Others like St. Thomas Aquinas

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Montie_Claunch

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I am trying to get myself into Philosphy and Sound reasoning and I fear that I have a hard time finding anything by St. Thomas A. And I fear he is rather dry .Anyway I was reading the Bood How The Catholic Church Saved Western Civilaization and the author mentioned (forgive me I can’t remeber right off hand where and I don’t have the book with me right now) that there were others like St. Thomas , in using Philosophy and Reasoning (big one reasoning), and I was wondering if anyone knew of any that I could look up (that are hopeuflly less dry)? Thanks and God bless.
 
some other excellent (christian) philosophers are:

alvin plantinga
william lane craig
william alston
frederick coppleston S.J.
norman malcolm
norman kretzmann
alfred j. freddoso
peter geach
elizabeth anscombe

there are more, but that ought to keep you busy…
 
john doran:
some other excellent (christian) philosophers are:

alvin plantinga
william lane craig
william alston
frederick coppleston S.J.
norman malcolm
norman kretzmann
alfred j. freddoso
peter geach
elizabeth anscombe

there are more, but that ought to keep you busy…
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If you have trouble with Aquina’s, most of these will tie you in knots.

I recommend you don’t give up on Aquinas, but try to ease yourself into his thought and work by starting with reliable summaries and examinations of his work by more accessable writers. Peter Kreeft comes to mind: I’m sure you can find several good introductions if you go to the websites of Sophia and Ignatius Press publishers.
 
Hi!

How about St. Anselm of Canterbury? He’s from an earlier period (11th century), and was one of the great Christian thinkers of the Middle Ages. I have read some of his treatises, but it’s been awhile, so can’t really suggest a book. With any luck you might find something online 🙂

Glac
 
Copleston’s books are a history of philosophy; you might try the relevant volume to get an overview. The Peter Kreeft suggestion is a good one.
 
You can’t compare any other philosopher or theologian to St. Thomas as none can hold a candle to his intellect (it is like comparing Hatori Hanso Swords) but other good ones of the middle ages are:

St. Boneventure
St. Anslem
St. Albert the Great
Peter Lombard
Blessed Duns Scottus

In the Early Church:

St. Justin Maryter
St. John Chrysostom
St. Basil
St. Gregory of Nyssa
St. Gregory of Nanzienza (sp?)
St. Bede
St. Ambrose
St. Augustine
Hugo of St. Victor
Origen

All the Doctors of the Church are a good read

Modern times:

GK Chesterton
Cardinal Newman
Karol Cardinal Woytila/John Paul II
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger/Benedict XVI
von Balthasar
Jacques Maritan
Hugo Rahner (not Karl)
Alfred Whitehead
Norris Clark
von Hildebrand (both husband and wife)

These are just a few off the top of my head. If I were you I would go back to Plato and Aristotle and then advance to the Church. It is necessary to have a solid background in Platonic and Aristotilian philosophy to fully understand what the Christian philosophers and theologians are saying.
 
Well Augustine influenced all those after him in the West including St Thomas and in some cases easier to digest for those from a protestant background. His constant use of quoting scripture certainly cuts to the chase.

C.S. Lewis is always a great place to start, sure he’s not catholic but he doesn’t deny anything the church teaches and he hints at a high church practice anyway. A great theologian for the common man or beginner.

John Paul 2. Yes he is often overlooked in this area but he really is a giant in this area his encynicals are a theological treatise bar none full of quotes and refernces from earlier theologian and plenty plenty bible.
 
Definately don’t give up on St. Thomas Aquinas. The trick to reading him is learning his “language”, as he has a very unique manner of conveying his ideas. One of the things I’ve discovered about St. Thomas Aquinas is that he’s actually just stating the obvious 9 times out of 10, it’s just that he’s doing it in such a way as to shut down any potential arguments or misunderstandings before they occur. This leads him to use circuitous phrasing and arguments just to explain that God exists permanently and by virtue of His being God.

Read the summaries by others if you need to, and then go back and read the articles of the Summa in question. Pretty soon you’ll get a feel for how St. Thomas Aquinas writes, and from there the Summa will be a cake walk. An excellent writer for helping you get into the mind of St. Thomas Aquinas is G.K. Chesterton. He never wrote a detailed summary of the Summa, but his thinking style is very, very similar to St. Thomas Aquinas. The nice thing about Chesterton is that he wrote in modern English, making his work much more approachable for us today. It’s key to remember that when St. Thomas Aquinas was writing, he was writing in the ecclesiastical Latin of his day, familiar to all who could read, and his work was considered both definative and (relatively) easily understood. The fact that he’s such a difficult read today has more to do with our distance from his style and language, rather than any innate complexity on his part.

To use a Chestertonian expression, St. Thomas Aquinas is the Doctor of Common Sense. Keep that in mind while reading his work and you’ll have a much easier go of it!

Peace and God bless!
 
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