St. Thomas Aquinas Essay

Saint Thomas Aquinas was a Philosopher used the logic of both Aristotle and Saint Augustine to establish his teachings. He taught that believing in God was not simply for the ignorant. He used both Greek Philosophy and Christian Doctrine in his teachings. He taught an abundant of things including that the goal of Theology is is use reason to grasp the truth about God and to experience salvation through that truth. In addition to that, he shaped the catholic understanding of mortal sin and venial sin.

Francis of Assisi was a poor man who astounded and inspired the Church by taking the gospel literally—not in a narrow fundamentalist sense, but by actually following all that Jesus said and did, joyfully, without limit and without a mite of self-importance. Francis was famous for his love of all creation. He called for simplicity of life, poverty, and humility before God. He worked to care for the poor. Thousands were drawn to his sincerity, piety, and joy. In all his actions, Francis sought to follow fully and literally the way of life demonstrated by Christ in the Gospels. My report is going to discuss the life and contributions of St. Francis of Assisi.

Aquinas argued the existence of God with five main points. Aquinas began by saying that nothing can be a cause of itself; rather every event was caused by some prior event. Therefore event A causes event B that leads to event C and so forth. He believed in this cause and effect relationship but believed that there must be a first cause as a starting point. When contemplating this starting point Aquinas rejected the possibility of an infinite series of events. This means that the universe has not existed forever and there must have been something from which every single event stems. There must be an uncaused first cause, which Aquinas concluded to be God. The first cause is called the unmoved mover. The unmoved mover is what set all other events and beings in motion.

Than there has to be something that already existed to make everything exist and for that to happen that had to be someone, so that is God. Aquinas also pointed one in one of his earlier proofs of the First Mover. Aquinas says that anything moved is moved by another, so there must be a first mover (a mover that is not itself moved by another) and that first mover is God. Both of the philosophers used great methods to come to their conclusion about how god came into existence. They both used different thinking methods to get to their well respected arguments but did come to the conclusion that God does “exist”. I believe the key difference about the two philosophers was the time difference between the philosophers, Thomas Aquinas wrote his proofs in the medieval ages around the 1200’s while ( with no disrespect) Rene Descartes wrote his meditation in the 1600’s. There is a big 400 year gap between ideas are compared but that came down to the same conclusion

After reading Article 1, Aquinas for Armchair Theologians by Timothy M. Renick most can automatically acquire that Thomas Aquinas was a very influential thinker amongst others when explaining his theological views. His religious views may have differed from others during his time, however, it did influence and encourage others on the different topics of God vs. Satan, and why God has not all the answers, and powers when making sure every human being should not face evil. Aquinas believed that Christians needed to view their basic beliefs in another way to make sense of their own faith when questioning all that God did for each individual. The real question to all this, which a lot of people even question today is “Why is their evil in the World?”

St. Francis of Assisi was born in Umbria in the year 1182. He was a child every father hoped for, he was filled with life, a determined and courageous individual. He was gifted with rather good looks, qualities that attracted friends and a gift of leadership. His father was an extremely wealthy merchant in Assisi. But this son, his favourite, was the one who broke Peter Bernardone’s heart. The boy turned on his father, and in a vicious event that eventually resulted into a public scene. St. Francis of Assisi stepped away from his father, his business and left his father in a state of immense emotional suffering.

Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologica represents one of the most famous attempts to prove God's existence. Aquinas wrote at a time in which people began to develop skepticism concerning the existence of God. In this regard, it is instructive to position Aquinas

The first part in which one can prove that there is a God is based on change. In the first part, Aquinas mentions that things change and that there has to be something which brings about that change, but at the same time is changeless. Aquinas states that “a thing in process of change cannot itself cause that same change; it cannot change itself” (Aquinas 45). For example, he gives an example about wood and fire. The wood is able to be hot but simply cannot make itself change without having an outside source that will cause it to become hot. The fire, that is naturally hot, will indeed make the wood hot and as a result, will change the wood.

