Thomas Aquinas

Why does nobody discuss him here?

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Because Veeky Forums is a congregation of teen plebs.

We used to have theology threads quite a bit, but I think they all migrated to Veeky Forums.

>Potency and Act so divide being that whatsoever exists either is a Pure Act, or is necessarily composed of Potency and Act, as to its primordial and intrinsic principles.

What did he mean by this OP?

We talk about important people, like Augustine. Not fucking half measure faggots Aquinas

I thought you wanted discussion bitch??

What is half measure about Aquinas?

I'm relatively new to theology (trying not to be a teen pleb), but i see myself as able to understand theologians. I see both Augustine and Aquinus as incremental to the understanding of theology. I think that comparing the two is quite useless.

>What is half measure about Aquinas?
He quit like a bitch and used your favorite artists' scapegoat, ineffability.

The nature of religion in itself is that is the teaching and writings of something that is beyond or understanding, so of course there will be ineffability.

Both finite and corporeal beings are fundimentally based with potency and act, but solely god is pure act due to his nature of being identified with existence.

Keep in mind, i'm a teen pleb. Be merciful.

If God is pure act isn't he doing all potential actions at the same time? In that case how can anything happen? I don't even know how to properly address this as the concept is so foreign.

God experiences all of time in a single instant. There is no past, present, and future for him, all is eternally present. That's the idea behind him being pure act, at least.

Any Spiritual contemplation that does not mention the Demiurge is willfully not playing with a full deck.

Bingo.

In what context? Platonic, Gnosticism, or other?

Any context. At least Plato said the Demiurge is good.

I thought Catholics believed in free will? It sounds like if God is performing everything at the same time, there could be no such possible act.

In timaeus he descrives the demiurge is the creator of all physical aspects of our universe, but still not the form of good. Am i wrong?

The spirit does not exist on a physical plane, while the universe mostly does. God is still the demiurge for all physical and somewhat ideological things, but has no control over one's free will.

Forgot to add response

He didn't finish ST, you fucking dweeb.

The summa was meant to be for beginning students. It sucks that he didn't finish it, but he wrote plenty more advanced works.

Good riddance.

Because Neoplatonism > Neoaristotelianism

and Augustine > Aquinas

>Aquinas
>unimportant

Pleb can't into the history of Western thought.

Because people on Veeky Forums aren't well read enough or intelligent enough to do so. Aquinas requires a completely different mindset to understand compared to modern philosophy and isn't exactly entertaining.

No, plebs migrated to here and the quality posters mostly left and joined various discord chats.
Spoilers, will invite people to my Aquinas reading group via Goodreads if anyone is interested.

How do i join?

because being well-read in religion doesn't get me upboats on reddit

> The Holy Hog of St Hubert's
> so fat that when he died they had to pull down a wall of the house to get his body out

Because it's actually hard and requires thinking, this board just posts memes and never reads anything.

It's just dense and requires perseverance. Though I suppose this is what passes as 'profound' for brainlets.

Aquinas is the fucking GOAT

Good job summarizing in one sentence the most important figure of Western theology and one of the most influential person in the history of philosophy itself.

Reading this thread actually makes me question why do I even come here at all any more.

>he was so great and important I can't even
Doesn't mean his ideas are hard to comprehend today. Stop this retarded fanboy nonsequiturs.

>literature board
>theology thread
>le why do i come
fuck off to Veeky Forums or plebbit

>it's another newfags want to fit in episode

Philosophy, theology and other related fields have been part of Veeky Forums since the board started.

It seems to me that the theory of parallel universes solves this conundrum quite well. One God existing over every universe, so every action can possibly be chosen.

1)Summa contra Gentiles
De unitate intellectus, contra Averroistas

2)The format is a textual equivalent to the medieval disputatio, so it's tightly structured. The Summa is several thousand pages long so you might as well look through the contents to find sections that interest you.

Reminder that Aquinas argued that husbands are obliged to fuck their wives if they look horny

>The marriage debt may be demanded in two ways. First, explicitly, as when they ask one another by words; secondly, implicitly, when namely the husband knows by certain signs that the wife would wish him to pay the debt, but is silent through shame. And so even though she does not ask for the debt explicitly in words, the husband is bound to pay it, whenever his wife shows signs of wishing him to do so.

Nothing wrong with that.

Congrats you learned the concept of omnipresence.

Not playing with jokers. Those are meaningless cards.

Mostly this. He's very dry and very robust in his general praise. His style is almost wholly unreadable to a modern audience.

wew lad you read latin. colour me sad 4u.

On the topic of OP, Merton is never discussed and he is far more relevant to a modern christian looking for respite in aestheticism.

