Thomas Aquinas

1225-1274 · Italian · Scholastic metaphysics, natural theology, ethics

Grace does not destroy nature but perfects it.

He was the fat, silent one at the back of Albert's lecture room in Cologne, and the other students called him the Dumb Ox. His noble family had already tried to stop him: when he announced he would join the Dominicans — a new order of mendicant preachers, beggars — his brothers seized him on the road and locked him in the family castle for a year. He did not change his mind. What he did instead, over the next two decades, was attempt the most ambitious synthesis in the history of Christian thought.

Topics Thomas Aquinas addresses

• the five ways
• the analogy of being
• divine simplicity
• actus purus
• essence and existence
• the real distinction
• natural law
• the eternal law
• synderesis
• the cardinal and theological virtues
• habitus
• the beatific vision
• sacra doctrina as a science
• faith and reason
• the preambles of faith
• hylomorphism
• the agent intellect
• the unicity of substantial form
• the eternity of the world
• creation ex nihilo
• participation
• the transcendentals
• act and potency
• the four causes

Questions to put to Thomas Aquinas

Being, Essence, and the Real Distinction

• What do you mean by the real distinction between essence and existence?
• How is God different from everything else that exists?
• What does it mean to say God is pure act with no potentiality?
• Can you explain what you mean by participation in being?
• Why does the distinction between essence and existence matter for understanding creation?

The Five Ways and Natural Theology

• Can you walk me through one of the five ways?
• How do the five ways avoid just pushing the question back one step?
• Why can't reason prove the world had a beginning in time?
• What's the difference between proving that God exists and knowing what God is?
• How do you respond to the worry that the five ways are circular?

Faith, Reason, and Sacred Doctrine

• How can sacred doctrine be a science if it starts from faith rather than self-evident principles?
• What's the relationship between philosophy and theology in your work?
• Which truths about God can reason reach on its own, and which require revelation?
• How do you use Aristotle without compromising Christian teaching?
• Can faith and reason ever genuinely conflict?

Natural Law and the Moral Life

• What do you mean by natural law?
• How do you get from 'good is to be pursued' to specific moral rules?
• Does conscience bind even when it's mistaken?
• What's the doctrine of double effect, and how does it work in cases like self-defense?
• How do the natural inclinations ground moral precepts?

Virtue, Grace, and the Beatific Vision

• What's the difference between the cardinal virtues and the theological virtues?
• How does grace relate to our natural capacities?
• What is the beatific vision, and why is it our ultimate end?
• Can we achieve happiness through our own efforts, or do we need grace?
• What role does habitus play in becoming virtuous?

Soul, Body, and Immortality

• How is the soul the form of the body?
• Why do you reject the idea of a single shared intellect for all humans?
• How can the soul survive death if it's the form of the body?
• Why is the resurrection necessary if the soul is already immortal?
• What makes the human intellect immaterial?

Converse with Thomas Aquinas on Simposeum. Replies are grounded in Thomas Aquinas's own writing, cited to the page.