Baptism and birth in Thomas of Aquinas: an embryological, political, and moral

analysis

Abstract

This work aims to analyze the origin of the self in the medieval though: the relation between
baptism and birth the effect of each of these events in the future development of the fetus
and in the life of the human being that comes from it. We will do that in some of the works
of Thomas of Aquinas – one of the most famous author of the scholastics – in which he
associates the rationality that exist in the human beings and the action of divinity: Summa
Theologiae I, q 75 a 2 and 6; III q 66 a 9. We understand that differentiate the effects on the
soul of the birth and the baptism will give light on philosophical problems of the XIII and
XIV centuries related to politics and moral (v.g. the difference between murder and
abortion, the limits of the authority of the father to a child, etc.) and problems related to
anthropology (v.g. in which moment the embryo starts to be a human being, when does the
embryo stop to be a vegetative being and evolves to a sensitive and then rational one, etc.).
Our thesis is that the doctor angelicus understand baptism as the non plus ultra for abortion
and that it marks a before and after in the life: before baptism there is not a human being
and, if killed, it would be aborted, but after it, the baby is perfected as a rational being that,
if killed, it would be murdered.

Bibliography

Sources:

Alarcón, E, S. Thomae de Aquino opera omnia, Universidad de Pamplona y Universidad de

Navarra, versión online: http://www.corpusthomisticum.org/iopera.html.

Bekker, I. (1837-1870), Aristotelis Opera Omnia, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Pasnau, R. (2002), Thomas Aquinas - The treatise on Human Nature – Summa Theologiae 1a
75-89, Hackett Publishing Company, Indianapolis/Cambridge.

Commentaries:

Bledsoe, J. P. (1973), “Aquinas on the soul” en Laval théologique et philosofique, v. 29, n° 3,

Laval, pp. 273-289.
Callus, D. (1961), “The Origins of the Problem of the Unity of Form” en The Thomist: A
Speculative Quarterly Review, Vol. 24, n. 2-4, April, July, October, pp. 257-285.

Johnston, E. M. (2013), “The biology of woman in Thomas of Aquinas”, The Thomist: A

Speculative Quarterly Review, Vol. 77, N. 4, October 2013, pp. 577-616.