Archetypes of Wisdom
Douglas J. Soccio
Chapter 8
The Scholar: Thomas Aquinas
Learning Objectives
On completion of this chapter, you should be able to
answer the following questions:
What is theology?
What is Scholasticism?
What is the Argument from Motion?
What is the Cosmological Argument?
What is the Argument from Necessity?
What is the Principle of Sufficient Reason?
What is the Principle of Plenitude?
What is the Argument from Gradation?
What is the Teleological Argument?
The God-Centered Universe
Whereas the classical mind was predominantly secular, the
medieval mind was chiefly theological.
Theology, from the Greek theos (God) and logos (study
of), means “the science or study of God.”
The Middle Ages was philosophy’s turn from the study of
man and nature to “otherworldly” inquiries and the study
of God.
The Seeds of Change
The Christian religion arose after the death of Jesus
Christ, through the efforts of the early apostles and
disciples, especially Paul.
Christianity originally consisted of scattered groups of
believers who anticipated the Second Coming of Christ,
which would signal the end of the world.
Thinking they would soon be in heaven, early Christians
saw no need to develop political interests. They were also
uninterested in science and philosophy and remained
indifferent to much that went on around them. Their chief
concern was salvation through faith.
The Need to Reconcile
Faith and Reason
Most of us are rational creatures for whom it is somehow
unsatisfying to accept contradictions and serious
inconsistencies concerning something as important as our
religious faith.
The basic principles of reason – also called rules of
inference – define the limits of rationality.
That is, constantly violating them moves us into the realm
of the irrational or illogical. They cannot be rationally
refuted, since we rely on them in order to reason.
The Law of Contradiction
One of the most important rules of inference is the law of
contradiction. It says that no statement can be both true
and false at the same time and under the same conditions.\
A statement (p) and its opposite (~p) is a contradiction,
and so is necessarily false.
Augustine:
Between Two Worlds
Aurelius Augustine (354-430 C.E.) has been described as
“a colossus bestriding two worlds” for his efforts to
synthesize early Christian theology with his own
understanding of Platonic philosophy and Manichean
dualism.
Manichean dualism is the belief that God and Satan are
nearly evenly matched in a cosmic struggle, and that
human beings must choose sides.
Augustine set in motion a major shift from the humancentric classical worldview to the God-centered medieval
worldview.
Life of Augustine
By his own account, Augustine lived a wanton, worldly
life, in the North African city of Tagaste, in the province of
Numidia, until he was thirty three years old.
Eventually, under the prodding of his mother and the
bidding of Ambrose (c. 339-397C.E.), the Bishop of
Milan, Augustine turned to the Bible.
After his conversion to Christianity, he sold his
inheritance, gave the money to the poor, and founded the
Augustinian Order, the oldest Christian monastic order in
the West.
In 396 C.E., he was ordained Bishop of Hippo, a Roman
coastal city in North Africa. It was a post he held for thirty
four years.
Augustine’s Ideals
Augustine of Hippo wrote more than 230 treatises
including the Confessions (c. 400) and the City of God
(413-426).
He rejected Platonism, Epicureanism, and Stoicism as
ways of life.
Augustine argued that faith and reason can be reconciled.
By itself, without faith, reason is powerless - even perverse
- without the right will, without a will grounded in grace,
love, and proper longing.
Augustine’s Works
After his conversion, Augustine produced more than 230
treatises, two of which – the Confessions (c.400 C.E.) and
The City of God (413-426 C.E.) – remain important
philosophical works for Christians and non-Christians
alike.
The City of God details the fall of Rome in terms of a fullfledged philosophy of history, the first philosophy of
history ever. By arguing that the fall of Rome was part of
the Christian – not pagan – God’s plan, The City of God
signals the end of the ancient worldview.
Augustine’s Confessions are considered by some scholars
to be the first true autobiography.
The Life of Thomas Aquinas
Born near Naples, Thomas Aquinas (c.1225-1274) chose to
join the Dominican order, though his family insisted that
he become a Benedictine monk.
