St.

Thomas Aquinas

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St. Thomas Aquinas
The Biblical God and Humanity
In the 5th century, Augustine's writing is considered
to be the most influential in the early medieval period.
hypothesis, which we call the theistic hypothesis.
This means we shall ask whether or
not the existence of God provides the best
explanation of the existence of the world.
Religious people definitely do not treat God's
existence as a hypothesis, for
God is a constant presence. rather than a being
whose existence is accepted as
the best explanation of available evidence. In
neither the Jewish nor Christian
Bibles is there any argument for God's
existence.
For the biblical writers, proving
God's existence would be as pointless as trying to
prove the existence of the ali
we breathe. The religious problem reflected in the
Old Testament narratives is not atheism but
polytheism: not the denial of God but the worship
of too many
gods. Likewise, in the New Testament, the reality
of God is unquestioned due to
the conviction that in Jesus of Nazareth the eternal
God became flesh and dwelt
among human beings.
In its earliest missionary endeavors,
Christians directed their preaching to Jews
who accepted therealityofGod.lt was only
later when Christian
missionariesconfronted
a variety of naturalistic philosophy that
they felt the need to argue philosophically
for
the existence of God.
However, even then, the task was not considered
too formidable
for the basic structure of the arguments.
For Augustine (354-430 CE),philosophy is
amorsapiential the love of wisdom, tes
aim is to produce happiness, However, for
Augustine, isdom is not just an abstract
logical construction; butitissubstantially existent as
the Divine Logos.
Hence,philosophy
is the love of God: it is then, religious. Teachings of Christianity
are based on the love of
God, which Augustine's, Aquinas, and Anselm's arguments are
basically rooted.
For Augustine, Christianity, as presenting the full revelation of the
true God, is
the only full and true philosophy. However, we can love only that
which we know.
When comes this knowledge of God? It begins with faith and is
made perfect by
understanding. All knowledge leads to God, so that faith
supplements and enlightens
reason that it may proceed to ever richer and fuller
understanding. Indeed, without
this enlightenment of faith, reason invariably sooner or later, goes
astray.
As a French poetry laments:

Philosophie
J'ai tout lu Ihave everything.
J'ai tout vu I have seen all.
J'ai tout connu I knew all
J'ai tout entendu Ihave heard all.
J'ai tout eu Ihad it all.

