The Life and Influence of Thomas Aquinas

The Life of St. Thomas Aquinas 

Thomas Aquinas was one of the most, if not the single most influential theologian and leader of the medieval era of Christianity. He founded the school of Thomism, as well as the ideas and theology behind the Dominican school of thought within catholic theology of the time. Aquinas also made great use of Aristotle’s philosophy, but more so, he contributed to it’s popular use in society at that time and after. Thomas Aquinas was not particularly popular or well accepted in his own time, he was well appreciated by the Dominicans of course, but was a theological adversary to the Franciscans. But of course, after Aquinas, his life, thought, theology, and philosophy would influence Christianity and the world for generations to come. Aquinas is considered the foremost of the medieval scholastics.

Saint Thomas Aquinas was born 1224 or 1225 in Roccasecca, in the Kingdom of Sicily (Chenu, 2020). He was baptized under the name Thomas, signifying the meaning: “abyss” (Conway, 2016). He died in 1274. Thomas was placed in the Monte Cassino when he was a young boy, as a prospective monk, and his parents hoped that he would one day become a wealthy leader within the church (Chenu, 2020). He spent nine years there until 1239 when the emperor expelled all monks from the area, due to their rigid service to the pope (Chenu, 2020). Later Aquinas joined the University of Naples and there joined with the Dominicans, a school of thought that had developed approximately 30 years prior (Chenu, 2020). Aquinas took a vow of poverty, and his parents became increasingly disturbed by his chosen vocation (Chenu, 2020). His family had Aquinas kidnapped on the road to Paris and he was held prisoner for over a year, before they finally allowed him to follow the path of God’s will. Apparently while he was in captivity his parents locked him in a tower with a prostitute so that he would give up his vow of celibacy (Conway, 2016, p. 16-19). But he instead prayed earnestly and experienced a dream of two angels who named him a perpetual virgin, and he was delivered from this temptation, winning the prostitute to Christ (Conway, 2016, p. 18-19). He returned to Paris to the convent of Saint-Jacques, the hub of Dominican activity at this point in history (Chenu, 2020). There Aquinas studied under St. Albertus Magnus who helped shape his thought and ideas in many ways. Many theologians during this time feared that Arabian-Aristotelian scientific thought, including rationalism and naturalism were serious dangers to the church. But Aquinas didn’t fear these ideas. He embraced Aristotelian thought, studying it deeply and began lecturing on it (Chenu, 2020). Thomas eventually left Paris with his mentor Albertus Magnus in 1248 to a convent in Cologne, where Magnus would head up the faculty (Chenu, 2020). Thomas stayed for four years, then departed again for Paris in 1252 to begin work on a Master of Theology (Chenu, 2020). He completed the degree in 1256 and began teaching at a Dominican school in Paris at that time (Chenu, 2020).

According to Chenu (2020), “In 1259 Thomas was appointed theological adviser and lecturer to the papal Curia, then the centre of Western humanism. He returned to Italy, where he spent two years at Anagni at the end of the reign of Pope Alexander IV and four years at Orvieto with Pope Urban IV. From 1265 to 1267 he taught at the convent of Santa Sabina in Rome, and he then, at the request of Pope Clement IV, went to the papal Curia in Viterbo. Suddenly, in November 1268, he was sent to Paris, where he became involved in a sharp doctrinal polemic that had just been triggered off.”

In 1272 Aquinas traveled to Italy to establish a school of Dominican thought at the University of Naples. During this time another controversy developed in which a friend of Thomas’ in Paris St. Bonaventure began to criticize Aristotelian thought which included Thomas’ use of it.

It was in 1274 that Pope Gregory X summoned Thomas to the second Council of Lyons in the hopes of healing the controversy which had developed between Greek and Latin churches at that time (Chenu, 2020). While St. Thomas traveled to the council, he became ill, so he stopped to rest at the Cistercian abbey of Fossanova, and there he died (Chenu, 2020). Five year after his death, the masters of Paris, a very important and powerful theological council condemned twelve statements made by Thomas Aquinas. These theses of Aquinas were condemned, and the implications of this condemnation would be far reaching. Later Aquinas teachings would become increasingly influential in medieval Christianity, eventually playing an important role in the Catholic church’s response to the reformation (Boland & Bailey, 2014, p. 124).

The Thought of St. Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas was deeply influenced by Aristotle’s philosophy of reason. Aquinas believed that there were two primary avenues to understand God, through revelation and through reason. Aquinas believed that theology as explored through the texts of scripture were understood primarily through revelation, the concept that God guides us to understand himself. But Aquinas also believed that reason was useful in understanding God and the world around us. He brought together Theology and Aristotelian philosophy, while also considering them distinctly separate.

