PhilosophersThomas d'Aquin

Thomas d'Aquin

Faith and reason cannot contradict each other.

Thomism (Scholasticism) · Aristotelianism1225 – 1274 ItalyTheologianChristian AristotelianNatural law thinkerDominican friar
Gratia non tollat naturam, sed perficiat
Grace does not destroy nature but perfects it.
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Bonum est faciendum et prosequendum, et malum vitandum.
Good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided: the first precept of natural law.
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De Deo scire non possumus quid sit, sed quid non sit
We cannot know what God is, but rather what he is not.
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Lex tyrannica, cum non sit secundum rationem, non est simpliciter lex
A tyrannical law, not being according to reason, is not a law, strictly speaking.
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Ad infinitam Dei bonitatem pertinet, ut esse permittat mala, et ex eis eliciat bona
It belongs to God's infinite goodness to allow evils and to draw goods out of them: his answer, with Augustine, to the problem of evil.
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Misconceptions

False
Aquinas proves God like Anselm: from his definition alone.

He rejects that proof. Even if we understand "God" as that than which nothing greater can be thought, it only follows that it exists in the mind, not in reality. For him, God can only be proved from his effects.

False
For Aquinas, faith comes first and must silence reason.

He holds the opposite: reason and faith cannot contradict each other. An argument against faith must therefore be a reasoning error, which reason can refute. Grace does not destroy nature, it perfects it.

Nuanced
The five ways prove the Christian God.

They conclude to a first mover, a first cause, a necessary being… "which all call God". Aquinas then argues, in later questions, that this being is one, perfect, good. But the Trinity, in his view, cannot be demonstrated: it belongs to faith.

Nuanced
At the end of his life, Aquinas declared that all his work was straw.

The phrase is not in his writings: it is reported by witnesses at his canonisation hearings, several decades after his death. According to them, he said it at the end of 1273, after an experience during Mass, comparing what he had written with what he had seen. It is not a retraction of his ideas.