THOMAS AQUINAS

Introduction Saint Thomas Aquinas is one of the most famous saints of the Catholic Church. He is called a 'Doctor of the Church' and was a theologian, and philosopher. His parents sent him to a monastery when he was five years old and his teachers were surprised by how quickly he learned and his great faith. But when Thomas announced that he wanted to become a Dominican, his family tried to stop him. His brothers captured him and locked him up in a castle. His mother, sister and brothers kept him there for two years. Thomas was a very big man with a kind and humble manner. Because he didn't talk very much, people thought he was stupid and therefore called him 'the ox.' When they heard him preach, however, everyone realized how wise Thomas really was. After he became a priest, Thomas studied in Paris and taught at universities in many cities of Europe. He wrote more than 40 books and several beautiful hymns. All of his work praises God and helped many people understand faith better. At the end of his life, Saint Thomas stopped writing and he had a vision of Heaven. Because of this experience, Thomas decided that compared to the great glory of God, his writing was 'like straw.' Three months later, on his way to see the Pope, he died. Thomas Aquinas’ Early Life and Eduacation He was born in Italy in 1225, the son of a count. When he was five years old, his parents send him to study with the Benedictines of Monte Casino. There, and later at the university of Naples, he was taught the 'liberal arts' - the Trivium; grammar, logic and rhetoric, and the Quadrium; music, mathematics, geometry and astronomy. This was a complete education in those times. His teachers were surprised by his intelligence. He especially excelled in learning as well as practicing the virtues. When he was 19 years old, and old enough to decide how to spend his life, he announced that he wanted to become a Dominican friar. His family, who by some accounts wanted him to become Benedictine, protested violently. His mother instructed his brothers to capture Thomas and lock him up in a castle.

They kept him there for nearly two years, trying one thing after another to change his mind. In an attempt to soil his reputation, his family sent a woman of bad reputation into his room, but Thomas chased her out with a piece of burning wood from the fire. After this event, he prayed to God, asking for purity of mind and body and two angels appeared to him in a dream, to assure him that his prayers had been answered and that God was giving him the gift of perfect chastity. He spent his imprisonment reading and in prayer, so when his family finally relented and Thomas joined his Dominican brothers, he exclaimed, “He had made as much progress as if he had been in a stadium general”. After he made his vows, and was closely questioned by the Pope about his motives for joining the Dominicans, he was sent to study under a renowned professor of the Dominican order. In the school, Thomas' size, humility and reluctance to speak were misinterpreted as dullness. He was given the nickname 'The Ox.' But when his teachers and fellow students heard him speak on a difficult topic, they realized what a mistake they had made. Soon, Thomas began teaching where before he had studied. He was in great demand as a teacher and speaker, frequently called to confer with the king of France and the Pope. The rest of his life was spent praying, preaching, teaching, writing, and journeying.

The Works and Later Life of Thomas Aquinas Saint Thomas wrote many theological and philosophical books, as well as composing several beautiful hymns. His most famous work, the Summa Theological, was never finished. During a Mass on the Feast of Saint Nicholas, the Thomas had a strange mystical experience, one that convinced him that 'All that I have written seems to me like straw compared to what has now been revealed to me.' Based on this experience, Thomas began to prepare for death, but when Pope Gregory X summoned him to the Council of Lyons, he decided to set out. He collapsed on the way and was taken to the Cistercian monastery of Fossa Nuova, where he lay in his final illness for a month. When the end was near and final rites administered, Saint Thomas pronounced this act of faith: If in this world there be any knowledge of this sacrament stronger than that of faith, I wish now to use it in affirming that I firmly believe and know as certain that Jesus Christ, True God and True man, Son of God and Son of the Virgin Mary, is in this sacrament...I receive Thee, the price of my redemption, for Whose love I have watched, studied and labored. Thee have I preached; Thee have I taught. Never have I said anything against Thee: if anything was not well said, that is to be attributed to my ignorance. Neither do I wish to be obstinate in my opinions, but if I have written anything erroneous concerning this sacrament or other matters, I submit all to the judgment and correction of the Holy Roman Church, in whose obedience I now pass from this life.