St. Thomas is probably best well known for his famous five proofs for the existence of God. While Anselm believed that the existence of God was self-evident and that from faith one could investigate to find evidence for God’s existence, Aquinas believed that God’s existence was not self-evident, and there was another option for finding belief in God, and that was by investigation.

The first argument is the argument from the order of movement in nature (The Thomistic Institute). The idea here is that movement is caused by something, so if you go all the way to the beginning, you must find a prime mover (The Thomistic Institute). There cannot be an infinite regression, so there must be an unmoved mover (The Thomistic Institute). This necessity of a prime mover proves God exists. The proof from causality is the idea that every cause has an effect in the world. So, with every cause, there must also be a first cause, an uncaused cause (The Thomistic Institute). This points to the existence of God.

The next is the proof from contingency and the necessary (The Thomistic Institute). The mind-numbing contingency argument suggests that things exist, and this is surprising, because why should they exist? So since contingent beings do exist, and have no reason for existing, therefore God exists. The fourth is degrees of perfection. Given that we find things in the world that exist at various degrees closer or further from perfection, a perfect perfection must exist, therefore God exists (The Thomistic Institute).

The fifth is the concept that things without intelligence in nature work toward orderly ends (The Thomistic Institute). For example, bees in a beehive have no intelligence, but they build toward an end by producing honey and a sustained colony. Therefore, it’s logical to say that a higher being, God, has guided these ends, or programmed these entities with this instinct. These proofs were groundbreaking and helped form the impotence for future explorations of apologetics and explorations of reasonable evidence for the existence of God (The Thomistic Institute).

Thomas Aquinas also explored a great deal regarding speculative theology of the Trinity (Emery & Murphy, 2010). Aquinas found great value in a deep understanding of trinitarian theology in the life of a believer. He indicated that an understanding of the trinity was necessary to understand God’s creative work and thus also the works within the creation itself (Emery & Murphy, 2010, p. 8). Indeed, he believed one could not understand salvation itself without deeply understanding the trinity because God worked out salvation through the working of the trinity on those who were saved (Emery & Murphy, 2010, p. 8). Aquinas wrote, “It is not possible to believe explicitly in the mystery of Christ, without faith in the Trinity, since the mystery of Christ includes that the Son of God took flesh; that he renewed the world through the grace of the Holy Spirit; and again, that he was conceived by the Holy Spirit” (Emery & Murphy, 2010, p. 8). St. Thomas wrote extensively on the Trinity in works like Summa Theologiae, Summa contra Gentiles, Summa contra Gentiles, and Scriptum super libros Sententiarum (Commentary on the Sentences) (Emery & Murphy, 2010).

The Legacy of St. Thomas Aquinas
St. Thomas Aquinas stands as a giant of the medieval era of Christianity, and as a giant of historic Christianity overall. Thomas Aquinas’ acceptance of reason in the Aristotelian vein was historic in syncretizing Christianity with reason in a way that helped forge it’s spread and deepen it’s ability to describe a world increasingly explored and explained through science and reason.

His three famous works Summa Theologiae, The Summa Contra Gentiles, and Disputed Questions on Truth greatly influenced the Medieval era and massively influenced historic Christianity (The Thomistic Institute).

St. Thomas immediately after his death was viewed as a controversial figure, with some of his ideas being condemned shortly after his death. However, as soon as the 14th century translations of his works were appearing in German, Greek, and Armenian (Boland & Bailey, 2014, p. 124). In the mid fifteenth and sixteenth centuries numerous Thomistic theologians made extensive use of Aquinas’ works, and wrote numerous commentaries on them. During the great reformation, the works of Aquinas were central in formulating the Catholic churches response to Luther and the rest of the reformers (Boland & Bailey, 2014, p. 124). The works of Aquinas continued to influence society and the church into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as well in various ways (Boland & Bailey, 2014). Without a doubt, St. Thomas Aquinas left a massive mark on the world through his explorations of Aristotelian thought, his contributions to the Dominican movement of the Catholic faith, his many intellectual, philosophical, and theological works, as well as his legacy through the Thomistic movement.

 

References

Boland, V., & Bailey, R. (2014). St. Thomas Aquinas. London: Continuum.

Chenu, M. (2020, April 27). St. Thomas Aquinas. Retrieved October 17, 2020, from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Thomas-Aquinas

Conway, P. (2016). Saint Thomas Aquinas. Forgotten Books.