Even after his family held him captive for months (and
some say sent a provocatively dressed girl to tempt him),
Aquinas resisted. He was even able to write a treatise On
Fallacies while in captivity.
He studied in Cologne with Albertus Magnus, or Albert the
Great (c. 1200-1280), then at the University of Paris.
Albertus pressed him to ground the Christian faith in
philosophy and science. Otherwise, the church would lose
influence due great advances in secular knowledge.
The Wisdom of the Scholar
The term scholasticism refers to mainstream Christian
philosophy in medieval Europe from about 1000 to about
1300 C.E., and comes from the Greek scholastikos,
meaning “to devote one’s free time to learning.”
Medieval scholars were the first professors of philosophy;
their task was to teach, expound on texts, and publish
educational summations of official doctrine.
The emergence of the scholastic professor of philosophy
reflects a move away from the sophos to a less personal
view of the thinker as part of a scholarly community.
Thomas Aquinas was an archetype of the scholastic
philosopher.
God and Natural Reason
In Aquinas’ time, as in our own, there were conflicting
claims about what constituted proper “standards of
evidence” for evaluating matters of theology.
Aquinas approached this problem from an Aristotelian,
“naturalistic” position, sometimes referred to as natural
theology because it appeals to natural reason or
intelligence.
Natural reason here means reason that is unaided by
divine revelation. Natural theology is an attempt to
“prove” God’s existence by appealing to concrete
experience and empirical evidence.
Proving the Existence of God
Aquinas aimed to demonstrate God’s existence through
what has become known as the Five Ways (or Five
Arguments).
The First Way is the argument from motion: that motion
must be given to each object by an object that is already
moving.
The Second Way is the argument from cause, also known
as the cosmological argument: that it is impossible for
any natural thing to be the complete and sufficient source
of its own existence.
The Third Way
The Third Way is the argument from necessity.
It states that some things are only possible but others are
necessary.
It relies on the principle of sufficient reason (that nothing
happens without a reason) and the principle of plenitude
(that given infinity and the richness of the universe, any
real possibility must occur).
God is the necessary reason that only possible things
actually happen.
Gradation and Teleology
The first three arguments fail to establish that God is a
good and loving being. In the fourth and fifth arguments,
Aquinas makes a qualitative shift in his proofs.
The Fourth Way, the argument from gradation, rests on
the idea of qualitative differences among kinds of beings,
which ascend in order from the simplest right up to God
(an idea later described as “the Great Chain of Being”).
The Fifth Way, known as the teleological argument, or the
argument from design, is based on the idea that order, or
design, doesn’t arise on its own. Since there is order in the
world, something capable of ordering a world on such a
grand scale must have put it there.
The Problem of Evil
The problem of evil is arguably the most important
theological question.
Essentially,
If God can prevent the destructive suffering of the
innocent, yet chooses not to, He is not good.
If God chooses to prevent the suffering, but cannot, He
is not omnipotent.
If God cannot recognize the suffering of the innocent,
He is not wise.
The Problem of Evil
Quick answers to the problem of evil are usually worse
than no answers because they involve obvious absurdities
or suggest a callousness that is inconsistent with charity.
The real force of the problem of evil comes back to
justifying preventable evil and suffering.
Aquinas said that there is a solution to the problem of evil:
“Though God did not deliberately will evil, He willed
the real possibility of evil. Evil must always be
possible when love and goodness are free choices.”
Overview of Modern Themes
Overview of Modern Themes
The Enlightenment, or the Age of Reason, began in the
first half of the seventeenth century with the publication of
two seminal texts:
Sir Francis Bacon’s Novum Organon (1620)
René Descartes’s Discourse on Method (1637)
Both thinkers - in particular Descartes - challenged the
cumbersome and complex disputations of Scholastic
philosophy.
Reason, Reformation and
Revolution
Along with Descartes, modern philosophy includes David
Hume and Immanuel Kant.
The Reformation and the Copernican Revolution signaled
a major shift from the medieval worldview, with its
organic emphasis on a God-centered, earth-centered
universe in which everything had an allotted place in a
fixed hierarchy.
