Fifth discussion

St. Thomas was born in Roccasecca, near Aquino about halfway between Rome and Naples. At
the age of 5, he was sent to monastery. When he was about fourteen, he went to the University
of Naples. During his stay in the city, he was attracted to the way of life of the Dominican friars
at a nearby monastery and decided to enter their order in spite of the objections of his family:
where upon his brothers, in hopes of bringing him to quit the Dominicans, kidnapped him and
held him at Roccasecca for more than a year. His brothers sent into his room one night a very
beautiful woman in order to tempt Thomas and thereby prevent him from going to the
monastery, but Tomas frightened the woman away Thomas managed to escape from his
brothers and made his way to Paris.

Thomas studied in the school of Albertus Magnus. There he was introduced to the study of
Aristotelianism and completed his theological studies. He was proclaimed a saint by the Church
and has been acclaimed as the Angelic Doctor

For Aquinas, the existence of God needs to be demonstrated, and demonstration must start
from the sensible world without any prejudice. Such demonstrations are possible and are
accommodated to anyone who is simply capable of reflecting.

There are five ways in which the human intellect can prove the existence of God. all have a
command point of resemblance. The starting point is a consideration of the sensible world
knows by immediate experience.

The Five Ways of Proving God's Existence:

First, thru the sense of experience of motion or change in the universe. It is certain, and evident
to oursense, that in the world some things are in motion. "Whatever is moved is moved by
another. If that which is in motion is moved by another, then this must still need to be put in
motion by another and then by another again. However, this cannot go on to infinity, because
there is a necessity to arrive at a first mover, which is in itself unmoved by another. This First
Mover is understood by everyone as God

Second, from the nature of the efficient cause, Accordingly, in the world of sense, we find that
there is an order of efficient causes. Aquinas held that there cannot be anything in this world of
senses that is caused by itself, since this will be imbossible.However, it is more admissible to
have an Efficient Cause or the First Cause of everything, which is in itself uncaused. This First
Cause is called God.

Third, is taken from possibility and necessity. There are things in this world that are possible not
to exist because prior to their existence, they are simply not yet. Moreover, we experience that
there are things which come into existence and eventually pass out of existence. This being is
called a contingent being. In this case there should be the existence of necessary being which
brings the contingent beings into existence Because nothing can cause its own existence, it
follows that there should be a necessary being-whose existence is explained by itself-which
accounts for possible beings. This necessary being is God.

Fourth, is taken from the gradation of perfection to be found in things. In this world, we observe
that there are things which are better than the others, and there are also things which are less
good than the others, and there are also things which are less good than the others. However,
such "more good" or "less good" are predicated to things in the way as they resemble to
something which is the maximum. Hence, there should be the worst or the best. Now, the
maximum in any genus is the cause of all that genus. In this case, there must also be something
which is to all being the cause of their being goodness and every other perfection; and this we
call God.

Fifth, is taken from the governance of the world. We observe that things in the world act towards
a certain end. However, whatever that lacks intelligence cannot move towards an end, unless it
is directed by some being endowed with knowledge and intelligence. Therefore, there should be
an intelligent being that should exist by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and
this being we call God.

St. Augustine proves the existence of God through a priori and a posteriori arguments The more
convincing arguments for Augustine will be those a priori proofs drawn from the presence within
us of this special illumination. In fact, the presence of this illumination is proof of the existence of
God. Such a priori argument can be reduced to the following formula: We are conscious of
possessing within ourselves ideas and formal principles which are by nature universal and
necessary, outside the confines of time and space, eternal |

The universal principle are communicated to us by Him, by the Wisdom of God, the Word of
God. As we said above, Augustine also appeals to a posteriori, arguments, when for instance
from change and the imperfections of beings the rises to the perfect being, the being above all
change, God.

The Nature of Human Person:

St. Thomas believed that a human nature has both its source and ultimate end in God. He
believed that God is not only the final end of human being, but He is also the very ground of the
existence of both the human being and the world. The moral end of a person is not simply a
natural end towards which he/she by nature tends. It is the good in which a person, in his
innermost being yearns for and made manifest to him in synderesis and conscience.

For St. Thomas, conscience is the concrete particular judgement by which in a given particular
situation, a person knows what he or she ought to do. On the other hand, synderesis, is more
general, ie it is the intellectual habit or disposition by which, the human person in any given
situation is in possession of the fundamental principles of morality-do good and avoid evil in as
much as God created the human person in His own image and likeness, it follows that the
human person is also to be considered good because the Creator is the summum Bonum or the
Highest Good. This case, it is necessary that the human person should be following his/her
nature as good in order to achieve the real purpose of his her existence

The Happiness of the Human Person

St. Thomas held that the human persons ultimate happiness consists in contemplating God and
not in goods of the body. In this case, the human person's ultimate happiness consists only in
wisdom and not in any other sciences. This is because the contemplation based on the
sciences has the lowest things for their object. But happiness must consist in an operation of the
intellect in relation to the highest object of intelligence. In this case, the human person's ultimate
happiness consists in wisdom based on the consideration of divine things.

St. Bonaventure

St. Bonaventure was born at Boanorea in 1221. He entered Franciscan Order. He studied at the
University of Paris.

The Three Degrees of Knowledge of St. Bonaventure

1st Degree is knowledge of the particular of the individual, for this first degree of knowledge,
sensible experience, corresponding to the physical senses, is indispensable;

2nd Degree consists in knowledge of the universal, of ideas, and of all that we acquire by
reflecting upon ourselves This knowledge does not come from abstraction as suggested by
Aristotle and Aquinas, but from illumination. This illumination is for Bonaventure the result of an
immediate cooperation of God.

3rd Degree is the understanding of things superior to ourselves-God. This kind of knowledge
can be obtained through the eye of contemplation.

The Nature of Man:

For Bonaventure the soul is of its very nature form and matter and as a consequence is a
complete substance independent of the body. The body in turn is composed of matter and form
(vegetative and sensitive form), but it aspires to being informed by the rational form. In this
aspiration and coordination and unity of the individual consists

With regards to the faculties of the soul, Bonaventure, in accord with St. Augustine,
distinguishes three; the will, the understanding and the intellective memory. For Bonaventure the
faculties are expressions of one and the same soul, which is endowed with three diverse
activities; between the soul and its faculties there is merely a logical distinction In
Aristotelianism, the faculties are qualities of the soul and really distinct from it. Bonaventure
holds that among the faculties of the soul, the will has primacy over the other faculties; therefore
it is necessary to love in order to understand.

This law is applied also to our knowledge of God: it is necessary to be united to God through
faith and grace in order to know Him and His attributes. The process of this knowledge is
described in the Itinerarium mentis in Deum. There are three grades or steps through which the
soul ascends to God:

• The first grade is called "vestigium" which is the imprint of Himself that God has stamped on
material things outside ourselves.

• The second grade is imago" or the reflection of the soul upon itself, by which, seeing the
threefold faculties of the soul-will, intellect, and memory-man discerns the image of God.
. The third grade is "similitudo"- or the consideration of God Himself. By Considering the idea of
the most perfect being we can conceive the unity of