The Medieval Nun
| St. Thomas Aquinas Made Simple |
| The Medieval Nun Keri Peardon, proprietress 3619 Rocky Glade Road Eagleville, TN 37060 Website: www.TheMedieval Nun.com Etsy Store: www.TheMedievalNun.etsy.com E-mail: Keri@TheMedievalNun.com |
- Introduction to the Project
This writing is a project I started some time ago, thinking to introduce my fellow re-enactors to medieval
religious philosophy. I kept at it for a while, then decided this is a long project; I didn’t think people would
want to keep up with it over a length of time, even broken into pieces for a regular newsletter. But I held onto
my notes and I have since decided this might be something interesting to add to my website.
St. Thomas Aquinas himself arranged his philosophical views in the form of arguments. There is a question,
and an unknown person—perhaps just a devil’s advocate—argues one point, then St. Thomas Aquinas argues
his. While I have termed this other party the “Popular Party,” because I think that the position being argued is
the popular one in most instances, it should by no means be taken for granted that this was always true.
Certainly someone held these beliefs at the time; St. Thomas Aquinas is not arguing to hear his own voice.
But it may not be that the majority of the population and/or the church held that particular opinion. .
Where I have taken text directly from St. Thomas Aquinas, there are quotes, but the rest of the words are my
own interpretation and summary of St. Thomas Aquinas’s arguments, as they are very hard to understand in
their original context. In fact, there are some debates which even I have left out because I can’t figure out
what they are even arguing about; the words being used no longer have the same meaning they seem to have
had in the 13th century. For example, the word “science” in the middle ages clearly has a different meaning
than our modern use of the same.
- Organization of the Project
There is so much information (after all, I'm covering most of the contents of a book here), I had to break out
the sections, or "rounds" as I call them, into separate pages.
Page One: This page. Intro, historical background, and the first round, focusing on the existence of God.
Page Two: Second round, focusing on the nature of God.
Page Thee: Third round, focusing on goodness.
Page Four: Fourth round, focusing on the infiniteness of God.
Page Five: Fifth round, focusing on divine unity.
- Source Material
My source for this material was:
Introduction to Saint Thomas Aquinas
Edited, and with an introduction, by Anton C. Pegis
Random House, New York, (c) 1948
The works contained in the book come from the following treatises by St. Thomas Aquinas:
Summa Theologica
Summa Contra Gentiles
My source book does not necessarily contain all of the information from St. Thomas's listed treatises,
and my work certainly does not cover everything in the book.
- Historical Background
St. Thomas Aquinas was born in 1225 near Aquino, Italy. He entered a Benedictine monastery at the age of
6. In 1239 he went to study at the University of Naples. He then spend a number of years studying
throughout Western Europe. In for 5 years, beginning in 1256, he taught theology at the University of Paris.
He then moved on to teach in Italy. He returned to Paris in 1268 to join in a theological controversy between
the Benedictine and Thomas Aquinas orders, and perhaps the secular state as well. He died in 1274 and was
canonized in 1323.
- The Debate
Round, The First
Mediator: Welcome to the first round of this debate. This round will focus on the existence of God. There
will be three questions.
I put before you the first question: is the existence of God self-evident?
Popular Party: Yes, God’s existence is self-evident.
My first argument is that any knowledge we possess about a thing makes it self-evident. According to
Damascene, “the knowledge of God is naturally implanted in all.” If we all know God exists, then his
existence is self-evident.
Secondly, things are self-evident when their parts are known. If I had never seen a dog, but one had been
described to me, then when I did see a dog, it would be self-evident that I am looking at a dog, based on what
I know. So if you understand the concept of God, then you will know immediately that He exists, and
therefore his existence is self-evident.
Thirdly, everyone knows that the whole of a thing is greater than its parts. A clock has hands, but hands
alone are not useful; only the clock as a whole, including the hands, tells time. God exists mentally in men.
But that is only a part of the existence of God. He must exist in actuality and mentally, because He must be
greater than a single part. Therefore it is self-evident that He exists.
