St. Thomas Aquinas

St. Thomas Aquinas was a Dominican friar, priest and theologian, born in the Kingdom of Sicily around 1225 and dead at forty-nine in 1274, who wrote the Summa Theologiae and set the pattern for how Catholic theology uses philosophy. He argued that faith and reason come from the same God and cannot finally contradict each other, and he composed the hymns still sung at Eucharistic Adoration. The Church canonised him in 1323, named him a Doctor of the Church in 1567, and keeps his feast on 28 January.

Aquinas is the most influential Catholic theologian after Augustine, and his authority in the Church was neither immediate nor uncontested. Some propositions associated with him were caught up in a condemnation at Paris three years after his death. What follows sets out the life, the work, the objections, and what a reader without a philosophy degree can actually take from him.

1. Who Thomas Aquinas Was

Thomas was born around 1225 at Roccasecca, in the county of Aquino between Rome and Naples, into a noble family with connections to the emperor. He was sent as a boy to the Benedictine abbey of Monte Cassino, where his family expected he would become abbot in due course, and later to the university at Naples. At Naples he encountered the Dominicans, a new order of preachers who lived by begging, and he joined them.

His family objected violently. His brothers intercepted him on the road and held him at the family castle for about a year to break his resolve. The story that they sent a prostitute into his room, and that he drove her out with a burning brand from the fire, comes from his early biographers and belongs to the tradition rather than to a document of the time. He did not give in, and eventually the family let him go.

He studied under St. Albert the Great at Paris and at Cologne, became a master of theology at Paris in his early thirties, and spent his working life teaching, disputing and writing at Paris, at the papal court in Italy, and at Naples. He wrote at enormous speed, dictating to several secretaries. He never held office beyond his teaching chairs, refused promotion, and died on the road.

2. The Dumb Ox

Thomas was a quiet, large man. His classmates teased him, calling him the "Dumb Ox." If only they knew he was the smartest guy in the room (and the century). His teacher, St. Albert, prophesied, "This ox will bellow so loud his brightness will fill the world."

The nickname and Albert's answer to it come from the early biographies of Thomas, chiefly the life written by William of Tocco a generation after his death for the canonisation process. The exact wording varies between versions. The picture underneath is consistent across the sources: a large, slow-speaking, silent student whom his fellows underestimated.

Silence was a habit rather than a limitation. Contemporaries describe him as abstracted, absorbed in thought during meals, and unbothered by what people made of it. Whatever the exact wording of Albert's remark, the assessment was correct within a decade.

3. The Summa and What Is Actually In It

The Summa Theologiae was written from 1265 as a textbook for beginners in theology, which tells you something about thirteenth century beginners. It is arranged in three parts: God and creation, the moral life and the human journey to God, and Christ and the sacraments. Thomas died before finishing the third part, and it was completed from his other writings by his secretary.

The structure is the most useful thing about it, and it is easy to describe. Each topic is broken into questions, each question into articles, and every article follows the same shape. First the objections, stated as strongly as their proponents would state them. Then a citation from Scripture or a Father that points the other way. Then Thomas's own answer. Then a specific reply to each objection in turn. Nothing is skipped and nothing is caricatured.

His other major works include the Summa contra Gentiles, written to set out the reasonableness of Christian faith in dialogue with those who do not accept Scripture, commentaries on most of the works of Aristotle, commentaries on Scripture including the Catena Aurea, a chain of patristic comment on the four Gospels, and a long series of disputed questions.

He is also the theologian who gave the Church its precise language for the Eucharist. The word transubstantiation was in use before him, and Thomas explained it with the distinction between substance, what a thing is, and accidents, how it appears. The substance of bread and wine becomes the Body and Blood of Christ while the appearances remain. The Council of Trent used that framework, and the Catechism follows it still.

4. Faith and Reason

Thomas showed that there is no conflict between Faith and Science (Reason). Both come from God. His masterwork, the Summa Theologica, asks thousands of questions (from "Does God exist?" to "Can angels be in two places?") and answers them with rigorous logic. He was the original FAQ page.

The claim is stronger and more specific than a truce. Thomas held that truth cannot contradict truth, because God is the author of both the natural light of reason and the light of revelation. Where an apparent conflict appears, either the reasoning is faulty or the interpretation of revelation is. The First Vatican Council taught the same, and the Catechism repeats it: there can never be any real discrepancy between faith and reason, since the God who reveals mysteries and the God who bestows the light of reason are the same God (Catechism of the Catholic Church 159).