Aquinas, Saint Thomas was born at approximately 1225 at Aquino castle in Roccasecca, Italy. As a philosopher-theologian he was arguably the most influential thinker of the medieval period. He produced a powerful synthesis that combined Aristotelian and Neoplatonic elements within a Christian context. He maintained the Christian theological traditions, inspired by Aristotle's approach sought his own argument for God's existence.

I. Introduction In this paper I will first define the terms used in Aquinas's Second Way for the existence of God, specifically, the terms: efficient cause, intermediate efficient cause and first efficient cause. I will then introduce and explain Aquinas's Second Way by dissecting the premises and I will give reasons for and against believing each premise. . Finally, I will defend the following thesis: Aquinas's Second Way is unsuccessful by itself in giving reason to believe in the existence of God. II.

Aquinas' second proof is similar to his first in that it relates to cause and effect. St. Thomas reasoned that in a world of order there is an order to all cause and effect. And , since there is a cause for the existence of all things there must be a cause that caused all things and had no cause itself. He points out that nothing in creation existed prior to itself and the causality cannot be traced back infinitely. If the efficient or first cause did not exist then nothing would exist. That first or efficient cause is God.

1.) Thomas Aquinas believes that humans are born with a clean slate in a state of potency and acquire knowledge through sense experiences by abstraction of the phantasms. His view on how man acquires knowledge rejects Plato’s theory that humans are born with innate species. Along with Plato’s theory of humans understanding corporeal things through innate species, Aquinas also rejects Plato’s theory that in being born with innate species, humans spend their lives recollecting their knowledge.

Here Aquinas argues that everything that happens is the cause of something, but nothing can cause itself. If we trace back a cause all the way back to the beginning of the world, it could not have caused itself. Therefore, God must have been the first cause. Aquinas’ third proof is the Argument from Contingency. We see that everything here on earth is finite. People die, empires fall. All things must come to an end. That means things had to have a beginning where nothing was in existence yet. How did things come into existence? God. Aquinas’s 4th argument is the Argument of Degrees. Here we judge things to be a certain degree of good or bad. But what are we comparing that to? If they have a certain degree of good and bad, then what is the greatest degree of good? And that must be God. Aquinas’s final argument is his Argument from Design. Perhaps one of his strongest arguments Aquinas says that there must be an intelligent designer behind everything. Random objects don’t have any brains to act the way they do. But they are directed in the way they act by God.

Thomas Aquinas claims Christianity is a science with the use of the writings of Aristotle on scientific knowledge. Aquinas also makes the claim that theology, or the study God, is a science accepted through Revelation. Faith provides ammunition for Aquinas to state that believers of Christianity have the affirmation of God already inside of them. This claim considered that divine writings were inspired by God. Aquinas stated, "The principles of any science are either in themselves self-evident, are reducible to the knowledge of a higher science are the principles of sacred doctrine." Once these documents had God’s authority approved by faith, they became indemonstrable knowledge,

St. Thomas Aquinas is a famous philosopher from the medieval period who believed there was a god. One of Aquinas significant works in philosophy was his argument that God exists. In Aquinas' argument, or also known as Summa Theologica, he uses five arguments to support the claim that God exist and four of them are cosmological argument. Cosmological arguments are arguments that try to reason that god exists because of the universe or cosmos leads to the conclusion that god exists. His first argument is the Argument From Motion. In the argument of motion Aquinas observed that we live in a world and universe that things are continuously moving, and he also noticed that to make something move something has to move or start it moving. To Aquinas this means that everything that is moving must have been moved by something or someone and there had to be a time when the thing wasn't moving. The mover for the beginning of everything in Aquinas' argument is God. The second argument is the Argument From Causation which is very similar to the Argument From Motion. Aquinas thoughts were that everything that is caused had to be caused by something else. Nothing can cause it's self so there must be an thing that is uncaused and to Aquinas that thing is God because it can't go back forever. The Third argument is The Argument From Contingency. Contingency is a future or thing that could have not existed and Aquinas believe that the world can't always be contingent because then it could have