St.

Thomas Aquinas

Thomas Aquinas and metaphysics :

The Christian philosopher attempts to unify the Christian themes and concepts of Aristotelianism. He
distinguishes the subject, that is to say, the various powers and potentialities, not yet updated, and
form, which, in the subject matter organizes and gives it its true essence and existence: c ‘ is due to the
shape of the material that everything is routed to its own existence. However, Aquinas goes beyond the
purely Aristotelian and it posits the existence, under which an act is reality. In God’s existence and
essence coincide (“I am who I am,” declares the LORD in the Bible) on the contrary, essence and
existence are different in the various individual substances, including humans.

Thomas Aquinas and morality:

His morality is also very close to that of Aristotle’s thoughts on justice, which leads him to distinguish
between distributive justice (that which divides the honors, riches, according to the qualities of each)
and commutative justice (the rule that economic exchanges under the equal proportion principle).

At the top of Thomistic Ethics ranks of the Sage: it means the person whose attention is tounée to the
supreme cause of the universe, namely God. And the wisdom she represents the knowledge of divine
realities. The ultimate happiness of man consists in contemplating the divine truth: the contemplation of
truth is our ultimate goal and raises us to God.

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This adaptation of the Aristotelian doctrine in Christian thought, hardly accepted by the Church, go play,
gradually, a fundamental role in Catholicism. From the 16th century, Thomism is adopted as official
doctrine of the Church.