Quotes About Aquinas

There are indeed solid ontological foundations for an understanding of signals of transformation. Both Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin take the notion of God to be a direct perception of God's existence, one unmediated by reason, by revelation, by society, or by psychological need.

Aquinas was a superior servant; he betrayed little reaction to the news that there was a corpse in the chapel. He merely blinked once, slowly, and then crossed himself.

Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin concur on the claim that there is a kind of natural knowledge of God (and anything on which Calvin and Aquinas are in accord is something to which we had better pay careful attention).

The believer," says Aquinas, "has sufficient motive for believing, for he is moved by the authority of divine teaching confirmed by miracles and, what is more, by the inward instigation of the divine invitation."5

I can't tell you how Aquinas has enriched and changed my life, my thought. He has helped me to be a better evangelical, a better servant of Christ, and to better defend the faith that was delivered, once for all, to the saints.

Change just is the realization of some potentiality; or as Aquinas puts it, "motion is the actuality of a being in potency

Perhaps Aquinas's notably soft line on gluttony may have had something to do with the fact that the saint was said to have had what today we might call a weight problem.

Santo Tomás de Aquino lo explicaba con este ejemplo: «saber que alguien viene no es saber que Pedro viene aunque sea Pedro el que viene». A través de la oración y la contemplación podemos, a partir de esta intuición, identificar a quien ahora solo vislumbramos. Por ejemplo, el anhelo de sentido y verdad que todos compartimos es, según David Bentley Hart, «simplemente una manifestación de la estructura metafísica de la realidad».

Thus, for Aquinas, the New Law goes beyond the Sermon on the Mount and the other teachings of Jesus. It is nothing less than divine grace—divine life and power. Grace is the New Law that enables us to keep the commandments in a way that we as children of Adam couldn't on our own.

Third, as Brian Davies has emphasized, much discussion of the problem of evil seems to presuppose that God is a kind of moral agent who has certain duties which (so it is alleged) he has failed to live up to. But this way of thinking simply makes no sense given Aquinas's conception of God.

That God is very remote indeed from the things of our experience is nowhere clearer than in Aquinas's account of divine simplicity, which is perhaps the most controversial aspect of his teaching on the divine attributes. For Aquinas, God is "simple" in the sense of being in no way composed of parts (ST I.3).

attributes. For Aquinas, God is "simple" in the sense of being in no way composed of parts (ST I.3).

In his Summa Theologica, Saint Thomas Aquinas said, "To love is to will the good of the other."10 The modern philosopher Michael Novak refines this further by adding two words: "To love is to will the good of the other as other" (emphasis mine).11 He continues: "Love is not sentimental, nor restful in illusions, but watchful, alert, and ready to follow evidence. It seeks the real as lungs crave air.

Leading Christian theologians such as Augustine and Aquinas were not what today might be called 'strict constructionists.' Rather, they celebrated reason as the means to gain greater insight into divine intentions.

If somebody is going to try to paste a person's view on epistemology to me, then give me Thomas Aquinas. Don't give me Ayn Rand.

As Aquinas, the quintessential theologian, says: "The notion of form is most fully realized in existence itself. And in God existence is not acquired by anything, but God is existence itself subsistent. It is clear, then, that God himself is both limitless and perfect."28

Aquinas was unconvinced. The message of revealed religion contained in the Bible and church doctrine was meant for everyone, not just the rednecks among us. Likewise, every human being deserved to know the whole truth, not just a chosen elite. To fall for the notion of a "double truth" and argue there was one set of truths for reason and another for faith and never the two shall meet made nonsense of the idea of truth itself.

The problem was, Albert never made that lack of conflict explicit. For all his staggering erudition, he was never tempted to join up the two great existing systems of wisdom in the Western world: the school of Aristotle and Greek science and that of Plato and his Christian disciples, including Saint Augustine. That was the task Aquinas decided to undertake once he received his license to teach at the University of Paris in 1256.

The work Aquinas did in the next sixteen years changed the face of Western Christianity and philosophy.

the Summa Contra Gentiles and Summa Theologica. These last two alone total a stupefying two million words. They are a monumental fusion of learning and faith, and a reconciliation of ancient philosophy and Christian theology, without parallel even in the works of Saint Augustine. In fact, together they make Aquinas the one Christian thinker whose system can stand beside those of Aristotle and Plato—in part because it is a brilliant synthesis of the best of both thinkers.

In page after page of the Summa, Aquinas will calmly and tentatively assert a position. Then he looks around at all the counterpositions and objections. He examines whether they hold up under scrutiny; if not, he quietly refutes them and moves on to the next question. At one stroke, a Christian dialectic was born, more sophisticated than Abelard's and more all-embracing than Anselm's, because it stands on a reading of Aristotle's entire corpus.

The overriding issue for Aquinas is, "Is it true?" His Averroist colleague Siger of Brabant had asserted that if it was in Aristotle, then it must be true. Not necessarily, Aquinas says. He cites the Philosopher (as he calls Aristotle in both Summas) more often than any other non-Christian thinker. But he also finds powerful insights in Plato, in Saint Augustine, and in Dionysius the Areopagite.? Citations from the Bible always clinch the argument.

And in the middle is man, the highest and most rational of material beings but also the lowest of the spiritual beings, "the boundary line of things corporeal and incorporeal." Human beings occupy a crucial place in Aquinas's ordered nature. They are the one material being gifted with a soul. They are also the one spiritual being gifted with a mind, meaning an active intelligence ready to take on the challenges the material world offers.

For Aquinas as for Aristotle, human freedom boils down to the power to make choices. In the end, the morality of our actions must always be judged by the active will and the intentions behind them. It also implies the freedom to choose good over evil and the mental capacity to know the one from the other (which is why dogs and infants can't commit mortal sins).