Fourthly, the existence of truth is self-evident, and according to the Gospel of John, “[God is] the way, the
truth and the life.” Therefore if truth is self-evident and God is the truth, the existence of God must be self-
evident.
Aquinas: I think we can all agree that no one can believe the opposite of that which is self-evident. After all,
can anyone claim that the sun is square? Or that rain comes from the ground? No, it is quite evident that the
sun is round and that rain falls from the sky.
According to Psalms, “The fool said in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” Therefore, since it’s possible to believe
that there is no God, then God must not be self-evident.
As to the first argument, that the knowledge of God is implanted in all from birth, I will acknowledge that we
do have some knowledge of God which is natural to us all, but this is not full knowledge. For example, I may
know that someone is coming to my house today. That is different from knowing that Peter is coming to my
house today. We are born with a general and vague notion of a higher being, but I would argue that this is not
the same as knowing God. Also, just because we want there to be a God does not mean that there is one.
As to the second argument, that the whole of something is self-evident if its parts are known, I would argue
that we don’t even have a consistent definition of god from which to work. How can we know Him by his
parts when we can’t even agree as to what He is to begin with?
It has been proposed that the definition of God is “something which nothing greater can be thought.” But
some argue that God has a body (after all, he did walk in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve.) If God
indeed has a body, how can we know him through that one part? How can the flesh of God represent the
whole? How can we see the finite body as a part of an infinite God?
As to the third argument, that if the concept of God exists mentally, He must exist in actuality, I must
disagree. As mentioned before, there are people who deny the existence of God. They quite clearly
understand the concept of God mentally, but they still deny His existence in actuality. Understanding the
concept and believing in it are two different things.
As to argument four—that truths exist, and God is truth, therefore God is self-evident—the existence of truth
in general is self-evident, but the existence of a Primal Truth is not self-evident. That there are things which
are true in this life is correct. However, just because there are truths does not mean that every truth is self-
evident. For instance, I had eggs for breakfast. Is it self-evident that this statement is true? No. Is it true?
Yes. Therein lies the difference between the concept of truth and the existence of specific truths which are
self-evident. The existence of God is a specific truth which has not been documented.
Question One, Complete
Afterward: So, what is St. Thomas Aquinas on about here? Doesn’t it sound odd for a monk and theology
professor to be arguing against the existence of God? But wait; take a closer look. He actually does not argue
against the existence of God, but rather he says that God is not self-evident. I think that Aquinas was
something of a scientist; he has a need to explain the world around him. If God were self-evident, then
everyone should believe in him, just as everyone should believe that rain comes from the sky. But it is clear
that there are unbelievers in Aquinas’s time, as there were in biblical times. So how do you account for the
unbelievers? It is not logical to say that they are lying about their beliefs. It must be that God is not self-
evident; there is room for disbelief.
I think for Aquinas it is important that each man make his own way to God and come to know Him firsthand.
He is not born truly knowing God; he must study God in order to gain knowledge of Him. This concept of
personal revelation is very popular in our own times among evangelical Protestants, who believe in the concept
of being saving or being born again. If you had God all along, then you would not need to be saved or born
again. But they hold that you have to discover God yourself and develop a personal relationship with Him.
Question Two
Mediator: I put before you the question, can it be demonstrated that God exists?
Popular Party: God’s existence cannot be proven. Firstly, the belief in God is an act of faith. Faith cannot
be proven. Ergo, God cannot be proven.
Secondly, physical presence can be proven. However, the very nature of God is a lack of physical presence,
therefore He cannot be proven.
Thirdly, God cannot be proven by His effects—the earth and the universe—because those things are finite,
but God is infinite. Therefore His creations cannot adequately demonstrate His existence.
Aquinas: Every effect has a cause. It does not matter if we do not understand the cause; not understanding
it does not mean it does not exist. If there is an effect, a cause must exist regardless of whether or not we
understand it.
Firstly, I feel that God can be proven scientifically by the complexity of His effects, therefore He is not only
known by faith. That some people do not understand science, and must rely on their faith alone, does not
mean that science does not exist.
Secondly, I agree that God is not physical. So no, you cannot find physical proof of God; if you did, that
would not be God. So, in a way, the lack of physical proof, especially in light of His effects, would seem to
prove that there is a God.
