Theology

Thomas Aquinas

1225 to 1274, Italy

The synthesis of faith and reason, and the five ways.

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Lessons

The Five Ways

Aquinas’s five arguments that the existence of God can be demonstrated by reason alone, working up from the ordinary facts of the world.

Faith and Reason

Aquinas’s great synthesis: that faith and reason, revelation and philosophy, come from the same God and so can never truly contradict each other.

Natural Law

Aquinas’s theory that there is a moral law written into human nature, discoverable by reason - the foundation of much of Western ethics and law.

Speaking of God

How Aquinas solved the problem of how finite human language can say anything true about an infinite, utterly simple God - through the doctrine of analogy.

The Problem of Evil

Aquinas’s answer to the hardest question in theology: how a good and all-powerful God can permit the evil and suffering that fill the world.

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