Chapter 47 Chapter Thirteen St. Thomas Aquinas

St. Thomas Aquinas (born 1225 or 1226 AD, died 1274 AD) is considered the greatest of the scholastics.His system must be taught as the only correct system in all Catholic cultural and educational institutions that teach philosophy; this has been the practice since Leo XIII's decree in 1879 AD.St. Thomas is thus not only of historical importance, but also of current influence, just as much as Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and Hegel, and indeed more so than the latter two.He followed Aristotle so closely on most occasions that the Stacilan had almost paternal authority in the eyes of Catholics; Virtue is also considered impious.But that wasn't always the case in the past.In the time of Aquinas, the promotion of Aristotle and the struggle against Plato were still to be carried out.The power of Aquinas, later victorious, was maintained until the Renaissance; thereafter.Plato regained the supremacy in the opinions of most philosophers, and people's understanding of Plato at this time has improved compared with that in the Middle Ages.In the seventeenth century a man could be both an Orthodox and a Cartesian; Malebranche, though a priest, was never condemned; but such liberty is a thing of the past today. ;Catholic monks, if they want to deal with philosophy, must recognize St. Thomas.

St. Thomas, son of Count Aquinas.The count's castle in the Kingdom of Naples, near Monte Cassino, where the education of the "Dr. Angel" began.He studied for six years at the University of Naples founded by Friedrich II; then he became a monk of the Dominican Order and went to Cologne to study under the leader of Aristotle in philosophy at that time, Al Bertus Magnus.After living for a time in Cologne and Paris, Thomas returned to Italy in AD 1259, where he remained for the rest of his life—residing in Paris for another three years, AD 1269-1272.The Dominican monks of Paris at that time had been at odds with the authorities of the University of Paris because of their Aristotelianism, and they were suspected of sympathizing with the heresy of the Averroes, who at that time formed a A powerful faction.The Averroes, according to their interpretation of Aristotle, maintain that the soul of man, so long as it has individuality, is not immortal;

Immortality belongs only to the intellect, and the intellect is impersonal, and it is the same in different intellectual beings. When they are forced to realize that this doctrine is contrary to the Catholic faith, they flee into the "double truth" escape. In the words, the so-called double truth refers to: one is the philosophical truth based on reason, and the other is the theological truth based on revelation.All this brought Aristotle into disrepute, and St. Thomas in Paris worked hard to undo the harm caused by excessive adherence to Arabic doctrine.In this work he has had extraordinary success.

Aquinas, unlike his predecessors, did have a good knowledge of Aristotelian philosophy.His friend William of Murbeck supplied him with some translations of the original Greek, while he himself engaged in writing some notes.Before Aquinas, people's conception of Aristotle has been clouded by the addition of neo-Platonism and he proclaimed the real Aristotle and hated Platonism, even if it appeared in St. Augustine's speech is no exception.He finally convinced the Church that Aristotle's system, which had been misinterpreted by Moslems and Christian Averroes, was preferable to Plato's as the basis of Christian philosophy. .It seems to me that the view from Aristotle's On the Soul to Averroes is much more natural than that to Aquinas; but the Church, since St. Thomas, has taken a different view.I could go a step further and say that Aristotle's views on many logical and philosophical questions are not definitive and have been proven mostly wrong; Catholic philosophers and teachers of philosophy are not allowed to preach on this point of.

The most important work of St. Thomas is the Compendium of the Objections of the Heretics, written in AD 1259-1264.The book establishes its Christian truth through debate with a hypothetical reader who has not yet converted to Christ; this hypothetical reader, it has been speculated, is the kind of person usually considered to be well versed in Arabic philosophy.He also wrote a book called the Summa Theologica, which is almost as important as the previous one, but which is of less interest to us, because it does not presuppose less of the truth of Christ. The following is an excerpt from the Compendium of Objections of the Heretics.

Let us first examine what is meant by "wisdom."A man may be wise at a particular task, such as building a house; it means that he knows how to achieve a particular end.But all specific purposes are subordinate to the purpose of the universe, so wisdom itself is related to the purpose of the universe.The purpose of the universe is the intellectual good, which is truth.The search for wisdom in this sense is the most perfect, noblest, most profitable, and most pleasurable enterprise.All this is confirmed by citing the authority of the "Great Philosopher", namely Aristotle. My purpose, says Aquinas, is to illustrate the truths proclaimed by the Catholic faith.