"good" ≠ "the good"

Don't remember if the demiurge was explicitly described as "the good" or not, but I think Plato at least skirted around that idea. What I remember for sure is that the demiurge was "good," and from this quality made the universe "good" so as to be in his own image.

Catholic marriage sounds like fun. More fun than Protestant marriage, anyway.

This almost has it right, but God isn't present at all times, God is beyond time. Creatio ex nihilo imples this. Being present at all times sort of implies God's presence does not extend "before the beginning" since his presence is bounded by time. This would make Creatio ex nihilo void, however, so the atemporal conception is truer to Christian doctrine. The defense regarding free will still holds in this conception, though.

This defense is given by Boethius, or at least my understanding of it.

Jewish law was way ahead of him on this one.

Describes it as the giver of all the material goods in the world.

hello my patrician friend

Descartes is not a philosopher and never will be cry more.

Sam Harris has ended nothing. His 'contribution' is only so considered by the target audience of "The Big Bang Theory."

Sad? For someone who has direct access to the historic knowledge of our civilization?

What a plebian thing to say.

I also like Maritain, he's like Aquinas except not as systematic, but Maritain had a gigantic fucking vocabulary that can sometimes hit you like a sack of bricks.

We all start somewhere.

The Vatican II theologians such as Ratzinger, de Lubac, Balthasar, Maritain, etc. all seem really interesting and I've been wanting to get into them. Do you have any recommended readings for tackling them bar Aristotle, Aquinas, and the Bible?

You're right, of course. Where are my manners?

Balthasar is probably the easiest to read. Bishop Robert Barron has a few youtube videos on the Vat2 Crew that are good. I really liked ratzinger's dialogue with habemas (called the dialectics of secularism), where they discuss things like, for instance, how the democratic state relies on normative presuppositions that it can't produce or establish via its institutions, emphasizing the importance of the role of the Church as Conscience of the State, since the only accredited institution capable of telling people for instance what ethical attitude to take is the Church, and only because the Church exists outside of democracy can it provide this function and thus secure the stability of democratic states which otherwise would be volatile having nothing to lean on aside for the institution of self-hood. As was the case in russia due to their poor clerical establishment of russian orthodoxy.

Yeah, Bishop Barron is the one who got me interested in them. I'll naybe get a prayer or meditation book from Balthasar first then pick up that Ratzinger book after. I should probably put aside the Trilogy until I'm a bit more well read. I really appreciate the help, user.

I saw a singer recently and commented on it to the gallerist and my mother. They both didn't realize what they had.

Take it back

> balthasar is easy to read

confirmed for never having read balthasar, he's basically like reading heidegger

>1) Are there other interesting texts by him, apart from the Summa Theologica?
Summa Contra Gentiles is his more widely read text as a whole as it is more focused on philosophy and showcases his thought in a perfectly systematic way. There are various selections of his writings, ones on Politics often contain De regno which was written for a king on how to govern as a gift. His commentary on Aristotle is firmly the best one ever written.
2) How does one read the Summa Theologica ? The same way you read Proust ? or can it be compared to, let's say, a journey into Kant's three Critiques ? I studied an excerpt and the prose didn't look as annoying as that of Kant or Heidegger.
I'm still preparing for it and have gone through most of what he references and Kreeft, Copleston, Feser and MacIntyre on him and it was a good move. Going to start reading it some time this year.
>I enjoyed the City of God, can they be compared ? (how long is the Summa Theologica btw ?)
The style is completely different and it is 5 times the size I believe.

>are hard to comprehend today
MacIntyre for example claims that most of criticism directed at him from Descartes to Russel is wrong exactly because they didn't comprehend his ideas. And, at least in ethics, he is a figure of authority.
de Lubac and Balthasar are often, and rightly so seen as heterorthodox, and rightly so, by the most important neo-scholastic of them all, Garrigou-Lagrange was right about everything. Ratzinger is the only one out of the bunch worth something desu, and his theological opinions shifted massively with time.

Balthasar has a pretty strong critique of Heidegger and I definitely think he's worth reading.

Ratzinger is good, but what is he but apologetics?

>Ratzinger is good, but what is he but apologetics?
He never wrote apologetics. At least none that I know of, from the 10 or so books by him which I've read.

They discuss theology all the time on Veeky Forums and its seriously top bantz.
The level of autistic bickering that goes on in those thread is unmatched on all of Veeky Forums.

That's why I don't go to Veeky Forums

If you're trying to avoid autism then you've come to the wrong site m8

I've been coming to lit for ages now desu.

If only this were the meme trilogy