Q0183

Thomas Aquinas

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

Grace does not destroy nature, but perfects it.
Thinker Thomas Aquinas
School Scholasticism
Source Summa Theologiae I, q.1, a.8 ad 2
Theme Nature
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with Summa Theologiae I, q.1, a.8 ad 2, within the tradition of Scholasticism. The wording below is a verified rendering prepared for careful reading rather than a claim of unique translation authority.

A short reading

Read in the register of nature, the sentence asks the reader to test an assumption rather than to collect a slogan. In Thomas Aquinas's wider work, similar claims are usually offered as prompts for judgment: what would have to be true for the sentence to hold, and what would follow if it did?

How to cite this quotation

APA: Thomas Aquinas. (n.d.). Grace does not destroy nature, but perfects it. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0183

MLA: Thomas Aquinas. “Grace does not destroy nature, but perfects it..” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0183.

Chicago: Thomas Aquinas. “Grace does not destroy nature, but perfects it..” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0183.

Same thinker

More from Thomas Aquinas

  1. Good is to be done and pursued, and evil avoided.
  2. Prudence is right reason applied to action.
  3. Whatever is received is received according to the mode of the receiver.

All quotations by Thomas Aquinas

Same theme

More on nature

  1. Upon those who step into the same rivers, different and different waters flow.
  2. Nothing can be created from nothing by divine agency.
  3. God, or Nature.
  4. [In the state of nature, the life of man is] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
  5. Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe…: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.

Browse the nature theme