Moreover, Aquinas was not a slave to a dogmatic and repressive Church. On the contrary, his works were among those condemned by the Bishop of Paris in , Aristotle was considered by some to be a dangerously unorthodox, even possibly materialist, writer, whose views were incompatible with Christianity. It was not long, however, before Aquinas was to become the intellectual touch-stone of Catholic orthodoxy.
All religion, like all human thought, contains anti-intellectual and repressive tendencies. But in Catholicism rationalism triumphed, and with it a strong belief in the capacity of human reason to work out or at least to provide the basis of fundamental beliefs about the nature of the cosmos and how humans should act in it. The problem with taking Aristotle as the guide to a rational metaphysics and theology is that many of his beliefs about the natural world were wrong.
He was wrong about the nature of the stars, the sun and moon, about intertia and the force of gravity, about the laws of motion and the atomic structure of matter. Moreover, some accuse him of being an impediment to the development of science for decades, if not for centuries. The seventeenth century scientific writer Francis Bacon said that Aristotle's doctrine of final causes was 'like virgins dedicated to God, barren'. And it is arguable that modern science only really got under way when the search for the 'essential natures' of things, and for the final causes, for the sake of which things exist, was given up.
Modern science is not concerned with essential natures, but tends to see all material things as forming a continuum in which there are no sharp dividing class-divisions. And modern science is not concerned with whatever purposes nature might have, concerning itself solely with the general mathematically describable relationships that obtain between physical entities. So on the one hand the rediscovery of Aristotle was a major factor in the rise of modern science.
It encouraged investigation into the causes of things, to be discovered by close observation and the search for intellectual elegance.
On the other hand, Aristotle's general view of nature as a realm in which Forms, or essential natures, were seeking to realise themselves ever more perfectly in matter because it is good that they should do do, stood in opposition to the modern scientific view of nature as a realm in which general laws of nature govern relations between objects, without any reference to purpose or value.
One way of resolving this paradox is to distinguish clearly between Aristotle's theories about physics and his metaphysical views. The Christian development of Aristotle's philosophy by Aquinas is of help here, because it enables natural science to investigate the laws in accordance with which physical entities behave, while holding that the purposes of nature are hidden in the mind of God.
The natural sciences have no direct access to that mind, and some form of revelation may be necessary to give a clue as to what God's purposes are. Natural science will show the intelligibility and elegance of the laws of nature.
But only philosophy can investigate the question of whether the whole of nature may be created for a purpose, and of whether there may be important aspects of the created order like conscious thoughts and feelings, for instance that cannot be fully investigated by the methods of the natural sciences. Aristotle certainly did think there was a God, and he outlines his view of God in Book 12 of the 'Metaphysics'.
There he says, 'God is an eternal and most excellent living being, so that continuous and eternal life and duration belong to it This idea of God is not based on any revelation, and it is not an ordinary inductive causal inference from observation of what happens in the natural world.
It is more like a fundamental postulate, the key integrating idea of a general conceptual scheme for interpreting the world in a consistent, coherent, plausible, fruitful and illuminating way. Aristotle is thinking of God as an explanation for why the world is as it is. But he is thinking of a special kind of explanation, an explanation that will be absolute, in that it stands in need of no further explanation.
An explanation is whatever answers the question 'why? When Aquinas claims to set out five ways for demonstrating that God exists, at the beginning of the 'Summa Theologiae', he is expounding Aristotle's arguments in the 'Metaphysics'. The question both of them ask is: 'Is there any conceivable thing or state that could provide an absolute explanation for the existence and nature of the universe?
Aquinas' first and second 'ways' point out that if anything changes or comes into being, such change or origination demands an explanation in terms of something other than the changed or originated thing. But then that something other will need to be explained as well. So it must be something different in kind from the changed or originated thing.
A finally satisfactory explanation of change or of coming-to-be would have to lie in something incapable of change or of coming into being. This form of argument does not appeal to everyone. Richard Dawkins, who has become a theologian in his old age, sees it as 'arbitrarily conjuring up a terminator' with an unwarranted assumption that God, the terminator, is immune to the regress. But in fact to posit an unchangeable being or state as the explanation of a changing process is exactly what cosmologists do when they seek to explain the 'Big Bang'.
They rightly sense that to just have an initial singularity at the origin of the universe is to leave it without final explanation. The search for explanation, which is the ultimate motivation of all science, would stop in a truly arbitrary state, which could not itself be explained. So cosmologists search for something that could explain the Big Bang.
And one favoured explanation at present is the postulation of a set of unchanging quantum laws that govern a set of random quantum fluctuations in a vacuum. I am not here concerned to spell out what this means, and the difficulties of it, but the interesting point is that it is a proper scientific objective to find something that is not either brought into being or changeable - a set of quantum laws - that can explain how the universe originated as it did.
Dawkins remarks that it is 'perniciously misleading' to call this explanation God. But I think he has not got the patience to see what is going on, or how similar it is to proper scientific enquiry, admittedly at the edge of human understanding.
What Aquinas is looking for is some ultimate explanation for the universe. Following Aristotle, he claims that he can state some of the characteristics it must have. It must be beyond change and origination. But that is not yet sufficient. The scientific question will be: why are those laws the way they are?