Thomas held equally that reason has limits. Some truths about God can be reached by reason, such as that God exists. Others, the Trinity and the Incarnation among them, are known only because God revealed them, and no argument can establish them from nature alone. He treated revelation as necessary, including for the truths reason can reach, because most people have neither the time nor the training to reach them.

The controversial part in his own day was Aristotle. The works of Aristotle had reached the Latin West through Arabic and Greek transmission, they were being read as a rival account of the world, and lecturing on them at Paris had been restricted. Thomas took the tools and used them for Christian theology, and he did so while arguing against the readings of Aristotle he judged incompatible with the faith. That was a live risk at the time, and it is the reason for the reaction described below.

5. The Five Ways

The most quoted passage in Thomas is a single article of the Summa, in which he sets out five arguments that God exists. He gives them briefly, in about a page, as a summary of arguments already in circulation.

• From motion. Things are changed by other things, the series of movers cannot be without a first, so there is a first unmoved mover.
• From efficient causation. Nothing causes itself, and a series of causes requires a first cause.
• From contingency. Things come to be and pass away, so if everything were like that, at some point nothing would have existed and nothing would exist now. Something must exist necessarily.
• From degrees of perfection. Things are more and less good, true and noble, which implies a maximum by which the rest are measured.
• From the governance of things. Things without intelligence act toward ends regularly, which points to an intelligence directing them.

Two clarifications save a lot of wasted argument. Thomas is not describing a chain going back in time to a first event, and he explicitly held that the world's beginning in time is known from revelation rather than proved by reason. The series he means is one of dependence here and now. And each argument ends with a phrase like "and this all men call God", which he treats as a starting point. The rest of the Summa is spent working out what that first cause can and cannot be.

6. The Eucharistic Hymns

He was a poet as much as a logician. He wrote some of the most beautiful poetry in history, including the hymns we still sing today at Adoration: Tantum Ergo and Panis Angelicus. Towards the end of his life, he had a vision of Jesus that was so beautiful he said, "All I have written is straw compared to what I have seen."

The hymns were written for a purpose and on commission. Pope Urban IV extended the feast of Corpus Christi to the whole Church in 1264 and asked Thomas to compose the texts for the Mass and Office. What he produced is still in use.

• Pange Lingua Gloriosi, whose last two stanzas are the Tantum Ergo sung at Benediction.
• Sacris Solemniis, which contains the stanza Panis Angelicus.
• Verbum Supernum Prodiens, whose final stanzas are the O Salutaris Hostia.
• Lauda Sion Salvatorem, the sequence for the Mass of Corpus Christi.
• Adoro Te Devote, traditionally attributed to him.

The hymns say in verse what the Summa says in argument. Faith supplies what the senses cannot reach: sight, touch and taste report bread, and the word of the Son of God is the ground for believing otherwise. A man who could write both is a useful corrective to the idea that theology and prayer are separate departments.

7. The Straw, and His Death

On 6 December 1273, while saying Mass at Naples, something happened to Thomas that his companions could not get him to explain. He stopped writing. The Summa was left unfinished. Pressed by his secretary Reginald of Piperno to continue, he said words that have come down in several forms, the usual rendering being that everything he had written seemed like straw compared with what had been revealed to him.

The saying is reported in the testimony gathered for his canonisation, some decades after the fact, and the wording varies between witnesses. What is not in doubt is that he stopped, and that the work ends where it does.

He was summoned to the Second Council of Lyon and set out early in 1274. He was injured on the road, fell ill, and was taken to the Cistercian abbey of Fossanova, where he died on 7 March 1274, about forty-nine years old. He asked for the Eucharist before he died and made a profession of faith in it.

8. Condemned, Then Canonised

In 1277, three years after his death, the Bishop of Paris, Stephen Tempier, condemned a long list of propositions being taught in the arts faculty, aimed chiefly at radical readings of Aristotle. A number of the condemned propositions touched positions Thomas held or was thought to hold. The Archbishop of Canterbury issued a related condemnation in England.

The dispute ran for decades inside the Dominicans and against the Franciscan school. It was settled in Thomas's favour. Pope John XXII canonised him in 1323, and in 1325 the Bishop of Paris annulled the 1277 censures insofar as they touched the teaching of Thomas.

