Thomas Aquinas
Thomas was born to a noble family near Aquino and was sent as a boy to the monastery of Monte Cassino. When he joined the new Dominican order of preaching friars, his brothers kidnapped him and held him for more than a year, and tempted him with a prostitute, whom he drove away. At Paris his classmates called him “the dumb ox”; today he is called “the doctor of angels.”1
His Summa Theologica, more than a million and a half words, was written for Christians; his Summa contra Gentiles argued from reason alone for those who did not accept the Bible. Aquinas merged Christian theology with Aristotle, offered five proofs for the existence of God, and taught that faith and reason work closely together and that nature reveals many truths about God, though some, like the Trinity, are known only by revelation.2
Late in 1273 he stopped writing. Asked to finish the Summa, he replied:
I cannot. Such things have been revealed to me that what I have written seems but straw.3 Thomas Aquinasto Reginald of Piperno
His Legacy
Aquinas was canonized within fifty years of his death, but, as Mark Galli notes, “it took another 200 years before his teaching was hailed as preeminent and a chief bulwark against Protestantism.” His writings played a prominent part at Trent, he was declared a Doctor of the Church four years later, and his system became, in Christian History’s words, “an official theology of Catholicism.” He was central to the doctrine of transubstantiation and to the scholastic theology of grace, merit, and the sacraments. The Reformers rejected the rule of Aristotle in theology and returned to Scripture alone.4
