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Summa Theologica

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About this book

Aquinas began this enormous work around 1265 as a teaching manual, meant to spare beginning students the disorder of the textbooks then in use. The Prima Pars, its first part, takes up God: whether his existence can be demonstrated (the famous five ways open it), what may be said of his nature, then creation, the angels, and the making of human beings. Every topic arrives as a question, with the objections stated first and answered last, so the reader watches an argument being built rather than handed down. Aristotle, Augustine, Avicenna, and Maimonides are all put to work. He never finished it; after something he experienced at Mass in 1273, he called all he had written straw. Free PDF and EPUB editions are available for download.

About the author

Aquinas Thomas

Thomas Aquinas (about 1225 to 1274) was an Italian Dominican friar and theologian who spent his career arguing that Christian faith and Aristotelian reason belong together. Fellow students called him the dumb ox for his silence; the Catholic Church later made him a saint and its central teacher.

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