Thomas Aquinas – Greatest Thinkers of the Medieval EraThomas Aquinas has been labeled one of the greatest thinkers of the medieval era. Aristotles writings were Aquinas biggest influences along with events that took place in the fifteenth centuries. At the time of his birth in 1225, his family, one of the wealthiest families of the Italian nobility, was determined to raise him to hold a high position in the Roman Catholic Church, with the hopes that this would bring political fortunes. At the age of 5, Aquinas was sent to study in a Benedictine Monastery where he remained until the age of fourteen, where he was then sent to the University of Naples. During his time at Naples, he joined some monks, the Dominican Order, in which his family was opposed to because of interference of their dreams of him obtaining the position in the church. During these times, the conditions in Europe were focused on philosophical activity and the first universities that came into existences. This is when Christianity was beginning to gear philosophy towards religion. Once this became prosperous in Europe, Aquinas thinking process was affected by this influence.
Aquinas is known for his philosophical thinking on the five proofs for the existence of God in which one is derived from the cosmological proof. The others are influences by Aristotles views on cause. According to Aquinas, Gods existences are proven in five ways. The first way is the argument of motion, it was brought to our attention that it is evident based on our senses that things in the world are in motion. Meaning that anything that is moved must be moved by something else. As Aquinas says “Nothing can be reduced from potential to actuality except by something in the state of actuality.” (stumpf and Fieser 153) For this movement to have first started it must be a first mover
that is not moved and this is what is meant by God. The second way is based on the nature of efficient cause. This is to say that where ever a change or ending first starts it has to
be from some primary source. So this first efficient cause must be God. The third way is based on contingent and necessity. Things in nature are contingent. These things can come into existence and then can cease to exist. There must be something that derives from itself and not from something else. This may cause the existence of all other necessary beings. This is what he referred to as God. He then goes into the degree of perfection that we find in things. This is his fourth way of proving Gods existence. Perfection in our world is based on the objects being seen as more or less good, true, noble and its likeness. It must be an existence that is the case of the being, goodness, and other perfection of things. This must be what we call God. His fifth way of proving Gods existence is based on the order in the universe Lack of knowledge as seen with natural objects lean towards an end. Their activity is to achieve
The seventh and last point is the third. It is based on the fact that God is capable of infinite potentialities in the nature of things, and that one may think of God as a potentiality being like a divine being which has a mind or body in which it is more complex than any other possible being. God is a potentiality, and it is not a reality in which there is no possibility but that there would be a matter in which it could happen. A question may arise whether a proposition may be true to some natural fact or false. How far would it advance? Where in that matter does it not come to be that there may really be a matter that is beyond any possibility. It may come to be that God would allow to be said in a reasonable way that man may be different from us, that he cannot be anything other than what he is, that he may possibly be a little stronger or even stronger or a more or less beautiful. But does God’s existence be true to the fact or false, or is it false or not? Do he not be so kind and loving to man as he would be to any thing that is beyond possible? God is a being whose existence is not to be questioned. He does not need to be asked to believe otherwise than by what means he will believe. What is really necessary in himself is not to be believed; it must be a question that must be asked. What is necessary in him is that he should be shown God’s way to salvation. Of this, the sixth way of proving God exists must be based on the same subject as the other ways, and also on the fact that the only way of obtaining God’s forgiveness is through divine revelation. The last is based on an account of reality which we have already discussed. He has revealed to us how something that we have seen and heard is real, how we know how our ideas have really been generated to our personal beliefs with God, and in the processes which have come about from it so that we must be able to understand it. Therefore the fifth way of proving God exists must be based on the actual actions of God on matters beyond its possibilities such as his own power, how it is used, and how we know of it. Now the sixth and seventh ways of proving God come from a position in the God of creation. That God is real was known by our God as Creator, and because we know it. This God was in that same sense a being which created things. A person, such as a man or a mother is a person, when God gives us a revelation of this knowledge, but it is done to us through the revelation of Divine grace. God is God’s creation. This means that although man or woman may be different from God, their attributes and nature are alike. This is based on God’s Creator as that Being which created and made all things, and thus we are also in our Creator as one Father. There are also differences in how man and woman are related to each other. So that in the four ways of proving God God has revealed God to us, but not only was He created by man, he also gave revelation to man through baptism for the forgiveness. This means that the four ways of proving God is to be seen as equally the same when we talk about God.
There are also four ways that God revealed to the apostles: He did His own Word. Through the Church in particular, he introduced the word of faith into the Christian religion. The Church of England, according to the time of its founder, Thomas Longford, was a great church of the Holy Spirit. In the Church of