But here I must rely on natural reason, for the pagans never accepted the authority of scriptures.But natural reason is wanting in the affairs of God; it justifies some parts of the faith, but not others.It can prove the existence of God and the immortality of the soul, but not the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Last Judgment.So far as it can be argued, the results are consistent with the Christian faith, and there is nothing in the revelation that is contrary to reason.But it is important to distinguish those partial beliefs that can be justified by reason from those that cannot.Therefore this Epistle is divided into four volumes, the first three of which do not refer to revelation except in order to prove that it is consistent with the conclusions reached by reason; and things that cannot be known apart from revelation.

The first step is to prove the existence of God, which some people think is not necessary because (they say) the existence of God is self-evident.This assertion would be true if we knew the essence of God, since (as will be proved later) in God essence and being are identical.But we know nothing of the nature of God except a very imperfect knowledge.The wise man knows more about the nature of God than the fool; and the angels know more than both; but no creature has enough knowledge to deduce the existence of God from the nature of God.For this reason the ontological argument is rejected. We must keep in mind that what can be verified by religious truth can also be learned by faith.These proofs are difficult, and can only be understood by the learned; but faith is necessary to the ignorant, to the youth, and to those who are engaged in practical work and have no time to study philosophy.For these people, revelation is enough.

Some people say that people can only know God by faith.If, they maintain, the principles of the demonstration are known to us from experience produced by the senses, as stated in the Second Analysis, then nothing beyond the senses cannot be demonstrated.But this assertion is false; and even if it were true, God is known by his perceivable operations. The existence of God is proved, as in Aristotle, by the argument of the non-passive agent.Some things in the world can only be moved, while others can be both moved and initiated.Everything that is moved is moved by something, and since it is impossible to go back endlessly, we must at some point come across something that moves rather than moves. .This non-passive initiator is God.It may be objected to this argument that it involves the eternity of motion which Catholics have long dismissed.But this objection is a mistake: the argument, which rests well on the assumption of the eternity of motion, is only strengthened by the opposite assumption, that it involves a beginning, that is, a first cause. .

In the Summa Theologica, five arguments for the existence of God are presented.First, the argument for the unmoved initiator is as above.The second is the argument for the first cause, also based on the impossibility of infinite retrogression.Thirdly, that all necessity must have its first source; this is much the same as the second argument.Fourth, there are all kinds of perfect things in the world, and these must originate from some perfect and beautiful things.Fifthly, We find even many inanimate beings accomplishing a purpose: this purpose must exist externally to these inanimate things, since only living things can have an inner purpose.

