#thomist

[hospodipomiluj]

Do you consider yourself a Thomist, or do you align more with the Scotist/Bonaventuran schools of thought?

Hi Anon, and thanks for your question!

I spent 6 years studying almost exclusively Thomistic theology and honestly....I think Thomas is mostly correct in his elaborations/teachings/explanations on the faith but....it’s so dry to me. I’m not a Thomist, I would never consider myself one, but I wouldn’t say I’m a Scotist or a Bonaventuran either. I know very little Scotist thoughts, though what I have read I don’t disagree with. Honestly, I’m just not a systematic theologian by any means. I even had a professor once tell me directly to my face that I’m not and shouldn’t pursue it. I took it personally at the time, but I realized what he was telling me: I’m a pastoral theologian. I don’t like theories and abstracts and exclusively pondering the unattainable divinity, I prefer living in the world and working with real people in every day situations...hence my being a youth minister. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a purely systematic theologian, I’m just not an academic.

Also, if I ever have to read anything from the Summa again, I might hurt someone. I spent two years STRAIGHT reading ONLY the Summa and...honestly I think that’s enough to burn most people out.

Thanks a bunch for your question and I’m so sorry my response has been sooo delayed! God bless you!

[amplexi]

God loves all existing things. For all existing things, in so far as they exist, are good, since the existence of a thing is itself a good; and likewise, whatever perfection it possesses. Now it has been shown above (I:19:4) that God's will is the cause of all things. It must needs be, therefore, that a thing has existence, or any kind of good, only inasmuch as it is willed by God. To every existing thing, then, God wills some good. Hence, since to love anything is nothing else than to will good to that thing, it is manifest that God loves everything that exists.

St. Thomas Aquinas, Dominican theologian. (Summa, Part I, Question 20, Article 2, Answer)

[realsociallyawkwardcatholic]

HOW DO YOU UNDERSTAND THOMAS AQUINAS!?!

I need a beer just to *think* I understand.

[animeandcatholicism]

For the Thomist, to say that God is the First Cause of things is, first and foremost, to say that He is the cause of their existence at every moment at which they do exist. God creates things out of nothing precisely in the act of conserving them in being, and apart from His continual causal action they would instantly be annihilated. You, the computer you are using right now, the floor under your feet, the coffee cup in your hand – for each and every one of these things, God is, you might say, “keeping it real” at every instant.

Edward Feser

[ascurrency]

The vacancy left by absence of worship is filled by mere killing of time and by boredom, which is directly related to inability to enjoy leisure; for one can only be bored if the spiritual power to be leisurely has been lost. There is an entry in Baudelaire: One must work, if not from taste then at least from despair. For, to reduce everything to a single truth: work is less boring than pleasure.

Josef Pieper

[ascurrency]

The indispensability, the vital function of the arts in man's life, consists above all in this: that through them contemplation of the created world is kept alive and active.

Josef Pieper

[ascurrency]

The inmost significance of the exaggerated value which is set upon hard work appears to be this: man seems to mistrust everything that is effortless; he can only enjoy, with a good conscience, what he has acquired with toil and trouble; he refused to have anything as a gift.

Josef Pieper

[ascurrency]

If in this supreme test, in face of which the braggart falls silent and every heroic gesture is paralyzed, a man walks straight up to the cause of his fear and is not deterred from doing that which is good -- which ultimately means for the sake of God, and therefore not from ambition or from fear of being taken for a coward -- this man, and he alone, is truly brave.

Josef Pieper