Emery, G., & Murphy, F. A. (2010). The Trinitarian theology of St Thomas Aquinas. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

McInerny, R., & O'Callaghan, J. (2014, May 23). Saint Thomas Aquinas. Retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aquinas/

The Thomistic Institute. (n.d.). Aquinas 101. Retrieved from http://www.Aquinas101.com/

What is Original Sin and why does it matter?

The doctrine of original sin is absolutely essential to any understanding of the Christian faith. If one is not aware of the problem, that of our need for a savior because of sin, then one cannot properly understand the solution, which is Jesus Christ, the God-man who washes away our sin by suffering in our place on the cross, and rising to life to give us eternal life.  

The doctrine of original sin was a key tenant of Augustinian theology, all the way back to the times of the early church. He after all understood sin quite well, because of his youthful journeys of constant sin and lust and self-destructive behavior.  The more we understand sin as Christians, and how terrible sin truly is, and how it has destroyed people and the world, the more we are driven to the love of Jesus Christ, and the amazing gift of Christ's substitutionary atonement on the cross. 

Augustine's view of original sin is important, in fact it must form the basis for the Calvinist view of total depravity, that man can make no approach to God, and God must awaken the fallen nature for any approach to be made to God.  Original sin, which begins in the garden, certainly affects every person, from birth, any person questioning this ought simply spend time with an angry toddler who cries out: "Mine, mine, mine!" Essentially, the doctrine of original sin is near as vital as the cross of Christ, which makes it extremely important.

Yet we also have to reflect on the inherent worth of every human being. Imago Dei is extremely important to Augustine because Augustine sees an ability to understand the Trinity through examining the Imago Dei within ourselves. The Imago Dei within us helps us to understand the mysteries of the Trinity, and similarly the Trinity helps us to understand the Imago Dei within ourselves.  Essentially, it's important to Augustine because the Imago Dei and the Trinity reveal one another. The Imago Dei is a balance to the reality of original sin, in that original sin condemns us, but the Imago Dei indicates conversely our incredibly worth in the eyes of God. Thus, we are, as beings made in the image of God, worth Jesus Christ coming on a rescue mission for, to save us.

The doctrine of the image of God is certainly important in our day and age.  It can be minimized too much, in which we reject any connection to God in likeness to God. One might think of "worm theology."  It can also be over-emphasized or more so distorted, like in new age beliefs, where the person is essentially deified to not simply be "like god" but to "be god."  For Christians, we debate whether the imago dei is primarily about intellect, or relationship, or an eternal nature, but it remains vitally important as we consider who we are as humans in relationship to God. When we consider original sin, we should recall that though we are miserably lost, we are also of great value in the eyes of God.

Why is there such a difference between God in the Old Testament and God in the New Testament?

 

Sometimes when we read through the Old testament, and all the amazing historical records, and then we compare it to the new testament, we see a big difference. Did God really change between the old and new testaments? 

Let’s dig into the question. So we see that in old testament times, several thousand years before Jesus was even born, you had God building a nation that would be his special nation in the world.  God began that process with a man named Abraham.  One man was faithful to God, and God guided him to found a nation.  That nation is called Israel. And even to this very day, Israel exists in the world.  We’re talking history here.

So we see God interacting in history in very intense and severe ways in the Old Testament.  Think about some of the examples…

First of all, we see the fall, where God curses Adam and Eve, and the world becomes fallen. We obviously struggle in sin and death now, the world is fallen and a broken place.

Then we see God bring about the great flood, where millions of people would die, and only Noah’s family would survive to repopulate the Earth.

We see how Israel is taken into slavery in Egypt for four hundred years, and God eventually works through Moses to deliver them from slavery, and he brings about great plagues on the Egyptians as punishment for their disobedience to God.

God eventually works through Joshua, commanding Israel to go to war. To take the promised land from tribes that already live there. 

On and on the list goes.  We see God interacting very directly with the nation of Israel, through people, through his prophets, his leaders, and his kings eventually. 

We see God commanding very direct actions, and very direct punishments, like the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.  And the taking of Israel into the Babylonian captivity.

There are many, many more examples.  But essentially the old testament was a time when God worked through various different people to found a nation called Israel that would be his special nation, and the goal was to spread faith in God from Israel to the whole world.  But Israel unfortunately disobeyed God, and time and again Israel faced judgment and destruction, and exile, and captivity, and invasions from other nations.

Then we see Jesus Christ the son of God come into the world, at a time when Israel was conquered and controlled by the Roman Empire.  And we begin reading the four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  And we see that God seems to change how he interacts with people. 

He commands us to love our enemies, to pray for those who persecute us.  He commands us to believe in Jesus Christ for our salvation.  And we no longer see God bringing judgment against nations, or destroying places, at least, not that we know of. 

So the question is what changed? Did God change?  Did God mellow out in the new testament? 

