AUGUSTINE AND THOMAS AQUINAS

AUGUSTINE'S WORKS INCLUDE...

• Against the Academics
• On Free Will
• Confessions
• On the Trinity
• City of God

AUGUSTINE'S TEACHINGS

• Law of nature based on right reason
• A lost Golden Age
• A universal common humanity
• Inward Turn- Barbarism to peace
• Studied Plotinus

DE GENESI

• Spiritual work
• Origin of the soul
• Good vs. Evil
• Light vs. Darkness

CITY OF GOD

• Hierarchy of existence established
• God>humans>natural world
• Man made things under all
• Objective- truth, goals, beauty
• Subjective- Happiness

MAJOR THEMES OF AUGUSTINE

• Desire
• Religion
• Evil
• Knowledge
• Learning

ST. THOMAS AQUINAS

• Established 5 proofs of God
• Theology> faith and reason
• Philosophy>reason
• Politics> group
• Ethics>human to human

HOW GOD WAS INVESTIGATED

• Divine essence
• Trinity
• Creatures(From God)

FIRST PROOF OF GOD

• Argument of motion
• Actuality and Potentiality
• Must be orgin of motion
• Reaction set off by God

In this statement, Aquinas is saying that mystery is not here to take out of the knowledge of nature, but mystery is around to perfect nature. The things revealed to human beings by divine revelation and faith do not negate science. In fact, nature works with faith in order to produce understanding to human beings.

5 PROOFS OF AQUINAS

• Motion
• Efficient Cause
• Possibility & Necessity
• Gradution
• Governance

When philosophy and faith come together into a solid understanding, they do not mix with each other allowing the message to be diluted. Instead, there is a transcendence of understanding into a new level of understanding different from faith and also different from philosophy.

SUMMA THEOLOGICA

• Existence of God
• How God and nature work
• Thoughts about creation
• Essence of Man

AQUINAS' THOUGHTS

• Theology is a science
• Theology=Best science
• Bible=Greatest revelation

ANALYSIS

• Reason changed Augustine
• Golden mean is too strict
• Confessions is more than a bio
• Sensible world is not evil

ANALYSIS

• Aristotle wrong abt. creation
• Revelation helps to know proofs
• Augustine changed for the better
• Maybe more than 3 divisions of God