Aquinas Accomplishments

Aquinas is notably one of the greatest philosophical thinkers of all time. Among his many accomplishments was his integration of the thoughts of Aristotle into the realm of philosophy. Consequently, it is crucial for us to evaluate Aquinas’s thoughts so as to understand where philosophy is helpful for understanding theology. This paper will consider Aquinas’s life through evaluating his key works such as the Summa Contra Gentiles, which contains his thoughts on the doctrine of Analogy, and his five proofs for the existence of God. This will show Aquinas’s development of the issues and the pushback that he received from other philosophers and their impacts today. It is important for modern Christians to understand how to utilize philosophy in

It was under Albert, that Thomas Aquinas began to appreciate the encyclopedic genius of Aristotle (Kenny, 2). Then in 1252, Albert decided that Thomas had learned Aristotle well enough to begin advanced studies. It was at this point that Aquinas’s study and teaching focused mainly on philosophy. He was sent to the university of Paris to begin his mastership studies (Kenny, 3). It was during this time that Aquinas wrote two works, one titled On being and Essence and the other On the Principles of Nature, these two explained Aristotelian and post-Aristotelian physics and metaphysics (Kenny,

It specifically elaborates on God’s creating the world out of nothing. Book II is largely focused on the topic of “Intellectual Substances”; these are immaterial creatures that are united to a body. Human souls are likewise spiritual and immortal, but they are individually united to individual bodies. It is the form of the body that is to say what makes a body a living kind (Kenny, 10). Aquinas makes sure to point out that though immortal, the soul does not exist before the origin of the human body to which it belongs. Neither is it inherited from parents as bodily features are. Instead, it is a fresh creation by God in the case of each human being (Kenny 11). This is important for modern believers to take not of because this understanding of the soul gives a new meaning to when life is created. Aquinas would have believed that the soul was made at conception when the body or form of the individual was first created. This provides a new angle for believes to evaluate when considering the origin of