Of course we know from the word of God that God does not change.  He is the same yesterday, today, and forever.  But the way that he interacts with us, his creation does seem to progress, to develop over time. 

When you study any book of the old testament, in some way it points us forward to the time when Jesus would be born.  Every prophet, leader, priest, or teacher lived by faith in God, but they were waiting for a time when Jesus Christ would be born, and then sin could finally be completely washed away.

It all pointed forward to Jesus. Before Jesus, God dealt with sin directly, through judgment. He destroyed the evil of the world, to allow the pure to prosper. 

Sin is the big problem of the Bible, of our world, of the past, and of the present. Sin is the problem.  But when Jesus came, and was sacrificed on the cross for our sins.  The sin problem finally had a solution. 

But God still despises sin just as much as he did when he destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, or when he flooded the Earth.  And God will deal with sin, on the earth, during a time in history that is coming, called the great tribulation.

This time is depicted vividly in the last book of the bible, the book of Revelation. Anyone who thinks that God mellowed out in the new testament and became all hearts and butterflies should read the book of Revelation. 

Right now we’re in what you might call the church age, this is the time of God’s patience.  The church is spreading out across the Earth, all the way from Israel, to our present day where it’s active in the United States, Canada, Mexico, South America, the continent of Africa, and yes, even little Owosso Michigan. Even in Shiawassee county, the church spreads.  This is a time when God waits patiently to see what we will choose, Him or the way of selfishness in this world. 

But eventually that window of patience on the part of God will close.  And then the judgments of the book of Revelation will begin.  The church will be set apart, and brought to God, and the world will experience the darkest time imaginable.  And this time will also directly connect with Israel.  Israel will be won to Christ during this time, but also face great turmoil and destruction. 

So to answer the question: We don’t see a big difference between who God is in the old and new testaments, but we do see a difference in regard to what phase of God’s plan we are in.  In the Old Testament times, was the time that God built of Israel, and paved the way for the coming of Jesus, and the new testament times is the church age, where God guides his church to take the gospel to all nations, and this church age concludes with the great tribulation, the end times, and the return of Jesus Christ.

God doesn’t change.  He still hates sin.  And the old testament times of “hellfire and brimstone” we saw in the times of Israel and Noah, and Abraham, those times are going to come again, not against the church, but against the sinful world that has rejected Jesus to the very end, and must now face the penalty for their disobedience. However, during this time of great tribulation, many millions will also be won to Christ. 

To finally answer the question then, God is the same forever, but over history we watch his plan unfold in different ways. Right now we are in the time of God’s patience, and His grace, so we ought to jump into that agreement, and say yes to Jesus, before time runs out.  Because judgment is coming in the future. 

What are the Prophecies about Jesus that were Fulfilled?

So today we’re talking about a very important to question about the great Jesus Christ our King.  The question is, “What are the prophecies that were fulfilled about Jesus?”

So many of you might be scratching your heads and saying, what prophecies? Well, something that is really astonishing about the life of Jesus of Nazareth, is that in the Old Testament, there were all these books that were written before Jesus was even born. Some of these books, a thousand years before Jesus was even born.  And these various books, inspired by God, made these predictions that this suffering servant figure would appear in the future.  And that he would do various things, and change the world forever.

And what’s amazing, is if you look at these prophecies, one by one, each of them happened at some point during the life of Jesus.  Now I’ve personally read that there are over 300 prophecies that Jesus fulfilled from the old testament, written before he was born. 

So I started searching various resources, and found a list of 40 of them, then a list of 100 of them, that’s pretty good I thought.  But I thought there were over 300?  So at last I found this list, and it lists off three hundred fifty one examples of prophecies fulfilled by Jesus.

So, if I studied one of these a day, from today, Nov 22^nd 2020, I could read one a day, and not be done until Nov 8^th of next year. Obviously we don’t have time to go through all 351 of them tonight. But I’ll show you some of them.

We can go right to the first book of the bible, Genesis, written about 1500 years before Jesus was born.  After the fall of Adam and Eve, you see God giving these prophecy to them.  He says, that the seed of the woman, so one of her ancestors would defeat the serpent.  And of course we know, that Jesus was born in the line of Adam and Eve, and he defeated Satan the evil one on the cross by dying to remove our sins. 

Also in the book of Job, one of the oldest books of the Old Testament, Job declares that “I know my redeemer lives, and he will one day stand on the Earth.”  As we know Jesus is God, so he was alive before he was even born into a human body.  Job knew even back then, that Jesus was alive, and that one day Jesus would be born into the world. 

Job was written around the same time as Genesis, about 3,520 years ago.

