Ａｎａｌｙｓｉｓ ｏｆ Ｔｏｍａｓ Ｔｈｅｏｌｏｇｙ ｉｎ Ｒｅａｓｏｎ Ａｓｐｅｃｔ

阳三川

Abstract:theology has been serving for the empty inners of human for centuries, since its coming into being. It not only brings the peace of heart, but also caused many conflict among the believers at the same time. It was doubted that since the first day of its birth that whether it is a pseudoscience or not. Is there a God existing in the world in reality? It by no means an easy job to give a satisfied reply. Tomas Aquinas therefore tried to confirm people' believe about God thought academic methods during his time. In this thesis, and whether the God exists or not will be given more attention and a simple analysis and discussion about theology based on the opinions of Tomas Aquinas will be presented. And some improper logic will be pointed out with support of philosophy and history in different point of view.

Key words: Tomas Aquinas, theology, God

During middle ages, Tomas combine the metaphysics of Aristotle with the theology of Augustine arguing that there are no conflicts between reason and faith. He showed a better way to persuade people to believe in God in a rational way, which mainly contributed to his emphasis on the logicality of philosophy. As a result of that, Tomas theology owns a dominate position in the theory of Christian, especially Catholic theology for centuries. However, the philosophy of metaphysics is not as powerful as supposed. Even today the impingements and challenges to theology never stop. There are still necessities for people to have a better understanding of Tomas theology. In the following, some basic information about theology will be given; some main point of views about Tomas theology will be presented and discussed.

Theology is considered as a subject about God, and makes a systematical analysis about the essence, intention and conduct of God, as well as an important subject in the studies of religion and the development of society. Theology, stemmed from the Bible, is a guide for people to get the essence of the Bible and comprehend the implication from God, which. Tomas Aquinas made the greatest achievement in theology. For many centuries, his teaching is still advocated by Christian and Catholics unswervingly. Tomas Aquinas deems that where reason functions do not need the help of faith and the existence of God can be realized with the assistance of the reason of human beings. In his mind, the most important task of theology is to comprehend the essence of God. From this dimension, philosophy should be restricted by the theology and serve for the theology, as a result of which the task of philosophy is only to prove, explain and protect the faith of religion.

In The Summa Theological, Tomas Aquinas refers that there are five methods can be used to prove the existence of God, which are the great achievements during his time, and protect the holiness of Christian religion from suspicion. However, with the development of our social and nature knowledge, we can find that many places can be discussed. And argument from motion comes first. If that by which it is put in motion, then this also must needs be put into motion by another, and that by another again. Therefore, it is necessary to arrive at a first mover, put in motion by no other. Tomas' supposition is that there should be a first mover above to make something happen, change, develop and disappear. To some degree, it not as proper as it narrates, because last mover may not exist, why should the first mover? Something without beginning and end point is proved in the world. In calculus, such phenomenon is nature not strange and slimily the so-called first mover always tries to be the first mover. However, such first mover may still be something normal in the nature.

"Among beings there are some more and some less good, true, noble, and the like."Everything in the nature is equal without human's value orientation. We human beings define whatever can be described according to our objective opinions. From this point of view, actually there are no difference among beings. And most of human have no hesitation to inherit the opinions from others without considering the rationality. If God stands for the perfect goodness, there is must be something stands for the ultimate not-goodness. All of these existing at last neutralize into nothing, then at this moment, we can conclude that if there were ultimate goodness,—God, he were just only a symbol we human beings made to meet the need of logic use and Tomas did not give an acceptable way of distinguishing without human value orientation.

The functions of religion and morality are more or less similar, which were created for kind of reasons, such as maintained of the order of the society, protection of the authorities of some group. Through the function of religion and morality, some social customs and order can be abided. However, that makes the influence of religion distinguished from that of morality is religion can affect the mentality of people. To make people convince the authenticity of God, the theology is compiled by the theologians, which include some conception of soul. No human beings are mortal, and most of them dreaded death. So the theology utilized the thought of common people, infusing ideas like that in the world of God soul can achieve immortality, and life can be continued after the death of body. We can recognized this kind of idea as kind of mental defense, which can give people courage, strength and reasons to struggle no matter in what kind of trouble. At last, we can conclude that theology is the support of religion, which is a natural response of defense to the application of human reason, which may bring depression to human, and disintegration to the society.

The most important assumption is the existence of God as the ultimate goodness. Scientifically the reasonable assumption, which can be the complement to the insufficiency of theory is allowed. "The God is omniscience, almightiness, sempiternity" is that kind of assumption, which to some extent reflects the helpless of cognition of that age. Only the God, which is assumed, can guide, supervise, make rewards and punishment, and coordinate the relation between nature and human. In Critique of Practical Reason, Kant takes the Rawls's Moral Justifications as the God. He says there exists two kinds of things, which make people more surprised and respected from the inner when people concentrated more on them. One is the sky full of stars, and the other is the moral laws in his heart.

Even though the suspect of the authenticity about this subject never stops till today, there still a number of supporters of theology who fight against those opponent unremittingly. God is just a criterion of everything in the nature, which tries its best to achieve this criterion, but never can it meet the need of equaling to the God. Nothing like God exists in the world. Therefore, God to this degree is only a hypothetical existence that out of people's mind. To this degree, we can say that according to Tomas' Theology, God is no more than an inexistent existence.

Reference:

[1] St．Thomas Aquinas. The Summa Theologica [M].Benziger Bros. edition, 1947.

[2] Immanuel Kant. The Critique of Practical Reason[M].Forgotten Books, 1893.