St. Thomas Aquinas: Reason, Faith, and the Nature of Being
St. Thomas Aquinas: Reason and Faith
Preliminary Question
To understand Thomist thought, we must address the scholastic problem: the compatibility of reason and faith. Reason alone can attain knowledge of the truths of the world (ontology), but about God, it can only say”what no” (natural theology). The God is, can only be known by man through reason, if it becomes the handmaiden of faith, to clarify their meaning (revealed theology).
Natural Theology
The Summa Theologica begins with questions of natural theology:
- a) Is it necessary to demonstrate the existence of God? Yes, because we cannot perceive God directly, and Atheism is an irrational attitude.
- b) What kind of demonstration would it be? It must be based on the world that the senses offer, reflecting the action of a necessary cause (proof a posteriori). The ontological argument (demonstration a priori) is wrong.
- c) What, specifically, do those demonstrations show? The five tracks.
- d) How does God show us in these demonstrations? As the mover of everything that changes (1st track), 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 ideas from other major Greek thinkers, Christians, and even Muslims or Jews, such as Plato, Plotinus, St. Augustine, Avicenna, Averroes, and Maimonides.
Anthropology
Man is the most perfect contingent being, because”it is created in the image and likeness of God” The man has body and soul. Being the seat of the soul powers, we resemble God more. This unity must be understood not in the Platonic sense (separate substances; body as a prison of the soul), nor in the strictly Aristotelian sense (the soul is the form of corporeal matter, and form and matter are not separable). The Thomist solution is to imagine the soul as a quasi-substance: the body can be removed temporarily, but it does not allow you to achieve perfection. That is why eternal life is to assume, 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.