Pope St. Pius V declared him a Doctor of the Church in 1567, with the title Angelic Doctor. Pope Leo XIII's encyclical Aeterni Patris in 1879 called for the restoration of his philosophy in Catholic schools, which shaped Catholic intellectual life for a century. The Church's law on the training of priests still directs that philosophy and theology be taught with St. Thomas as guide.

9. Feast Day, Patronage and Influence

His feast is 28 January, the date his relics were transferred to Toulouse. It was kept on 7 March, the day of his death, until the calendar reform of 1969 moved it out of Lent. His relics are at the church of the Jacobins in Toulouse.

He is the patron of students, of universities and Catholic schools, of theologians, philosophers, apologists and booksellers. Academic institutions across the world carry his name, and Catholic student chaplaincies are frequently dedicated to him.

His influence outside theology is substantial and worth knowing. His account of natural law underlies a great deal of Catholic moral teaching and of the Church's social doctrine. His treatment of just war is still the reference point for that discussion. His work on virtue is read by philosophers with no religious commitment at all.

10. What a Reader Can Take From Him

State the objection before you answer it

Every article of the Summa opens with the case against Thomas's position, put as well as he can put it. Anyone who cannot do that for their own beliefs does not yet hold them for reasons.

Faith does not need protecting from evidence

Thomas took the most threatening intellectual movement of his century and used it. A Catholic who is afraid of a scientific finding or a hard question has adopted a position Thomas would not recognise.

Distinctions end more arguments than volume does

His standard move is to notice that a word is being used in two senses and to separate them. Most religious disputes over a dinner table are the same problem.

Knowledge is not the goal

The most learned man of his age stopped writing and called it straw next to what he had seen. Study serves prayer. When it stops doing that, it has gone wrong.

11. Frequently Asked Questions

When is St. Thomas Aquinas's feast day?

His feast day is 28 January, the anniversary of the transfer of his relics to Toulouse. Until the calendar reform of 1969 it was kept on 7 March, the day he died in 1274, and it was moved so that it would not fall in Lent. He is honoured as a Doctor of the Church with the title Angelic Doctor.

What is the Summa Theologiae?

It is the major work of St. Thomas Aquinas, begun in 1265 and left unfinished at his death, written as a textbook for students of theology. It covers God and creation, the moral life, and Christ and the sacraments. Every article follows the same structure: objections stated at full strength, a counter-authority from Scripture or the Fathers, Thomas's own answer, then a specific reply to each objection. The third part was completed after his death from his other writings.

What are the Five Ways of Thomas Aquinas?

Five brief arguments that God exists, set out in a single article of the Summa: from motion, from efficient causation, from contingency and necessity, from degrees of perfection, and from the governance of things toward ends. Thomas is arguing for dependence here and now rather than a chain going back in time, and he held that the world's beginning in time is known from revelation rather than proved by reason.

Did Thomas Aquinas really call his work straw?

Something of the kind is reported. After an experience during Mass at Naples on 6 December 1273 he stopped writing and left the Summa unfinished, and when his secretary pressed him to continue he answered that everything he had written seemed like straw compared with what had been revealed to him. The saying comes from the testimony gathered for his canonisation decades later and the wording varies between witnesses. That he stopped writing is not in doubt.

Why was Thomas Aquinas condemned in 1277?

Three years after his death, the Bishop of Paris, Stephen Tempier, condemned a long list of propositions being taught in the arts faculty, aimed mainly at radical readings of Aristotle, and some of them touched positions Thomas held or was thought to hold. The dispute ran for decades. Pope John XXII canonised him in 1323, and in 1325 the Bishop of Paris annulled the censures insofar as they touched Thomas's teaching.

Which Adoration hymns did Aquinas write?

Pope Urban IV asked him to compose the texts for the feast of Corpus Christi in 1264. From that commission come Pange Lingua Gloriosi, whose last two stanzas are the Tantum Ergo sung at Benediction; Sacris Solemniis, which contains the Panis Angelicus; Verbum Supernum Prodiens, whose final stanzas are the O Salutaris Hostia; and Lauda Sion Salvatorem, the sequence for the Mass of Corpus Christi. Adoro Te Devote is traditionally attributed to him as well.