Let us go back to the book "Synopsis of the Refutation of the Heretics".Having proved God's existence, we can now mention many facts about God, but these are, in a sense, negative: we can only learn about God's nature by what he is not.God is eternal because he is immovable; God is immutable because he does not contain the potentiality of passivity.David of Dinant (the materialist pantheist of the early thirteenth century) "had shouted" that God was one with primordial matter; this is paradoxical, since primordial matter is pure passivity, while God is pure activity.In God there are no parts, therefore He is not a body, for a body always has parts. God is his own essence, otherwise he would not be one, but would be composed of essence and being. (This is important) In God Essence and Being are one and the same.There is no chance in God, which cannot be specified according to any substantial distinction; it does not belong to any class; he cannot be defined.However, he has no lack of superiority of any kind.All things resemble God in some respects and not in others.It is more proper to say that all things are like God than that God is like all things. God is good, and his own good; he is the good of all good, he is wise, and the actions of his wisdom are his essence.He understands in his own essence, and understands himself fully. (We remember John Scotto, who had a different opinion.) Though there are no constituents in the divine intellect; God understands many things.This may seem like a problem, but things that God understands have no physical existence in God.At the same time, they do not exist by themselves, as Plato thought, because natural things cannot exist without matter and cannot be understood by humans. But God had to understand forms before he could create anything.The solution of this difficulty is as follows: "The conception of the divine intellect, - which is his word, - as God understands himself, is not only the image of the known God himself, but everything that resembles the divine essence. The likeness of God. Thus many things, by a knowable form, which is the Divine Essence, and by a known will, which is the Word of God—can be understood by God." Every form, as long as it is a positive something, is a completion.The intellect of God contains in his essence the qualities inherent in each thing, by understanding where each thing is like him and where it is not; The essence is knowledge, not reason.Thus the plant is like God in that it is alive, but not in that it has no knowledge; the animal is like God in that it has knowledge, but in that it has no reason. but not like God.Creation and God are always distinguished by a negation. God understands all things at the same instant.His knowledge is not a possession; Nor is it reasoned or logical.God is truth. (This has to be taken literally.) Now we are faced with a problem that puzzled both Aristotle and Plato.Can God know individual things, or only truths in general?Christians, because of their belief in providence, must think that God knows everything; nevertheless, there are strong arguments against this view.St. Thomas enumerates seven such arguments, and then refutes them one by one.The seven arguments are as follows: 1.Since individuality is a signate matter, nothing immaterial can know it. 2.Individuals are not eternal and cannot be known when they do not exist, so they cannot be known by an eternal and unchanging being. 3.Individuals are contingent, not necessary; hence no exact knowledge of them is possible except when they exist. 4.Some individuals arise from will, and this can only be known by those who have the will. 5.The number of individuals is infinite, and this infinity cannot be known. 6.Individuals are too small to be worthy of God's attention. 7.There is evil in some individuals, but God cannot recognize evil. Aquinas replied that God knows individuals because he is their origin; This thing is as present, but God Himself is out of time; God knows our hearts and our secret wills, God knows infinite things, but we do not.God knows small things, for nothing is quite small, and everything has something noble; otherwise God would know only himself.Besides, the order of the universe is extremely noble, but if there is no knowledge of its small parts, its noble order will not be understood.Finally, God knows evil.For knowing anything good involves knowing its opposite, evil. God has a will; his will is his essence, and his main object is the divine essence.When God desires himself, he desires everything else, for God is the end of all things.He even wished for things that hadn't yet appeared.He desires his own being and goodness, and although he desires other things, he does not have to desire this.God has free will; though we may ascribe a reason to his will, we cannot ascribe a cause.God cannot desire the impossible in itself; for example, he cannot make a contradiction real.St. Thomas's example of the supernatural is not quite appropriate; he says that God cannot make a man an ass. In God there is joy and love; God hates nothing and has the virtues of contemplation and positivity.He is happy, and that is his own happiness. We now turn (in the second book of the book) to the view of creation.This is useful in refuting some fallacies about God.Contrary to what the ancients believed, God created the world out of nothing.Some things that God cannot do are brought up anew.He cannot be an object, or change himself; he cannot fail; He cannot weary, or forget, or repent, or rage, or mourn; he cannot make a man soulless, or make the sum of the angles of a triangle not equal to two right angles.He cannot undo the past, sin, create another God, or make himself non-existent. The second volume of the book deals mainly with the question of the human soul.All spiritual substances are immaterial and immortal; angels have no body, while in man the soul is united with the body.The soul, as Aristotle said, is