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Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas Thomas Aquinas is a philosopher of 13 th century, a representative of medieval scholasticism. In his most famous work Summa Theologica Aquinas made an attempt to summarize and systemize all the knowledge of Catholic theology of those times, and historically this book became one of the essentials for all the theological teachings. The Summa includes three parts and supplement, which are divided into special topics, consisting of stated particular religious problems or questions, followed by given answers of the author, philosophic articles of standard format. In Part I there are explanations of the existence of God as a Creator of this world. The author emphasizes that God has comprehensive awareness about everything serving Him and governs the world. He is concerned about everything and loves every each being, so He tries to satisfy the needs of every His creature and keep it away of misery and evil.
Therefore, divine participation of God must be taken from positions of spiritual good willing, justice and love. But justice does surely mean also punishment for bad things and acts, sins. Further in the book Thomas Aquinas offers his thoughts about determinations of relations in spiritual and real world. Humankind is taken as strict opposite to God, as people have body and soul. Soul is intangible, immaterial and according to Aquinas imagination represents intellect and will.
He says that human souls have two sides, active and passive, according to its ability to react on incoming impulses from mind. Part II is dedicated to ethics. Author tries to systemize the code of ethics, based on philosophy of Aristotle. Everything people do is supervised by God, so He controls acts of kindness and evil. He knows, what will happen further, in the end, and that is how He guides people through bad and good things. So, being a good, kind, prudent and tolerant person, following the rules of Gods religion and promoting them, will be taken as something God will appreciate and award in the end.
Evil acts are called sins and will be punished by Him. It is in human nature to become a sinner. But God did not leave us hopeless with this. When human being is created, God placed two His signatures in our souls, love and faith, which directly relate to God and will guide us during our life to the purity of spirit, to the ability to differ right from wrong.
Sincere immense love and faith with a certain capacity, together with the following of the range of moral rules and keeping of well-known Gods commandments, can lead us to forgiveness of our sins. The only sin which will not be forgiven is unbelief. Part III of the Summa tells about Jesus Christ. The author presents Christ as hypothetically a miraculous human, who provides the relation between human being and the divine spirit. Jesus has human nature but is the person who brings the Gods word to people of the Earth. But he was not a perfect human, his abilities were limited by his own will and skills, and it is an element of our faith to imagine Christ as Gods perfection, who suffered for our sins and was blessed.
Aquinas offers to take Jesus as a human leader, a teacher, who dedicated his life to earning of salvation for people for their sins, who suffered for mankind and this way served for his own end, but still influences on us so significantly. The closing part is concentrated on the sacraments. Being created as impure, during the life we must realize the effect and the necessity of the sacraments, which can lead us to blessedness. Using a human body, Jesus Christ showed the purity that can be achieved through the sacraments. Eternal purity consists of vision of God, trying to reach it we are on the way to God and He Himself leads us along that path to everlasting blessedness.
Therefore, in his work Thomas Aquinas gives perfect synopsis of religious theology, he states fundamental Christian postulates, which are currently widely known and accepted. And till recent times this ancient book is very important and unrivaled because of its lucidity and profundity. It is vital for the beginners, who just started to learn principles and main doctrines of Christianity, who wants to understand religious philosophy deeper.
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