Thomas Aquinas

Thomas Aquinas an Italian Dominican friar, priest and theologian (1225-1274), reckoned among the greatest of the medieval scholastics and the principal architect of the synthesis between Christian faith and the philosophy of Aristotle. His Summa Theologiae remains the most influential systematic theology of the Latin West, and in 1323 he was canonised as a saint.

Life and Formation

Thomas was born in 1225 at Roccasecca, near Aquino in southern Italy, the son of a noble family related to the counts of Aquino. He received his early education at the Benedictine monastery of Monte Cassino and then studied at the University of Naples, where he encountered the philosophy of Aristotle. Against the wishes of his family he entered the Dominican order, an event that caused a celebrated dispute with his relatives.

He studied under Albert the Great at Cologne and Paris, the great centre of theology in the thirteenth century, and became a master of theology at Paris in 1256. He taught in Paris and in the Dominican houses of Italy, and for part of his career he served as lecturer and adviser at the papal court. He was physically large and slow of speech, and his fellow students nicknamed him the dumb ox.

His short life was one of unremitting study and writing. He composed commentaries on Aristotle and on Scripture, disputed questions, and the great systematic works that made his name. In 1274, summoned to the Second Council of Lyons, he fell ill and died at the abbey of Fossanova. His last months were marked, according to witnesses, by an experience that led him to call all his writings straw.

Faith, Reason and the Aristotelian Synthesis

The central achievement of Aquinas was to show that the philosophy of Aristotle, recovered in the West through Arabic and Jewish intermediaries, could be reconciled with Christian revelation. He rejected the view that faith and reason must conflict, arguing that they are two complementary ways of arriving at truth, both ultimately grounded in God, and that reason can establish many truths which faith confirms and completes.

He distinguished sharply between what can be known by natural reason, such as the existence of God and the immortality of the soul, and what must be accepted on revelation, such as the Trinity and the incarnation. This distinction allowed him to use pagan philosophy confidently while reserving the mysteries of faith to their proper source. It also gave theology a scientific structure, with its own principles and method.

His proofs for the existence of God, the so-called five ways, proceed from features of the world we observe, such as motion, causation and design, to the existence of a first cause. These arguments owe much to Aristotle and to the Islamic philosophers, and they illustrate his confidence that the created order bears intelligible traces of its maker.

The Summa Theologiae

The Summa Theologiae, begun around 1265 and left unfinished at his death, is the masterwork of scholastic theology. It is arranged in three parts, treating God and creation, the moral life, and Christ and the sacraments, and each topic is developed through a sequence of objections, a contrary authority, a resolution and replies. The format enacts a disciplined search for truth through debate.

The second part, on ethics, contains his account of happiness, of the virtues, and of law. He argues that human beings are directed toward beatitude, that the moral virtues perfect the natural powers of the soul, and that the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity elevate them. His discussion of the natural law, the participation of rational creatures in the eternal law of God, became one of the foundations of Western political and legal thought.

The work is remarkable for its clarity, its balance and its willingness to state opposing views at their strongest before answering them. Although never completed, it was studied and commented on for centuries and became the standard textbook of Catholic theology. Its method, the disputed question, trained generations of students in rigorous reasoning.

Law, Virtue and Political Thought

Aquinas developed a comprehensive theory of law that distinguishes eternal law, natural law, human law and divine law. Eternal law is the rational order by which God governs the universe; natural law is the share in it that human reason can discover; human law is its application to particular circumstances. This framework gave later thinkers, including Grotius and the founders of international law, a vocabulary for discussing universal moral principles.

He held that human law derives its authority from its justice and that an unjust law is a corruption of law rather than law in the true sense. This scholastic principle, developed by later authors, provided a basis for limiting political power and for the idea that rulers are bound by a higher standard than their own will. It was invoked both by defenders of the church and by critics of tyranny.

In his political writing he defended a form of government that combines monarchy with popular participation, and he argued that the purpose of the state is to promote the common good and to prepare human beings for the higher end of beatitude. His conception of human dignity as rooted in reason and freedom gave medieval thought a lasting humanist dimension.

Influence and Reputation

The condemnation of certain propositions from the work of his teacher and the controversies with the Franciscan school made Aquinas suspect in his own century, but his authority grew steadily after his death. He was canonised in 1323, and in the sixteenth century his theology became the official teaching of the Catholic church. In 1879 Pope Leo XIII made Thomism the foundation of Catholic higher education.

His influence extends far beyond theology. His commentaries on Aristotle helped shape the reception of ancient philosophy in the universities, and his discussions of law and virtue entered the secular tradition through writers such as Suarez and Grotius. His account of just war and natural right is still debated by moral and legal philosophers, and his defence of reason against fideism left a permanent mark on Western thought.

He is remembered as the greatest of the medieval scholastics and as the thinker who made Aristotle safe for Christian Europe. He was a saint, a mystic and a poet, author of hymns still sung, as well as a philosopher of extraordinary technical virtuosity. Few thinkers have combined such systematic power with such serene confidence that faith and reason point ultimately to the same truth.

See also

• Scholasticism
• Aristotle
• Natural law
• Summa Theologiae