This is pretty unfair. Not that his work is “true”. I mean it’s metaphysics…
But he didn’t say all ancient thinkers were actually Catholics (in the way the church was Catholic at Aquino’s time). It’s more that “god” was more like what ancient philosopher’s believed the universe or the origin of reality to be, than what the church said god and jesus were.
That god was an ineffable totality.
Dude was basically a panpsychist. We take it for granted now cause that’s a pretty common take for modern christians. But at the time it was pretty heretical.
Like if you compile his beliefs on god and the universe, dude does NOT sound like a catholic at all. Except if you count the super heterodox times of the first few centuries CE, where there wasn’t really a dogma stablished yet.
He sounds like Einstein or something tbh. Who wasn’t a christian.
Dude literally has entire arguments with the lists for the hierarchies of angelic and demonic beings, forgive me if I am not exactly going to equate him to one of the best physical minds of the twentieth century. By saying that ‘He sounds like Einstein.’, is quite literally doing the same thing that he does to Aristotle to him. I do not think they actually thought the same way, though there are some threads of throughline just simply due to the fact that they both exist within the Western tradition of thought.
I am not saying he thought that Aristotle was a Catholic, I am saying that he absolutely discards and disregards areas of those philosophies that directly contradict Catholic doctrine. I am of the opinion that he is fundamentally incorrect about their compatibility, with both the Augustinians and Averrioists being far more on the money about what the implications of the philosophy lies. You can learn far more by reading about St. Thomas than reading St. Thomas imo.
His real contribution is that reason is at least equal in its revelatory power to faith. However, much of his reasoning is usually incredibly strained and the substantial metaphysical application is fairly well annihilated by both David Hume and Kant’s Critique on Pure Reason. He isn’t as logical as he thinks he is, which to be fair to him, he seems to have recognized later in his life as he never actually completed the Summa Theologica, saying “All I have written seems like straw to me.”
That said, Catholicism has always been extremely heterodox in terms of it’s belief systems, as long as you did not threaten the political and social authority of Church, which St. Thomas always went out of his way to affirm. He does not appear that heretical within the larger tradition.
This is pretty unfair. Not that his work is “true”. I mean it’s metaphysics…
But he didn’t say all ancient thinkers were actually Catholics (in the way the church was Catholic at Aquino’s time). It’s more that “god” was more like what ancient philosopher’s believed the universe or the origin of reality to be, than what the church said god and jesus were.
That god was an ineffable totality.
Dude was basically a panpsychist. We take it for granted now cause that’s a pretty common take for modern christians. But at the time it was pretty heretical.
Like if you compile his beliefs on god and the universe, dude does NOT sound like a catholic at all. Except if you count the super heterodox times of the first few centuries CE, where there wasn’t really a dogma stablished yet.
He sounds like Einstein or something tbh. Who wasn’t a christian.
Dude literally has entire arguments with the lists for the hierarchies of angelic and demonic beings, forgive me if I am not exactly going to equate him to one of the best physical minds of the twentieth century. By saying that ‘He sounds like Einstein.’, is quite literally doing the same thing that he does to Aristotle to him. I do not think they actually thought the same way, though there are some threads of throughline just simply due to the fact that they both exist within the Western tradition of thought.
I am not saying he thought that Aristotle was a Catholic, I am saying that he absolutely discards and disregards areas of those philosophies that directly contradict Catholic doctrine. I am of the opinion that he is fundamentally incorrect about their compatibility, with both the Augustinians and Averrioists being far more on the money about what the implications of the philosophy lies. You can learn far more by reading about St. Thomas than reading St. Thomas imo.
His real contribution is that reason is at least equal in its revelatory power to faith. However, much of his reasoning is usually incredibly strained and the substantial metaphysical application is fairly well annihilated by both David Hume and Kant’s Critique on Pure Reason. He isn’t as logical as he thinks he is, which to be fair to him, he seems to have recognized later in his life as he never actually completed the Summa Theologica, saying “All I have written seems like straw to me.”
That said, Catholicism has always been extremely heterodox in terms of it’s belief systems, as long as you did not threaten the political and social authority of Church, which St. Thomas always went out of his way to affirm. He does not appear that heretical within the larger tradition.