the form of the body, and man has only one soul, not three.The whole soul pervades every part of the body.Animal souls are not immortal, which is always different from human souls. The intellect is a part of the soul of every man; there is not, as Averroes maintains, that there is but one intellect in which all participate.Souls are not inherited from semen, but are recreated with each individual.Indeed, there is such a difficulty: The birth of the illegitimate child seems to make God an accomplice in adultery.But this criticism is only superficially pleasing. (One great objection which puzzled St. Augustine was the inheritance of original sin. It is the soul that sins, but if the soul does not inherit but recreates, how can it inherit the sin of Adam? Thomas does not discuss this. thing.) Discourse on the question of universals is linked to the intellect.St. Thomas' position is the same as Aristotle's.The universals do not exist outside the soul, but in knowing the universals the intellect understands something outside the soul. The third volume of the book deals mainly with ethical issues.Evil is not intentional, it is not an essence, and it has an accidental good cause.All things tend to resemble God, and God is the ultimate of all things.Human happiness does not lie in lust, fame, splendor, riches, worldly power, and gratification of the flesh, nor does it lie in the senses. A man's true happiness lies not in moral action, but in the contemplation of God, for moral action is but a means.But the knowledge of God which most men have is not enough; nor is that knowledge of him by argument, or even by faith.In this life, we cannot see the essence of God, nor can we enjoy supreme happiness; but after death we will meet God face to face. (Not literally, he reminds us. For God has no face.) This happens not by our natural forces but by the light of God; And even then, we don't see him in full.Because of this witnessing, we become participants in eternal life, that is, life outside time. Providence does not exclude sin, chance, free will, chance and luck.Evil is for a second reason, similar to a great artist using bad tools. Not all angels are the same, and there are levels among them.Every angel is a unique specimen of his kind.Since angels have no bodies, they can only be distinguished by species, not by position in space. Astrology, on ordinary grounds, should be rejected.When Aquinas answered the question of "Is there a destiny", we may call the order made by God "fate", but it is more wise not to call it that way.Because "fate" is a pagan word.From this, it leads to the argument that although God cannot be changed, prayer is still useful. (I have failed to follow this argument.) God sometimes works miracles, and no one else can.But magic is possible with the help of the devil; it has nothing to do with real miracles, and is not due to the help of the stars. The law of God directs us to love God; next, to love our neighbor.It forbids adultery because parents are supposed to live together during the upbringing of their children.It forbids birth control because it is contrary to nature; nevertheless, it does not forbid lifelong celibacy.Marriage should be indissoluble, since fathers are needed in the education of children; On the one hand the father is more rational than the mother, on the other hand he is physically stronger when it is necessary to discipline his children.Not all sexual intercourse is sinful, because it is natural: but to believe that married status is as good as abstinence is to fall into Jovian heresy.Strict monogamy is necessary; polygamy is unfair to women, and polyandry makes paternity uncertain.Blood kinship had to be banned because it disrupted family life.In the book, there is a strange theory against brother and sister rape: if brothers and sisters form a love between husband and wife, because the mutual gravitational force is too strong, it will lead to too much intercourse. It is worth noting that all these arguments about sexual morality are based on purely rational considerations rather than divine commandments.Here, as in the first three books, Aquinas, after some reasoning, is fond of citing scriptures to prove that reason leads him to conclusions consistent with scriptures, without appealing to authority before arriving at them. . The discussion on self-sacrifice poverty is extremely lively and interesting.The conclusions reached at last were, as might be expected, consistent with the principles of the order of the dervishes.But the objections of the lay monks are also quoted, and written with as much force and truth as if he had heard them himself. Then, speaking of sin, predestination, and divine election, his views, in general, belonged to Augustine.A man loses his ultimate right to all eternal life by committing a capital sin.Therefore, he should be punished forever.No one can be freed from sin except by grace, and if a sinner is unrepentant, he is worthy of condemnation. A man needs grace to persevere in doing good, but no one is worthy of God's help.God is not the cause of sin, but He keeps some in sin and saves others from sin.With regard to predestination, St. Thomas, seems to hold the same position as St. Augustine, that there is no reason why some should go to heaven and others should go to hell.He also believed that those who were not baptized could not go to heaven.This is not a truth that can be proved by reason alone; it is revealed in John 3:5. Book IV of the original book dealt with the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Papal Supremacy, the Sacraments, and the resurrection of the body.These are addressed primarily to theologians rather than to philosophers, so I will simply state them as follows: There are three ways of knowing God: through reason, through revelation, and through the intuition of things known only by revelation beforehand.He said little about the third route.A writer inclined to mysticism