Velasquez: Thomas and the Angels; Wikimedia Commons
The Philosophy of the Middle Ages
Augustin (A.D. 354 – 430)
Augustin went through a spiritual development from non-beleiver to becoming the most influential thinker of the Western Christian church in his time. He lived in a period of transition in philosophy where the influence of Plato and Aristotle was great, combined with a strong growth in the adherence to the Christian church. Augustin was well aquainted with the thinking of Plato and Aristotle, and he integrated their thinking into the development of Christian thought. Augustin’s work was developed on a broad range of questions, in such a way that he could match the greatest thinkers of Antiquity.
In his work “Confessions”, Augustin created a language for introspection. In this work, he covered a large range of questions. At the center was the question of where God can be found and how God best can be sought. His answer was “in myself”. The will to know is clouded by desire. In his work “God’s city” (Civitas Dei), Augustin describes two parallel worlds he saw developing: God’s city (Civitas Dei) and the city of the world (Civitas Terrena). This model of thought was a development of Platonic and Neo-Platonic thinking, and integrated itself well with that of the Christian church.
Thomas Aquinas (1225 – 1274; Aquino, Kingdom of Naples)
The Scolastic period in Western philosophy, in the 12th and 13th centuries A.D., witnessed the challenges posed against religious belief by the development of natural science and philosophy. Thomas Aquinas was the quintessential Scolastic thinker, through his major efforts of uniting rational thinking and religious belief. He asked whether the question of God’s existence only was a matter of faith, or whether it could also be approached by reasoning.
He says that our knowledge starts with the impressions conveyed by our senses. These senses, however, must be followed up by reflection. To find an answer, Aquinas starts with Aristotle’s reasoning about change and movement. In all change there is a cause, and all that is moved is moved by something. By moving along in the chain of causes, we will find an original cause – and that cause is God. Even if there are many coincidences in the world, everything that happens cannot be the result of coincidences. Some things exist by necessity. These things are God. What we can know about God is that he exists and that he is at the origin of creation. We know no more.
What is the relation between body and soul? The dualistic view, found with Platonic and Neo-Platonic thinkers, that the soul and the body are separate, did not appeal to Aquinas. He thought that humans are intelligent animals, where reason and desire coexist, and – like Aristotle – he aims at a balance between body and soul. The ideal is the paradisial mix of innocence, sensuous joy and reason – as it existed before the downfall. There has to be a fundamental aim in life, and this fundamental aim is God (which is very close to Plato’s view that man in his life must aim for the divine). Our use of thought and reason is the way. The distinction between reason and faith, and their relative roles, was a major preoccupation.
By use of reason we create our laws, and these laws originate from the eternal, natural laws that govern the life of all humans – regardless of religion or ethnicity. This natural law says that we have the right to live, that we shall not hurt others, and that those who sin against others shall be punished. Human laws are an interpretation of the natural law. By this thinking, Aquinas brought Antiquity’s ideas of a natural law into the Middle Ages, greatly inspired by Aristotle and by the Stoics’ idea of “the true law”. This idea moved into the Renaissance, and subsequently inspired the Enlightenment’s thinking about Human rights.
A Franciscan reaction to the thoughts of Thomas Aquinas
The Franciscans Roger Bacon (about 1214 – 1292), Johannes Duns Scotus (about 1266 – 1308) and William Occam (1300 – 1349) were not ready to accept that the Dominican Aquinas should hold the role of the major thinker of the Church. They opposed him by pretending that he had misrepresented the teachings of Aristotle. They did not accept Aquinas’ views on the relations between reason and faith, and between theology and natural philosophy. They wanted a stronger separation of faith and science.
In this opposition we also find a renewed discussion of the notions of Universal and Nominal languages. William Occam contends that the language addresses itself to the visible world rather than to an eternal world of ideas. This Nominalist approach to the role of language challenged the theories of Plato (an eternal world governed by true harmony and reason, separate from the actual world observed by the senses) and Aristotle (an eternal world established through attentive observation of the eternal forms to be found in daily observation of nature). The theories of Plato and Aristotle were adopted by the Western and Eastern Churches, as well as by Islam, and the images of these churches were eternal images produced by the Universal language – which each of these religions contended to be representatives of. Occam opposed this thinking, and contended that God had no eternal plans prior to the creation of the world. Nominalism, as represented by him, implied that language directed itself to the specific reality observed by the senses and formed the point of departure for human understanding.
