Overview
Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) was the Dominican scholastic who synthesized Aristotelian philosophy with Christian theology in the Summa Theologiae and Summa contra Gentiles. Educated at Naples, Paris, and Cologne under Albert the Great, he taught in Paris and Italian studia. Canonized and later named a Doctor of the Church, he died en route to the Council of Lyon. Handbook dates: 1225–1274. His work became the backbone of Catholic philosophical theology.
Main ideas
Faith and reason are harmonious; theology uses philosophy as handmaid without collapsing into it. Five Ways argue from motion, causation, contingency, degrees, and teleology toward God. Natural law participates in eternal law and grounds moral precepts accessible to reason. Virtue ethics of Aristotle is baptized: infused theological virtues elevate acquired moral virtues. Essence and existence distinction structures created being. Analogy of being lets language speak of God without univocity or pure equivocity.
Major works
- Summa Theologiae
- Summa contra Gentiles
- Disputed Questions on Truth
- Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics
Legacy
Thomism dominated Catholic education and continually revives in analytic and continental forms. Legal theorists still debate natural law via Aquinas. He remains Christianity’s premier Aristotelian.
Themes in this archive
Nature (1) · Power (1) · Wisdom (1) · Knowledge (1)