He died on March 7, 1274, and numerous miracles proved his sanctity and canonized in 1323. After some discussion between the monks of the house where he died and those of his Order, his remains were transferred to the Dominican church in Toulouse. The shrine built over the spot was destroyed during the French revolution and his body was then moved to the Church of Saint Semin where it is today. The Theology of Thomas Aquinas In Aquinas’ book, The Nature and Method of the Theology of Saint Thomas Aquinas, he synthesizes various principles that characterize the various intellectual traditions, which he appropriated. St. Thomas' theology is based fundamentally on the authority of revelation, yet understood according to the philosophical principle of instrumental causality. His theology begins with the truth of Sacred Doctrine, the truth of God's knowledge of Himself and of humans' as being ordered to Him as to an end. Since God alone can impart His knowledge of Himself, the act of revelation by which it is given, and the act of faith, by which it is received, is fundamentally God's actions. Yet, this knowledge is imparted to humans, by humans and or humans. And since it is a principle of Thomistic thought that "whatever is received is received according to the mode of the receiver," revelation is also a human act conditioned by the human. The truth of Faith is transmitted through Sacred Doctrine and is the human participation in divine science, i.e. the knowledge which God and the blessed share in heaven. Aquinas’ theology, insofar as it is distinct from Sacred Doctrine, is a human science of the divine. However, both start first with God and then proceeds according to the human. His understanding in fact differs from Sacred Doctrine only to the extent that in theology the truth of faith is explicated through the more conspicuous use of rational arguments. According to Aquinas, theology, when properly done, will merely present all of, and only, the truth of Sacred Doctrine in another form. This is possible because of his conviction that reason of itself can attain truth. The human, by employing faith and reason together, can attain the truth about divine things since both are legitimate means of attaining truth. These principles by which St. Thomas understands the structure of theology are an application of principles learned from Aristotle and Plato and applied to the reality of Christian revelation. At the core of his theological synthesis is what is fundamentally a philosophical doctrine, i.e. the real distinction between essence and esse. Since in all of creation a thing's esse is limited by its essence, the only way to account for it existing at all is through unlimited esse causing it, and this we call God. By his metaphysics of esse, Thomas combines God's causality of creation with creation's participation in the divine. The combination of these two traditions allows him to justify true rational knowledge of God through analogy. Creation is, by analogy, like God since He created it. And in receiving being from God, it imitates and emanates from Him and tends toward Him who is perfect Being by tending toward the perfection and continuation of its own being. This last principle of emanation and return provides St. Thomas with the structure of his Summa Theologiae. His book is organized in three parts: the First Part deals with God and his creative activity; Second Part treats of human actions, along with their virtues, by which God is united to human beings in the communion of knowledge and love; finally, Christ and his Church are treated in the Third Part as the particular and historical means, necessitated by the Fall of Adam and Eve. In Christ, an effect of God is united or returned to Him in a manner that extends beyond participated existence, or rational communion. In Christ, God is united to creation and humanity in God's own personal existence. Thus, the Second Person of the Trinity is efficient cause of the humanity of Christ, God acting in a temporal way. As being united personally to God, Christ's humanity is the perfection of human communion and its final cause. And as the perfect human, Christ is humanity's example.

Conclusion Although St. Thomas lived less than fifty years, he composed more than sixty works, some of them brief, some very lengthy. This does not necessarily mean that his hand wrote every word in the authentic works; secretaries assisted him, and biographers assure us that he could dictate to several scribes at the same time. It is not possible to characterize the method of St. Thomas by one word, unless it can be called eclectic. He chose the best that could he found in those who preceded him, approving what was true, rejecting the false. His powers of synthesis were extraordinary. No writer surpassed him in the faculty of expressing in a few well-chosen words the truth gathered from a multitude of varying and conflicting opinions; and in almost every instance the student sees, the truth and is perfectly satisfied with St. Thomas’s summary and statement. Not that he would have students swear by the words of a master. In philosophy, he says, arguments from authority are of secondary importance; philosophy does not consist in knowing what men have said, but in knowing the truth. In the Church the esteem in which he was held during his life has not been diminished, but rather increased, in the course of the six centuries that have elapsed since his death. It is known that nearly all the founders and framers of laws of religious orders commanded their societies to study and religiously adhere to the teachings of St.Thomas.

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