Saint Thomas Aquinas

Barza, Jomar T. BEED ECED 4-A

SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS Saint Thomas Aquinas, O.P. (also Thomas of Aquin or Aquino; c. 1225–7 March 1274) was an Italian Catholic priest in the Dominican Order, and an immensely influential philosopher and theologian in the scholastic tradition, known as Doctor Angelicus, Doctor Universalis and Doctor Communis. He is frequently referred to as Thomas because "Aquinas" refers to his residence rather than his surname. He was the foremost classical proponent of natural theology, and the father of the Thomistic school of philosophy and theology. His influence on Western thought is considerable, and much of modern philosophy was conceived as a reaction against, or as an agreement with, his ideas, particularly in the areas of ethics, natural law and political theory.

Philosophy Aquinas believed "that for the knowledge of any truth whatsoever man needs Divine help, that the intellect may be moved by God to its act." However, he believed that human beings have the natural capacity to know many things without special divine revelation, even though such revelation occurs from time to time, "especially in regard to [topics of] faith." Aquinas followed basically the teachings of Aristotle. Aquinas proclaims the supremacy of reason in every man and maintained that man will know the truth by the application of truth. On the philosophy of happiness, Aquinas taught that man, by nature, longs for perfection and happiness and this personal longing can be realized with the full development of all man’s endowments – rational, moral emotional, social, physical and intellectual. For Aquinas, man is an embodied soul, not a soul using a body. Thomas Aquinas claimed that man is substantially united body and soul. Body and soul before death are essentially united because the two exist in a correlative manner. Blood that but one drop of has the power to win…….All the world forgiveness of its world of sin.

References: http://mb-soft.com/believe/txo/philoso.htm http://katoliko.org/2008/11/07/st-thomas-aquinas-11/ Eddie R. Babor. 2001. The Human Person: not real, but existing. C&E Publishing Inc. Page 79-83 Thomas Aquinas. Basic Writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas: Man and the Conduct of Life. Hackett Publishing, 1997. page 682, 864 Leo Elders. The Philosophical Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas. Brill Archive, 1990 Page 229-232 Clarence J. Glacken. Traces on the Rhodian Shore: Nature and Culture in Western Thought from Ancient Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century. University of California Press, 1967. Pages 230236