Thirdly, finite things can prove the existence of God; after all, they did not come into existence by
themselves. They are an effect and God is the cause. Although we must admit that we can’t fully understand
God because we are limited to seeing His finite effects. But just because physical, finite things can’t
demonstrate all of God does not mean that they don’t demonstrate at least a part of Him.
Question Two, Complete
Question Three
Mediator: I put before you the question, does God exist?
Popular Party: God does not exist. Firstly, the very definition of God is “infinite goodness.” If God were
truly good and infinite, then He could not allow evil to exist.
Secondly, God does not have to exist as a means of explaining the world. The world can be governed solely
by two things: nature and human free will.
Aquinas: Firstly, evil is necessary for the existence of good. How would we know that God was supremely
good if there was no Devil to compare Him to? If everything is white, what does black look like? If everyone
is good, how does on demonstrate courage or character? Is it not easy to be good when there is no evil? Is it
not more noteworthy when someone shuns temptation to do good? If there were no contrasts, everyone and
everything would be the same.
And because there is contrast, there is scale; there are small sins and mortal sins; there is small charity and
great charity. If something exists, it must have a maximum, a zenith. Therefore, since we know goodness to
exist—and we can see it thanks to evil—then there must be something which is perfectly good. And we all
know that only God can be perfectly good.
Secondly, it is certain and evident that in the world, some things are in motion. Now, whatever moves has to
be moved by some force; while things have the potential to move, they do not move of their own accord.
Since God is “the Alpha and Omega” it can be reasoned that He is the force that sets things in motion. Thus
nature demonstrates the existence of God. After all, the planets are not intelligent enough to move
themselves.
It is also certain that every effect must have a cause. Therefore something must have created nature. I
would argue that the existence of nature demonstrates the existence of God.
Everything now in existence was, at one time, not in existence. For instance, there was a time before I was
born when I did not exist. There are also things which existed, which no longer exist. My grandfather
existed, but no longer exists. And there are some things which do not yet exist, but will some day, such as
children who are yet to be born. Therefore, it stands to reason, at some point in the past, nothing at all
existed, since we all come in a line from those which came before, and there has to be a beginning to that
line. Before that, there was nothing. But something cannot spring out of nothing. Therefore, something had
to create the beginning of everything. As God is the first and the last, God must have existed before
everything else, and He must have put everything into existence.
Also, man alone among all of creation has free-will. Where did such free-will come from? How did it develop
naturally when it has developed in no other creature? No, man had to have been given free-will and only
something else with free-will—God—could have granted it.
Question Three, Complete.
Afterward: I find St. Thomas’s ideas on the universe fascinating. They seem fairly modern. For instance,
he understands that things have the potential for motion (kinetic energy), but that they have to be set in motion
by something. This is one if Newton’s laws: a body at rest must stay at rest until something else acts upon
it. So, you see, it wasn’t that Newton observed things about the universe that no one else had noticed before,
it was just that he discovered that gravity—not God—held the universe together and kept the planets in
motion. But it would seem that Aquinas knew that the planets were kept in motion naturally; his emphasis is
on what set them going in the first place.
Interestingly, he also has a concept of what we might refer to as pre-Bang. Modern scientists think that all
matter in the universe was once in an infinitely small area—like the center of a black hole, only it was the
biggest black hole ever. Then something caused all of that matter to blow apart and everything was set in
motion by flying away from the center. Aquinas would have been comfortable with the Big Bang theory, I
think, so long as everyone understood that God was what caused the Bang (and I’m sure he could argue how
and why God was able to do that). I think Aquinas would have also accepted the theory of evolution, since he
allows for “nature” to be in control of some things, so long as everyone understood that God made nature and
set it in motion, and that God did step in and differentiate man from all the other creatures by giving him a soul
and free-will. Although he may have sided with some conservative evolutionists, which hold that all life on
this planet, except man, evolved; God set man down whole and pre-formed and that’s why we can’t find the
missing link.
End of Round One.
St. Thomas
Aquinas
Aquinas
| Misc Info |
| Me |