Augustin went through a spiritual development from non-beleiver to becoming the most influential thinker of the Western Christian church in his time. He lived in a period of transition in philosophy where the influence of Plato and Aristotle was great, combined with a strong growth in the adherence to the Christian church. Augustin was well aquainted with the thinking of Plato and Aristotle, and he integrated their thinking into the development of Christian thought. Augustin’s work was developed on a broad range of questions, in such a way that he could match the greatest thinkers of Antiquity.
In his work “Confessions”, Augustin created a language for introspection. In this work, he covered a large range of questions. At the center was the question of where God can be found and how God best can be sought. His answer was “in myself”. The will to know is clouded by desire. In his work “God’s city” (Civitas Dei), Augustin describes two parallel worlds he saw developing: God’s city (Civitas Dei) and the city of the world (Civitas Terrena). This model of thought was a development of Platonic and Neo-Platonic thinking, and integrated itself well with that of the Christian church.
Thomas Aquinas (1225 – 1274; Aquino, Kingdom of Naples)
The Scolastic period in Western philosophy, in the 12th and 13th centuries A.D., witnessed the challenges posed against religious belief by the development of natural science and philosophy. Thomas Aquinas was the quintessential Scolastic thinker, through his major efforts of uniting rational thinking and religious belief. He asked whether the question of God’s existence only was a matter of faith, or whether it could also be approached by reasoning.
He says that our knowledge starts with the impressions conveyed by our senses. These senses, however, must be followed up by reflection. To find an answer, Aquinas starts with Aristotle’s reasoning about change and movement. In all change there is a cause, and all that is moved is moved by something. By moving along in the chain of causes, we will find an original cause – and that cause is God. Even if there are many coincidences in the world, everything that happens cannot be the result of coincidences. Some things exist by necessity. These things are God. What we can know about God is that he exists and that he is at the origin of creation. We know no more.
What is the relation between body and soul? The dualistic view, found with Platonic and Neo-Platonic thinkers, that the soul and the body are separate, did not appeal to Aquinas. He thought that humans are intelligent animals, where reason and desire coexist, and – like Aristotle – he aims at a balance between body and soul. The ideal is the paradisial mix of innocence, sensuous joy and reason – as it existed before the downfall. There has to be a fundamental aim in life, and this fundamental aim is God (which is very close to Plato’s view that man in his life must aim for the divine). Our use of thought and reason is the way. The distinction between reason and faith, and their relative roles, was a major preoccupation.
By use of reason we create our laws, and these laws originate from the eternal, natural laws that govern the life of all humans – regardless of religion or ethnicity. This natural law says that we have the right to live, that we shall not hurt others, and that those who sin against others shall be punished. Human laws are an interpretation of the natural law. By this thinking, Aquinas brought Antiquity’s ideas of a natural law into the Middle Ages, greatly inspired by Aristotle and by the Stoics’ idea of “the true law”. This idea moved into the Renaissance, and subsequently inspired the Enlightenment’s thinking about Human rights.
A Franciscan reaction to the thoughts of Thomas Aquinas
The Franciscans Roger Bacon (about 1214 – 1292), Johannes Duns Scotus (about 1266 – 1308) and William Occam (1300 – 1349) were not ready to accept that the Dominican Aquinas should hold the role of the major thinker of the Church. They opposed him by pretending that he had misrepresented the teachings of Aristotle. They did not accept Aquinas’ views on the relations between reason and faith, and between theology and natural philosophy. They wanted a stronger separation of faith and science.
In this opposition we also find a renewed discussion of the notions of Universal and Nominal languages. William Occam contends that the language addresses itself to the visible world rather than to an eternal world of ideas. This Nominalist approach to the role of language challenged the theories of Plato (an eternal world governed by true harmony and reason, separate from the actual world observed by the senses) and Aristotle (an eternal world established through attentive observation of the eternal forms to be found in daily observation of nature). The theories of Plato and Aristotle were adopted by the Western and Eastern Churches, as well as by Islam, and the images of these churches were eternal images produced by the Universal language – which each of these religions contended to be representatives of. Occam opposed this thinking, and contended that God had no eternal plans prior to the creation of the world. Nominalism, as represented by him, implied that language directed itself to the specific reality observed by the senses and formed the point of departure for human understanding.