or physical "stuff"
• Material cause


  The stuff that a being is made of
• Formal cause


  The shape that makes a being a particular kind
• Efficient cause


  Something which brings about the presence of another being