St. Thomas Aquinas: Reason, Faith, and the Natural Law
The Compatibility of Reason and Faith
A preliminary question in understanding Thomist thought is the solution given by St. Thomas to the scholastic problem: the compatibility of reason and faith. Reason alone can attain knowledge of the truths of the world (ontology). About God, however, reason can only say “what not” (natural theology). The God that is, can only be known by man through reason if it becomes the handmaiden of faith, to clarify its meaning (revealed theology).
Natural Theology
The Summa Theologica begins precisely with a number of questions of natural theology:
- Is it necessary to demonstrate the existence of God? Yes, because we cannot perceive God directly, and atheism is an irrational attitude.
- What kind of demonstration would it be? It must be assumed that the world offers to the senses, reflecting the action of a necessary cause (proof a posteriori). The ontological argument (demonstration a priori) is therefore wrong.
- What, specifically, are those demonstrations? The five ways.
- How does God show us in these demonstrations? As the mover of everything that changes (1st way), the uncaused First Cause from which all things were created (2nd), the necessary being (3rd), the Entity with the highest degree of perfection (4th), and the end toward which everything tends (5th).
Ontology
The world created by God is consistent, in general, with the explanation given by Aristotle:
- Theory of hylemorphism: all being is an integration of matter (hyle) and form (morph).
- Theory of the four causes: any change or movement in an entity is explained by the action of four causes: material, formal, efficient, and final.
- Aristotelian cosmology: the Earth is at the center of the universe.
However, the thought of St. Thomas is not just a repetition of Aristotelianism. In his effort to reconcile Aristotelian philosophy and Christian dogma, he also used brilliant ideas of other major Greek, Christian, and even Muslim or Jewish thinkers, such as Plato, Plotinus, St. Augustine, Avicenna, Averroes, Maimonides…
Anthropology
Man is a contingent being, more perfect because “he is created in the image and likeness of God.” Man has heart and soul. Being the seat of the soul, the powers of the heart more closely resemble God. This unity must be understood in a Platonic sense: separate substances; the body as a prison of the immortal soul, the soul needing the body at all. But neither strictly Aristotelian: the soul is the form of corporeal matter, as form and matter are not separable, the death of the body appears to represent the soul. The Thomist solution is to imagine the soul as a quasi-substance: the body can be removed temporarily, but it does not allow the soul to achieve perfection. That is why eternal life is to be assumed, that true happiness involves the resurrection of the flesh.
Ethics
.- The ultimate aim to humans is the
happiness Aristotle believed that happiness was achieved by exercising our intellectual faculties, that is, seeking the knowledge of the truth and the golden mean (virtue) between the passions .* But Sto. Thomas understands that as God being the supreme Truth and the high well-beyond the limited human intellect (mentioned above concerning the problem scholastic), full of happiness can not be achieved in this world alone .* after the resurrection of the body (ie the recovery of ontological plenitude of man), and the eternal contemplation of God can be attained this happiness to which we aspire .* Life should be therefore focused on get that eternal life which God has promised us if we keep his commandments.
But what commandments are those that we have to comply? Here routed such as the text of Question No 94 * God has established a set of principles that necessarily govern the world:eternal law .* Part of that eternal law regards human behavior: the natural law .* ** The natural law is universal (regards all human beings and in all ages) ** immutable (never changes) ** indelible ( is inscribed in the depths of the human heart, although humans may not know) .* The difference between human and other beings is that natural law allows disobedience, and not the rest of the eternal law. Human beings have the freedom to obey God’s laws or not. Politics in politics .- Also Sto. Thomas draws on Aristotelian thought, but it does not fold. His Christian and his ontological and ethical thinking led him to certain innovations .* There are three forms of legitimate government (monarchy, aristocracy and democracy) and three illegitimate (tyranny, oligarchy, demagogy) .* The ultimate goal of any form of government should be encouraging the eternal salvation of his subjects .** As the civil power should be subject-at least in certain cases, the ecclesiastical power .** On the other hand, the autonomy that Sto. Thomas has established for the reason for the faith, gives the president a degree of autonomy much greater, respect of religious power, that was accepted in medieval thought before him .* The right of any society must be founded on that part of natural law regards the coexistence between humans; party Sto. Thomas called the natural law / / 1VIA (movement) has a sense that things mueven2via (via the efficient cause) consists of the senses that exist in the world series Cauas effects and efficient, which in turn are the effects of other causas3via (via contingency) has to sense the existence of beings and corrupcibles be generated, ie beings contingentes.4via (via the limitation on the order of being) has to sense the existence of qualities in people in different perfeccion.5via degrees (via d ela purpose) has a sense that intelligent beings do not act according to his purpose.