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MindOverMatter
Guest
Aditional to the title Qeustion, What are the different schools of philosophy within in the Church? And what has happened to Thomism? I get the impression that it has been neglected. I could be wrong.
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Harmony1988
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Some aspects of thomism, aristotelian, and various other branches, there is no single school of thought.
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MindOverMatter
Guest
Why? I thought Thomas Aquinas settled the matter for all time?Some aspects of thomism, aristotelian, and various other branches, there is no single school of thought.
When i ask people who should i read; Thomas is the one i am pointed too.
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Harmony1988
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No…Why? I thought Thomas Aquinas settled the matter for all time?
When i ask people who should i read; Thomas is the one i am pointed too.
Thomas isn’t the absolute source of authority for everything, it’s deeply influenced by St. Thomas Aquinas, but there are still a lot of gaps. Philosophy didn’t stop in 1300 after Aquinas died you know?
People point there because he is probably the main source of ideas as to why the Church acts the way it does, but NOT in ALL cases, there are ideas of Aquinas’ which the Church in no way adopts. Such as the view of the treatment of animals or the view on abortion.
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MindOverMatter
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What are his veiws concerning these issues?No…
the Church in no way adopts. Such as the view of the treatment of animals or the view on abortion.
I was not aware that he supported abortion.
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Harmony1988
Guest
He did not “support” abortion as such. I didn’t meant to imply that he was some kind of pro-choice advocate.What are his veiws concerning these issues?
I was not aware that he supported abortion.
Well I rechecked again and this is what I got from this site:
What was Thomas Aquinas’ opinion 700 years later?
Thomas totally condemned abortion for any and all reasons. Aquinas did question when the soul was created. He spoke of the then-current scientific conviction that a male child was not fully enough developed to be judged human (and therefore to have a soul) until forty days, and that the female fetus could not be judged fully human until eighty days. This obviously says something about scientific knowledge of that age.
Well I guess I misread something earlier. Other sources also confirm that he didn’t support abortion.Aquinas was reflecting a theological and scientific judgment that mirrored the most accurate scientific information of his time. When, to the most exact instrument available, the unaided human eye, the unborn child looked like a child and the individual’s sex could be determined, he or she was deemed dignified and developed enough to be the possessor of an immortal soul, and so Aquinas made his conclusions. Since that time we have progressed to electron microscopes, ultrasonic stethoscopes, and Realtime ultrasonic movies, and increasingly sophisticated knowledge of chromosomes and genes. We now must make judgments in the light of our new and more accurate biological knowledge. Aquinas’ conclusions were the best that could be expected in his day. While not applicable today, they are of historical significance. Had men of his time had today’s knowledge of embryonic and fetal development, their conclusions would have been different.
However he concluded that torturing animals was only sinful because it promoted harm to humans, but it was not immoral in itself.
The Church however doesn’t teach that. Torturing animals is intrinsically immoral.
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Tessera
Guest
Philosophy (‘the love of wisdom’) is a human science, and has many branches. Likewise theology is a human science, and has many branches … (Scholastic, Patristic, etc).What are the different schools of philosophy within in the Church?
All the human sciences should order themselves according to Revelation. Thus St Maximus ‘re-ordered’ Platonism, and St Thomas ‘re-ordered’ Aristotelianism (although he used Aristotle’s method, rather than embraced his theology).
Thomism went out of favour due to the dry scholasticism of the 19/20 centuries … due to a whole raft of reasons (mostly the march of modernism) Christian theology was on the back foot and got involved in argumentation and defence of doctrine … too much emphasis on the letter … which is why Pope John XXIII wanted to ‘throw open’ the windows and let the Spirit into the Church.
Thomism is back, but St Thomas was as much a Platonist too, his big influences are St Augustine and Dionysius the pseudoAreopagite. Today I think there is an attempt to recover the spirit of Thomas, rather than just understand the letter.
A big influence is Ressourcement Theologie (‘back to the source’) — Pope Benedict and Pope John Paul II are both allied with this school, which looks back to the Patristic Era and the Church Fathers as models of how to do theology, and how to approach our Faith.
As Cardinal Schornborn said of the Catechism, it is not a work of theology, it is the object of theological investigation.
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