Summa Contra Gentiles

Aquinas Thomas, Anton C. Pegis

Description

Book One of the Summa Contra Gentiles series studies God's existence, nature, and substance, his perfect actuality, the autonomy of his knowledge, the independence of his will, the perfection of his life, and the generosity of his love.

The Summa Contra Gentiles is not merely the only complete summary of Christian doctrine that St. Thomas has written, but also a creative and even revolutionary work of Christian apologetics composed at the precise moment when Christian thought needed to be intellectually creative in order to master and assimilate the intelligence and wisdom of the Greeks and the Arabs. In the Summa Aquinas works to save and purify the thought of the Greeks and the Arabs in the higher light of Christian Revelation, confident that all that had been rational in the ancient philosophers and their followers would become more rational within Christianity.

Book 2 of the Summa deals with Creation; Book 3, Providence; and Book 4, Salvation.

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Philosophie de la religion
• Philosophie médiévale, scolastique
• Religion
• Christianisme
• Surveys
• Medieval
• PHILOSOPHY
• Philosophie et théologie
• Edad Media
• God
• Greeks
• Middle Ages
• Catholic
• Christianity
• Arab people
• History

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 01 mai 1975
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780268045517
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS
SUMMA CONTRA GENTILES
BOOK ONE: GOD
University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame London
Translated, with an Introduction and Notes, by ANTON C. PEGIS, F.R.S.C.
Copyright 1955 by Doubleday Company, Inc.
First published in 1955 by Hanover House as
On the Truth of the Catholic Faith
First paperback edition 1955 by Image Books
Published by arrangement with Doubleday Company, Inc.
University of Notre Dame Press edition 1975
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
undpress.nd.edu
Reprinted in 1978, 1982, 1986, 1988, 1990, 1996, 1997, 1999, 2003, 2005, 2009, 2012, 2014
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Thomas Aquinas, Saint, 1225?-1274.
Summa contra gentiles.
Reprint of the ed. published by Hanover House, Garden City, N.Y., under title: On the truth of the Catholic faith.
Includes bibliographies.
CONTENTS: book 1. God, translated, with an introd. and notes, by A. C. Pegis. -book 2. Creation, translated, with an introd. and notes, by J. F. Anderson. [etc.]
1. Apologetics-Middle Ages, 600-1500. I. Title. [BX1749.T4 1975] 239 75-19883
Summa Contra Gentiles, Book One: God
ISBN 13: 978-0-268-01678-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN 10: 0-268-01678-X (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN 9780268045517
This book is printed on acid-free paper .
This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at [e-mail] .
FOR MY CHILDREN
The pursuit of wisdom especially joins man to God in friendship
-S AINT T HOMAS A QUINAS
Contents.
General Introduction
I
St. Thomas and his writings
II
Aristotelianism and the occasion of the Summa Contra Gentiles
III
The plan of the Summa Contra Gentiles
SUMMA CONTRA GENTILES, BOOK ONE: GOD
I
The Christian God
II
The present translation
Bibliography
CHAPTER
1. The office of the wise man
2. The author s intention in the present work
3. On the way in which divine truth is to be made known
4. That the truth about God to which the natural reason reaches is fittingly proposed to men for belief
5. That the truths the human reason is not able to investigate are fittingly proposed to men for belief
6. That to give assent to the truths of faith is not foolishness even though they are above reason
7. That the truth of reason is not opposed to the truth of the Christian faith
8. How the human reason is related to the truth of faith
9. The order and manner of procedure in the present work
10. The opinion of those who say that the existence of God, being self-evident, cannot be demonstrated
11. A refutation of the abovementioned opinion and a solution of the arguments
12. The opinion of those who say that the existence of God cannot be demonstrated but is held by faith alone
13. Arguments in proof of the existence of God
14. That to know God we must use the way of remotion
15. That God is eternal
16. That there is no passive potency in God
17. That there is no matter in God
18. That there is no composition in God
19. That in God there is nothing violent or unnatural
20. That God is not a body
21. That God is His essence
22. That in God being and essence are the same
23. That no accident is found in God
24. That the divine being cannot be determined by the addition of some substantial difference
25. That God is not in some genus
26. That God is not the formal being of all things
27. That God is not the form of any body
28. On the divine perfection
29. On the likeness of creatures to God
30. The names that can be predicated of God
31. That the divine perfection and the plurality of divine names are not opposed to the divine simplicity
32. That nothing is predicated univocally of God and other things
33. That not all names are said of God and creatures in a purely equivocal way
34. That names said of God and creatures are said analogically
35. That many names said of God are not synonyms
36. How our intellect forms a proposition about God
37. That God is good
38. That God is goodness itself
39. That there cannot be evil in God
40. That God is the good of every good
41. That God is the highest good
42. That God is one