And what Aquinas sees is that the only satisfactory answer to the question would be to show that there is simply no alternative. If you understand what they are, you will see that they have to be as they are; they could not be any other way. Does science come near that? It has made attempts. Steven Weinberg speaks of a 'final theory' as the only consistent mathematical formalism that could give rise to a universe containing intelligent life.
The laws are the way they are because if they were not there would be no intelligent life. The laws are necessary to the universe being the way it is. That is an amazing claim, that if the universe is the way it is, there is just one set of ultimate mathematical laws that could make it so. The claim is amazing because there is probably an infinite number of possible mathematical laws, and so the chances of this set existing is infinitely small.
Nevertheless, the infinitely improbable might happen. Yet even that is not quite good enough. A man may be described by intellectual or moral qualities, or by dispositions belonging to him. Examples: a carpenter; a benevolent person; … ii. Examples: soft; not strong; … iii.
Examples: a person is shy, lazy; a thing is red, cold… iv. Examples: tall, short. Consequently, these three classes of attributes, describing the essence of a thing, or part of the essence, or a quality of it, are clearly inadmissible in reference to God. Example: Maimonides who wrote the Guide to the Perplexed. For he who is ignorant of the latter cannot understand the defect implied in emotions, the difference between potentiality and reality, the non-existence implied in all potentiality… He who knows these things, but without their proofs, does not know the details which logically result from these general propositions: and therefore he cannot prove that God exists, or that the [four] things mentioned above are inadmissible in reference to God.
Scholasticism, aka The Medieval Synthesis St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologica, pars secundus, secundus liber.
All that I have written seems like straw. But God is truth itself: I am the way, the truth, and the life Jo. Therefore God exists is self-evident.
Therefore, that God exists is not self-evident. In contrast with this unity, our modern. Probably the most familiar point of contact which the modern spirit has with the intellectual temper of the middle ages is the common meeting ground of humanism. Seen in this perspective, the intricate problems of the human drama can be reduced to three major themes, ever recurring throughout the divine symphony.
The first theme concerns the nature of man, and raises the question, What is his essence? The answer lies in the doctrine of creation.
God, the principle of absolute Being, Goodness, and Truth, by a loving act of His intellect and will created a realm of contingent beings which exhibit relative truths and goods. As one created thing among others, it is this more direct similitude to God which differentiates him specifically from the rest of creation, and defines his essential humanity. The remaining aspects of his nature he shares with other created things—sensations and passions with the animals, nutrition and life with the plants, and corporeality with the clod.
The more he resembles these, the less he achieves his essential humanity. But the more he resembles God, the more he fulfills his nature, which is precisely to be an image of God. The Problem of Orthodoxy II. Medieval Synthesis: Faith and reason can work together A. Averroes 1. Medieval Synthesis: Faith and reason can work together B. Thomas Aquinas 1. Agreed with Moses-ben Maimon, a. Can use philosophy esp.
Book I, Ch. Now there is a double means of asserting truths about God, for there are some truths about God which are beyond the faculty of human reason, such as, that God is three and one, but there are others which philosophers guided by the light of natural reason can attain, such as that God exists and that God is one.
However, in all that is governed or ordered for a purpose it is necessary to derive the rules for this governing and order from that purpose. For each and every thing is best arranged, when it is ordered in accordance with its purpose, and that purpose is the good. It must therefore be that the ultimate purpose of the universe is the Good of Mind; which is Truth, and that wisdom is concerned above all with studying its purpose. Final Cause or Purpose How do religion and philosophy work together?
What is sin? Book III, Ch. But as with the whole, so also with the parts, each and every action of man must serve his purpose.
Semen, although superfluous for the preservation of the individual, is necessary for the propagation of the species. It is true that other superfluities, such as excretion, urine, sweat, and the like, are not necessary for anything and good only for emission.
However, this is not the only requirement for semen, but also that it be emitted for procreation, which is the purpose of intercourse.
Procreation is, however, in vain unless it is followed by nutrition. Therefore the emission of semen should be regulated so that both procreation and rearing can follow. I am referring, however, to the method whereby procreation cannot follow by itself: every seminal emission, for example without the natural union of male and female. This type of sin is called unnatural. If, however, procreation cannot follow the emission of semen by accident, this is neither against nature or a sin, for example, if it happens that a woman is sterile.
What about matters of belief? Transubstantiation Essence Essence Accident Accident Book IV, Ch. It must be understood however that the above mentioned changing of bread into the body of Christ is a different mode from all changes in nature.
For in any natural change, there remains a substance in which different forms succeed each other, either accidental ones as when white changes into black, or substantial ones air into fire. Hence they are termed changes of form. But in the change mentioned above crosses over into a substance, and the accidents remain.
Hence this is termed a change of substance. In what way these accidental qualities persist and why must be scrutinized later. Now, however we must consider how a substance is changed into a substance, something which indeed nature cannot do, for all the operations of nature presuppose matter, through which substances are individuated.
Nature cannot make this finger that finger. But matter is subject to divine power, by which it is brought into being.
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