Ihad lost..lam a bit

Etje sui.un peu perdu
It should be taken as a humble
acceptance of the fact that human
beings
alone, without God, are bound to fail.
As stated in John 15:5, I am the vine;
you are the
branches. If you remain in me and Iin
you, you will bear much fruit:apart
from me, you can
do nothing.
Further, to quote Psalms 4: The thoughts are
very deep! The dull man cannot
know. The stupid cannot understand this.
We must first of all prove that truth is attainable
by reason.Does not all knowledge
come from sensation, and does not the sense
constantly deceive us? For St. Augustine,
even if we grant that the senses yield no
certainty in themselves so that we can always
doubt their reports, one thing we cannot doubt,
and that is the fact that we doubt.
Here, then, is absolute certainty. Now, if we
doubt, we are and as doubting we must
be living rational beings.
We have then established with certainty three
grades
or levels of existence: mere being, living being, and
rational being. This certainty has
been established, not by turning outward through
sensation to the external world, but
by turning inward to the soul itself.
The lowest form of knowledge is that of sensation
yet as we ascend higher to
knowledge of rational principles, it is the will which
directs the mind's eye to truth, first
invading to the mind itself then upward to the eternal
Truth.
In his earlier writings,
Augustine speaks in Platonic phrase of
humanity as a rational soul using a mortal
body. Later, he favors "man is a rational
substance constituted of soul and body" In
both cases, the soul retains its proper
entity, and the soul apart from the body
may be
considered as a substance.
Only the pure in heart shall see God; the progress in
knowledge and wisdom is
not only speculative, it is more fundamentally practical
and moral.Augustine's theory of
knowledge is at one with the procedures of speculative
mysticism. From this mystic love
and intuition of God follow all the principles to direct
humanity in all their undertakings.
For St. Thomas Aquinas, another medieval
philosopher, of all creatures, human
beings have the unique power to change themselves
and things for the better.
His philosophy is best grasped in his treatises Summa
Contra Gentiles and Summa
Theologica. Aquinas considers the human being as
moral agent. We are both spiritual
and body elements, the spiritual and material. The
unity between both elements
indeed helps as to understand our complexity as
human beings. Our spirituality
separates us from animals; it differentiates moral
dimension of our fulfillment in
action.
Through our spirituality, we have a conscience.
Thus, whether we choose
to be "good" or 'evil" becomes our responsibility.
The concept of St. Thomas will be
elucidated in the next lessons,
• Augustine is a fourth century philosopher
whose groundbreaking philosophy infused
Christian doctrine with Neoplatonism. He
is famous for being an inimitable Catholic
theologian and for his agnostic
contributions to Western philosophy.
• Augustine’s adaptation of classical thought
to Christian teaching created a theological
system of great power and lasting
influence. His numerous written works, the
most important of which are Confessions
(c. 400) and The City of God (c. 413–426),
shaped the practice of biblical exegesis
and helped lay the foundation for much of
medieval and modern Christian thought. In
Roman Catholicism he is formally
recognized as a doctor of the church.
• his Confessions tells the story of his own
conversion from Manicheanism to
Christianity. His philosophical ideas
anticipated Saint Thomas Aquinas and
Descartes. His three-volume City of God
remains a classic of Christian apologetics.
And many find the roots of some of the
darker sides of Christian doctrine, from the
emphasis on original sin to the second-
rate status for women, in his works.
• His most important and enduring works
are the "Summa Theologica", in which he
expounds his systematic theology of the
"quinquae viae" (the five proofs of the
existence of God), and the "Summa
Contra Gentiles".
• From his consideration of what God is not,
Aquinas proposed five positive statements
about the divine qualities or the nature of
God:
• • God is simple, without composition of
parts, such as body and soul, or matter
and form.
• • God is perfect, lacking nothing.
• God is infinite, and not limited in the ways
that created beings are physically,
intellectually, and emotionally limited.
• • God is immutable, incapable of change
in respect of essence and character.
• • God is one, such that God's essence is
the same as God's existence.
• Aquinas believed that the existence of
God is neither self-evident nor beyond
proof. In the "Summa Theologica", he
details five rational proofs for the existence
of God, the "quinquae viae" (or the "Five
Ways"), some of which are really re-state•
ments of each other:
• • • •
• The argument of the unmoved mover (ex
motu): everything that is moved is moved
by a mover, therefore there is an unmoved
mover from whom all motion proceeds,
which is God.
• The argument of the first cause (ex
causa): everything that is caused is
caused by something else, therefore there
must be an uncaused cause of all caused
things, which is God.
• The argument from contingency (ex
contingentia): there are contingent beings
in the universe which may either exist
ornot exist and, as it is impossible for
everything in the universe to be contingent
(as something cannot come of nothing), so
there must be a necessary being whose
existence is not contingent on any other
being, which is God.
• •
• The argument from degree (ex gradu):
there are various degrees of perfection
which may be found throughout the
universe, so there must be a pinnacle of
perfectionfrom which lesser degrees of
perfection derive, which is God.
• •
• The teleological argument or
argumentfrom design (ex fine): all natural
bodies in the world (which are in
themselves unintelligent) act towards ends
(which is characteristic of intelligence),
therefore there must be an intelligent
being that guides all natural bodies
towards their ends, which is God.
• Aquinas believed that Jesus Christ was
truly divine and not simply a human being
or God merely inhabiting the body of
Christ. However, he held that Christ had a
truly rational human soul as well,
producing a duality of natures that
persisted even after the Incarnation, and
that these two natures existed
simultaneously yet distinguishable in one
real human body.