43. That God is infinite
44. That God is intelligent
45. That God s act of understanding is His essence
46. That God understands through nothing other than through His essence
47. That God understands Himself perfectly
48. That primarily and essentially God knows only Himself
49. That God understands things other than Himself
50. That God has a proper knowledge of all things
51-52. Arguments inquiring how a multitude of intellectual objects is in the divine intellect
53. The solution of the above difficulty
54. How the divine essence, being one and simple, is the proper likeness of all intelligible objects
55. That God understands all things together
56. That God s knowledge is not habitual
57. That God s knowledge is not discursive
58. That God does not understand by composing and dividing
59. That the truth of enunciables is not excluded from God
60. That God is truth
61. That God is the purest truth
62. That the divine truth is the first and highest truth
63. The arguments of those who wish to take away the knowledge of singulars from God
64. The order of what is to be said on the divine knowledge
65. That God knows singulars
66. That God knows the things that are not
67. That God knows future contingent singulars
68. That God knows the motions of the will
69. That God knows infinite things
70. That God knows lowly things
71. That God knows evils
72. That God has will
73. That the will of God is His essence
74. That the principal object of the divine will is the divine essence
75. That in willing Himself God also wills other things
76. That God wills Himself and other things by one act of will
77. That the multitude of the objects of the will is not opposed to the divine simplicity
78. That the divine will extends to singular goods
79. That God wills even the things that are not yet
80. That His own being and His own goodness God wills necessarily
81. That God does not will other things in a necessary way
82. Arguments leading to awkward consequences if God does not necessarily will things other than Himself
83. That God wills something other than Himself with the necessity of supposition
84. That the will of God is not of what is in itself impossible
85. That the divine will does not remove contingency from things, nor does it impose absolute necessity on them
86. That a reason can be assigned to the divine will
87. That nothing can be the cause of the divine will
88. That in God there is free choice
89. That in God there are not the passions of the appetites
90. That in God there are delight and joy, but they are not opposed to the divine perfection
91. That in God there is love
92. How virtues may be held to be in God
93. That in God there are the moral virtues that deal with actions
94. That in God there are contemplative virtues
95. That God cannot will evil
96. That God hates nothing, and the hatred of no thing befits Him
97. That God is living
98. That God is His life
99. That the life of God is everlasting
100. That God is blessed
101. That God is His blessedness
102. That the perfect and unique blessedness of God excels every other blessedness
Subject Index
Index of Proper Names
General Introduction.
I. ST. THOMAS AND HIS WRITINGS
St. Thomas Aquinas was born in Italy in the castle of Roccasecca, near Aquino, early in 1225. Until 1239 he remained an oblate in the Benedictine Monastery of Monte Cassino where he had been entered by his parents in 1231. He studied the liberal arts at the newly established University of Naples, and in 1244 decided to become a Dominican. He set out for Paris, arriving there in the summer of 1245. It is uncertain whether he remained in Paris or went on for his studies to Cologne. In 1248 Albert the Great was sent to Cologne to found a House of Studies. Thomas was Albert s pupil in Cologne from 1248 until 1252 when he returned to Paris. After commenting on the Gospels (1252-1254) and on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, he received his license to teach from the University of Paris in 1256. For the next three years he taught in Paris at the Dominican convent of St. James. The years 1259 to 1268 Thomas spent in Italy, lecturing at the Papal Curia. In 1261 to 1265 he was in Orvieto. Here he met his fellow Dominican William of Moerbeke. It was at this time (1263) that Pope Urban IV renewed the efforts of Pope Gregory IX to receive the writings of Aristotle into the Christian world in a manner that would insure a maximum of benefit to Christianity as well as a minimum of harm. William of Moerbeke embarked upon his long and famous series of translations of the writings of Aristotle from the original Greek. Thomas himself undertook his no less famous series of minute commentaries on these translations. At a time when an Arabianized Aristotle was being hardened into an enemy of Christianity in Paris and elsewhere, the work begun by St. Thomas in Orvieto was destined to become a constructive contribution to the emergence of an enduring Christian Aristotelianism. That all St. Thomas contemporaries did not appreciate or understand this contribution is a fact, and a sad one. That contribution remains, however, a great monument in the history of the 13th century.
St. Thomas was back in Paris by 1269. There he entered into the two struggles that were agitating the University, namely, the attack of the secular clergy on the mendicant orders and the emergence of what has been traditionally called Latin Averroism in the Faculty of Arts of the University. In 1272 St. Thomas was given the task of founding a new House of Studies in Naples f