Creating a summary of all human knowledge may not be the sort of undertaking we begin in the twenty-first century, but there is still room on our bookshelves for a classic--Summa Theologica, one of the world's oldest and greatest masterpieces. St. Thomas Aquinas has much to teach us--most especially how to confront the classic questions that are still with us after centuries of thought.
Thomas Aquinas was an immensely influential philosopher and theologian in the tradition of scholasticism, known as Doctor Angelicus and Doctor Communis.
He was the foremost classical proponent of natural theology, and the father of the Thomistic school of philosophy and theology. His influence on Western thought is considerable, and much of modern philosophy was conceived as a reaction against, or as an agreement with, his ideas, particularly in the areas of ethics, natural law and political theory.
The philosophy of Aquinas has exerted enormous influence on subsequent Christian theology, especially that of the Roman Catholic Church, extending to Western philosophy in general, where he stands as a vehicle and modifier of Aristotelianism, which he fused with the thought of Augustine.
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