But if you’re looking for a book of the Bible that depicts tons and tons of prophecies about Jesus, we of course have to look at the book of Isaiah, which was read for you today in the scripture reading.  This book is incredible, it’s chock full of scriptures about the coming messiah.

Just look here at Isaiah chapter 52:13-15 It says, “¹³ Behold, My Servant will prosper,
He will be high and lifted up and ^[h]greatly exalted.
¹⁴ Just as many were appalled at you, My people,
So His appearance was marred beyond that of a man,
And His form beyond the sons of mankind.
¹⁵ So ^[i]He will sprinkle many nations,
Kings will shut their mouths on account of Him;
For what they had not been told, they will see,
And what they had not heard, they will understand.”

First of all, “My Servant” is capitalized which indicates we’re talking about God.  Jesus came as our servant.  This was written before Jesus was born. It says he will be high and lifted up. What happened to Jesus when he was crucified? He was nailed ot the cross on the ground, and lifted up. And on the cross verse 14, it says his appearance was appalling, his appearance was marred. This happened to Jesus, he had the crown of thorns forced on his head, he was beaten and whipped and was so bloody on the cross he was so mangled they turned away from him in shame. 

Verse 15 says he’ll sprinkle many nations.  And we know that this is true, when we’re born again, we’re sprinkled with the blood of Jesus, that washes away our sin.  Kings will shut their mouth on his account, if you recall Pontius Pilate became wordless once he spoke to Jesus.  Just incredible, this was all written before Jesus was even born. 

God inspired prophets like Isaiah to write these things down.  To point his people toward the coming of Jesus.

Let’s look through Isaiah 53, which we heard earlier.  This is just one chapter.  And there are over 300 prophecies, according to the list I found, 351. Amazing.  Let’s take a look.

Who has believed our report?
And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
² For He grew up before Him like a tender ^[a]shoot,
And like a root out of dry ground;
He has no stately form or majesty
That we would look at Him,
Nor an appearance that we would take pleasure in Him.
³ He was despised and abandoned by men,
A man of ^[b]great pain and familiar with sickness;
And like one from whom people hide their faces,
He was despised, and we had no regard for Him.

⁴ However, it was our sicknesses that He Himself bore,
And our pains that He carried;
Yet we ourselves assumed that He had been afflicted,
Struck down by God, and humiliated.
⁵ But He was ^[c]pierced for our offenses,
He was crushed for our wrongdoings;
The punishment for our ^[d]well-being was laid upon Him,
And by His wounds we are healed.
⁶ All of us, like sheep, have gone astray,
Each of us has turned to his own way;
But the Lord has caused the wrongdoing of us all
To ^[e]fall on Him.

⁷ He was oppressed and afflicted,
Yet He did not open His mouth;
Like a lamb that is led to slaughter,
And like a sheep that is silent before its shearers,
So He did not open His mouth.
⁸ By oppression and judgment He was taken away;
And as for His generation, who considered
That He was cut off from the land of the ^[f]living
For the wrongdoing of my people, to whom the blow was due?
⁹ And His grave was assigned with wicked men,
Yet He was with a rich man in His death,
Because He had done no violence,
Nor was there any deceit in His mouth.

¹⁰ But the Lord desired
To crush Him, ^[g]causing Him grief;
If He renders ^[h]Himself as a guilt offering,
He will see His ^[i]offspring,
He will prolong His days,
And the ^[j]good pleasure of the Lord will prosper in His hand.
¹¹ As a result of the ^[k]anguish of His soul,
He will ^[l]see it and be satisfied;
By His knowledge the Righteous One,
My Servant, will justify the many,
For He will bear their wrongdoings.
¹² Therefore, I will allot Him a portion with the great,
And He will divide the plunder with the strong,
Because He poured out His ^[m]life unto death,
And was counted with wrongdoers;
Yet He Himself bore the sin of many,
And interceded for the wrongdoers.

So in conclusion, those are some of the prophecies about the Jesus who would come, the God-man, who would be born of the virgin Mary.  But you may be wondering, why, why would God inspire people thousands of years before Jesus came to write about him? Well, perhaps so that today you would look at all these prophecies and be so amazed, what are the chances that one man could fulfill all these prophecies, including where he would be born and how he would die? There’s no way. This is what we call evidence for the fact that Jesus Christ is really real.  So if Jesus isn’t really real, then how were all of these prophecies fulfilled a thousand years later when Jesus of Nazareth was born?  Explain it to me, I’ll wait.  The only way it could be true, is if Jesus Christ is really real, and God really inspired people to write about what Jesus would do many years later. So believe in Jesus. Trust in Jesus. Give your life to Him.