The modern worldview, in stark contrast, moved the earth
from the center of the universe and put the reasoning
individual at the forefront of philosophy.
Objective and methodical reason replaced faith on the path
to truth.
Abuses of the Catholic Church
By the 14th century, the authority of the Roman Catholic
Church and of the pope had eroded.
The credibility of the papacy was severely damaged by
corruption, disputes and scandals. These abuses led to cries
for reform.
Martin Luther (1483-1546), a Roman Catholic
Augustinian monk and professor at the University of
Wittenberg, began the Protestant Reformation in Germany
on October 31, 1517.
Martin Luther was eventually excommunicated from the
Church in 1521.
The Reformation
Martin Luther nailed ninety-five theses (criticisms of
church teachings and practices) to the church door.
The philosophical significance of Luther’s move lay in its
implication that individual experience and interpretation
are more truly Christian than unquestioning acceptance of
an official, authoritative position.
Luther’s revolt against institutionalized authority is one of
the major markers of the decline of the medieval
worldview.
A Geocentric Worldview
In the Middle Ages, it was commonly believed that the
universe was carefully created by God, and that human
beings were the purpose of His creation.
The world of nature was thus thought to reflect a spiritual
order.
This geocentric worldview (with the earth at the center of
the universe) can be both comforting and reassuring.
If the universe manifests designed order, then each of us is
assured that we “belong” where we are.
Aristotle and Ptolemy’s
Cosmologies
According to Aristotle, the earth was the unmoving center
of the universe and the sun, moon and planets moved in
semiregular “epicycles” around it.
Ptolemy, an astronomer of the second century C. E., gave
Aristotle’s ideas even more weight by designing a
mathematical model that seemed to predict planetary
motions quite well.
The Copernican Revolution
However, by the fifteenth century, the Ptolemaic model no
longer matched the observed positions of the planets.
Copernican astronomy challenged the authority of Aristotle
and the astronomer Ptolemy.
This geocentric worldview was overthrown by the
astronomer Nicolas Copernicus (1473-1543), who
proposed a more accurate model with the sun at the center
of the universe.
The Copernican Revolution
In reaction to Copernican astronomy, Martin Luther called
Copernicus “that fool [who would] reverse the entire art of
astronomy…Joshua bade the sun and not the earth to stand
still.”
Copernicus rendered both church authority and the
consensus of unqualified non-astronomers irrelevant.
His careful application of reason and observation began a
revolution in both astronomy and philosophical thought.
Once Copernicus’s work was known, the earth was cut
loose from its central place of honor, and became just one
more planet revolving around the sun. If the earth was
reduced in significance, what about us?
Where Are We, Then?
For almost three centuries, many philosophers remained
convinced that, with the exception of “idiots,” people
possessed an innate, virtually equal capacity for rational
thinking that could be nurtured, developed, and tapped into
to produce progressively better lives for each generation.
A major task of the Enlightenment was to start anew – just
like America, just like each wave of immigrants – and to
use reason to accomplish a kind of individual and cultural
rebirth, uncluttered by past superstitions and improvable
beliefs, to create a “new world” based on objective,
universal knowledge.
Discussion Questions
The “problem of evil” has perplexed philosophers,
theologians, and others for centuries. How does Thomas
Aquinas approach the problem of evil?
Do you think he solves it?
Do you think it is solvable at all?
Give examples of “the problem of evil” as seen in today’s
society. Can these problems be solved?
Chapter Review:
Key Concepts and Thinkers
Theology
Principles of Reason (Rules
of Inference)
Law of Contradiction
Scholasticism
Argument from Motion
Cosmological Argument
Argument from Necessity
Principle of Sufficient
Reason
Principle of Plenitude
Argument from Gradation
Teleological Argument
Problem of Evil
Augustine (354-430 C.E.)
Thomas Aquinas (c.1225-1274)
Martin Luther (1483-1546)
Albertus Magnus (c.1200-1280
Nicolas Copernicus (14731543)
Ptolemy ( second century C.E.)