would certainly have more to say about this than the first two, but Aquinas' temperament was more speculative than mystical. The Greek Church was condemned by him for denying the dual origin of the Holy Spirit and the supremacy of the Pope.He also reminds us that although Christ was conceived by the Holy Spirit, we should not imagine that Christ is the Son of the Holy Spirit according to the flesh. Even the sacraments performed by wicked priests are valid.This point is doctrinally important.There were many priests who lived so sinful a life that pious people feared that such priests would not be able to administer the sacraments.This situation is embarrassing, because no one can know for sure whether the marriage he performed or whether his atonement was effectively forgiven.This situation led to heresy and schism, as some Puritan-minded people sought a separate priesthood that was more morally irreproachable.Therefore, the church had to assert strongly that the sin in the priest did not deprive him of the power to perform the sacrifices. A final issue to be discussed is the resurrection of the body.Here, as elsewhere, Aquinas does justice to the arguments against orthodoxy.One of these seems intractable at first glance: St. Aquinas asked: What would happen in the future if a man ate nothing but human flesh all his life, and his parents were like him?It seems unfair that those victims should lose their bodies at the last day as a result of his gluttony; yet what would be left to constitute his body?This difficulty, which at first glance seems insurmountable, I am pleased to point out, has been successfully resolved by him.St. Thomas pointed out that the identity of the body does not lie in the maintenance of the original particles of matter; the matter that constitutes the body is constantly changing due to the process of eating and digesting during life.Therefore, even though the man-eating man did not have the same physical composition when he was resurrected, he still got the same body as before.Introduction to the Book "A Compendium of Objections of the Heretics" Let us stop with this comforting thought. Aquinas's philosophy is broadly consistent with that of Aristotle, and the reader who accepts or rejects the philosophy of the Stagillian accepts or rejects Aquinas' philosophy to the same extent.Aquinas's ingenuity lies in the slight adaptation of Aristotelian philosophy to Christian teaching.In his day he was considered a bold innovator; even after his death many of his doctrines were condemned by the Universities of Paris and Oxford.He is better at systematization than originality.Even if every one of his theories is wrong, the "Synopsis" will still be a magnificent edifice of knowledge.When he comes to refute a theory, he often endeavors, and always endeavors to do justice, to state it first.His clarity and clarity in distinguishing between the two classes of arguments derived from reason and those derived from revelation are truly admirable.He knew Aristotle well and had a deep understanding of him.On this point, all the Catholic philosophers before him have not talked about it. However, the above-mentioned advantages seem to be far from enough to justify his great reputation.The statement about the appeal to reason is in a sense not honest, because the conclusion to be reached has already been determined in advance.Taking the non-dissolution of marriage as an example, the rationale for advocating the non-dissolution of marriage is the usefulness of fathers in educating their children. (a) the father is more rational than the mother, and (b) the father is physically stronger and fit to inflict physical punishment on his children.A modern educator would retort that (a) there is no reason to think that men are generally more sensible than women, and (b) punishment of the kind requiring great physical strength is educationally undesirable.And this educator can further point out that fathers have almost no part in modern education.But no follower of St. Thomas would therefore disbelieve in lifelong monogamy, for true belief is not based on the reasons stated. Take again the arguments that profess the existence of God, except for the teleological argument from inanimate beings, all of which rest on the assumption that series without a leading term are impossible.Every mathematician knows that this impossibility does not exist; the series of negative integers ending in negative one is a perfect example.But here a Catholic, even if he admits that St. Thomas's argument is not sound, will not forsake his belief in God; he will invent some other argument, or take refuge in revelation. Controversies about the identity of God's essence and being, that God is his own goodness, that God is his own power, imply a confusion between particular modes of being and universal modes of being, and this Confusion was seen in Plato's philosophy and thought to have been avoided by Aristotle.One must assume that the essence of God belongs to the properties of universals, whereas the existence of God does not.This difficulty is not easily stated satisfactorily, since it arises in a logic that can no longer be recognized.Yet it clearly reveals a certain syntactic confusion without which arguments about God would lose their plausibility. Aquinas had no real philosophical spirit.He is not like Socrates in Plato's pen, who relentlessly pursues arguments.He is not exploring questions whose conclusions cannot be predicted in advance.He knew this truth long before he began to philosophize; it is the truth proclaimed in the Catholic faith.If he can find some apparently reasonable justification for some part of this belief, all the better, but failing that, he has nothing but recourse to revelation.Finding arguments for preconceived conclusions is not philosophy, but a kind of sophistry.Therefore, I don't think he deserves to be compared with the first-rate philosophers of ancient or modern times.