Thomas Aquinas Fuses Faith With Reason in the Summa Theologiae
A monumental attempt to prove God's existence using the same logic Aristotle used for everything else
Quick facts
- Author
- Thomas Aquinas (1224/1225-1274)
- Written
- 1266-1273 CE
- Order
- Dominican
- Key feature
- The Five Ways, arguments for God's existence
What happened
Thomas Aquinas, a Dominican friar teaching at the newly founded universities of Paris and elsewhere, composed the Summa Theologiae between 1266 and 1273 CE, a systematic work intended, in his own words, to instruct beginners as well as the advanced in Christian teaching. Aquinas drew heavily on the newly recovered works of Aristotle, whose logical methods had become available to Western scholars mainly through translations from Arabic and Greek in the preceding two centuries, arguing that reason and revelation both led toward the same truth rather than standing in conflict. The work's Five Ways offered five separate logical arguments for God's existence, the first reasoning from the observable fact of motion in the world to the necessity of an unmoved first mover.
Why it matters
Aquinas's synthesis of Aristotelian philosophy with Christian theology became the intellectual foundation of scholasticism, the dominant method of medieval university education, and the Summa remained the single most authoritative work of Catholic theology for the following seven centuries.
How we know
The Summa Theologiae survives in numerous medieval manuscript copies and was widely taught and commented on within Aquinas's own lifetime and immediately afterward at the universities of Paris and elsewhere.
Sources
- Christian History Institute. 1272 Thomas Aquinas Concludes His Word on Summa Theologiae · Reputable sourcechristianhistoryinstitute.org · The domain "christianhistoryinstitute.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- Internet History Sourcebooks Project, Fordham University. Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologiae · Primary source (author-declared)sourcebooks.fordham.edu · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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