St. Thomas Aquinas Philosophy, his most known works like the 5 Arguments

2. ST. THOMAS AQUINAS
 Saint Thomas Aquinas was a Catholic
Priest in the Dominican Order and one of
the most important Medieval philosophers
and theologians.
 He was immensely influenced by
scholasticism and Aristotle and known for
his synthesis of the two aforementioned
traditions.
 Although he wrote many works of
philosophy and theology throughout his
life, his two monumental works are
Summa Theologica and Summa Contra
Gentiles. But his most influential work is
the Summa Theologica that extensively
discusses man which consists of three
parts; God , Ethics and Christ.

3. IN THOMISTIC
PHILOSOPHY
 Man is substantially body and soul.
 The soul is united with the human body because it is
the substantial form of the human body.
 It is the principle of action in the human body and the
principle of life of the body.
 But the soul however, requires the body as the material
medium for its operation particularly perception.
 Soul has operative functions which do not need a
material medium; they are the man’s intellect and will.
 Thus at death, intellection and will remain in the soul
which is immortal, simple and incorruptible.
 Body and soul before death are essentially united
because the two exist in a correlative manner.

4. WORKS
 No single work of St. Thomas can be said fully to reveal
his philosophy. His works may be classified according to
their form and purpose.
 The principal ones are:
 Commentary in the Sentences (a series of public lectures;
1254–56), his earliest great work; seven quaestiones
disputatae (public debates; 1256–72);
 philosophical commentaries on Aristotle's Physics, Metaphysics,
De anima, Ethics, part of theDe interpretatione, and
the Posterior Analytics;
 treatises on many subjects, including the Summa contra
Gentiles (1258–60); and, most important of all, Summa
theologica (1267–73), an incomplete but systematic exposition
of theology on philosophical principles. St. Thomas's philosophy
is avowedly Aristotelian;
 the methods and distinctions of Aristotle are adapted to
revelation.

5. According to St. Aquinas…
 “…all acts of virtue are prescribed by the
natural law: since each one’s reason
naturally dictates to him to act virtuously.
But if we speak of virtuous acts, considered
in themselves, i.e., in their proper species,
thus not all virtuous acts are prescribed by
the natural law: for many things are done
virtuously, to which nature does not incline
at first; but which, through the inquiry of
reason, have been found by men to be
conductive to well living.”

6. According to St. Aquinas…
 Man is the point of convergence between the
corporeal (means things pertaining to the
human body) and spiritual substances.
 In other words, Man is “one substance body
and soul”.
 In Thomistic physics, man is a substantial
unity of body and soul.
 Man is an embodied soul not a soul using a
body. (as Plato claimed).
 Man is substantially body and soul. And
definitely, only the soul is the substance
while the body is actual.

7. According to St. Aquinas…
 Thomas Aquinas wrote "Greed is a sin
against God, just as all mortal sins, in as
much as man condemns things eternal
for the sake of temporal things.“
 Thomas believed "that for the
knowledge of any truth whatsoever man
needs divine help, that the intellect may
be moved by God to its act."

8. According to St. Aquinas…
 For St. Thomas Aquinas, the goal of human existence
is union and eternal fellowship with God. For those who
have experienced salvation and redemption through
Christ while living on earth, a beatific vision will be granted
after death in which a person experiences perfect,
unending happiness through comprehending the
very essence of God. During life, an individual's will must
be ordered toward right things (such as charity, peace and
holiness), which requires morality in everyday human
choices, a kind of Virtue Ethics. Aquinas was the first to
identify the Principle of Double Effect in ethical decisions,
when an otherwise legitimate act (e.g. self-defence) may
also cause an effect one would normally be obliged to
avoid (e.g. the death of another).

9. Five positive statements about
the Divine Qualities or the
Nature of God:
 God is simple, without composition of parts,
such as body and soul, or matter and form.
 God is perfect, lacking nothing.
 God is infinite, and not limited in the ways that
created beings are physically, intellectually, and
emotionally limited.
 God is immutable, incapable of change in
respect of essence and character.
 God is one, such that God's essence is the
same as God's existence.

10. Thomas distinguished four
kinds of law:
 Eternal law is the decree of God that governs
all creation. It is, "That Law which is the
Supreme Reason cannot be understood to be
otherwise than unchangeable and eternal."
 Natural law is the human "participation" in
the eternal law and is discovered by
reason. Natural law is based on "first
principles":
. . . this is the first precept of the law, that good is
to be done and promoted, and evil is to be
avoided. All other precepts of the natural law
are based on this . .

11.  Human law (the natural law applied by
governments to societies)
 Divine law (the specially revealed law in
the scriptures).

12. Five rational proofs for the existence
of God, the "quinquae viae" (or the
"Five Ways")
 The argument of the unmoved mover (ex motu):
everything that is moved is moved by a mover,
therefore there is an unmoved mover from whom all
motion proceeds, which is God.
 The argument of the first cause (ex causa):
everything that is caused is caused by something else,
therefore there must be an uncaused cause of all
caused things, which is God.

13.  The argument from contingency (ex contingentia): there are
contingent beings in the universe which may either exist or not
exist and, as it is impossible for everything in the universe to
be contingent (as something cannot come of nothing), so there
must be a necessary being whose existence is not
contingent on any other being, which is God.
 The argument from degree (ex gradu): there are various
degrees of perfection which may be found throughout the
universe, so there must be a pinnacle of perfection from
which lesser degrees of perfection derive, which is God.
 The teleological argument or argument from design (ex
fine): all natural bodies in the world (which are in themselves
unintelligent) act towards ends (which is characteristic of
intelligence), therefore there must be an intelligent being that
guides all natural bodies towards their ends, which is God.

14.  Aquinas believed that Jesus
Christ was truly divine and not simply a
human being or God merely inhabiting the
body of Christ. However, he held that
Christ had a truly rational human soul as
well, producing a duality of natures that
persisted even after the Incarnation, and
that these two natures
existed simultaneously yet distinguishab
ly in one real human body.

15.  Thomas defined the four cardinal
virtues as prudence, temperance, justice
, and fortitude. The cardinal virtues are
natural and revealed in nature, and they
are binding on everyone. There are,
however, three theological
virtues: faith, hope, and charity. These
are somewhat supernatural and are
distinct from other virtues in their object,
namely, God: