God and Humanity Paper Thomas Aquinas and Karl Rahner are two major Christian thinkers that have helped shape Christian thought into what it is today. Thomas Aquinas, also known as St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), was a Dominican friar and a Catholic priest who was an immensely influential philosopher and theologian in the tradition of scholasticism. At the age of five he was sent to a Benedictine monastery, and later on decided to leave but wanted to remain religious so he joined the Dominicans. He then became a teacher of theology at the University of Paris. Aquinas was one of the most important medieval philosophers and theologians. He was greatly influenced by scholasticism and Aristotle and known for his synthesis of the two traditions.
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From the very beginning, he understood Christian faith not simply as knowledge about God, but as trust in the saving grace of God. Revelation is not information about God but is God’s own self-disclosure to us. Jesus is not a messenger with startling news but a mediator of inclusive, divine grace. The Spirit is not a universal instinct but a transforming power. And the church is not meant to be a self-sufficient establishment but a sacrament, an actual sign of salvation for all of us poor, disobedient humans. God offers human beings a share in the divine life. God's love creates the hollowness which it wants freely to fill. God fills the emptiness by inviting and enabling human beings to make free and responsible choices. In this way, God forms a relationship with humanity. We know God as we know ourselves, in the intimate experience of freedom to choose, and in the call to act responsibly. God is both the infinitely inaccessible creator and basis of being, and the close conscience and call of freedom. “…a Christian believes that there is a path to freedom which lies in going through this imprisonment. We do not seize it by force but rather it is given to us by God insofar as he gives himself to us throughout all of the imprisonments of our existence” (Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith). We must go through difficulties and hardships in order to receive the ultimate freedom that God gives us which is eternal life. God communicates the divine self without ceasing to be divine. The original possibility of being is also our object of adoration. “…everything is encompassed by the incomprehensible One whom we call God... and hence by someone who is incomprehensible and who ultimately cannot be situated in the calculus of one’s own life at a definite and definable point in which would be calculable” (Rahner, Foundations of
From the very beginning, he understood Christian faith not simply as knowledge about God, but as trust in the saving grace of God. Revelation is not information about God but is God’s own self-disclosure to us. Jesus is not a messenger with startling news but a mediator of inclusive, divine grace. The Spirit is not a universal instinct but a transforming power. And the church is not meant to be a self-sufficient establishment but a sacrament, an actual sign of salvation for all of us poor, disobedient humans. God offers human beings a share in the divine life. God's love creates the hollowness which it wants freely to fill. God fills the emptiness by inviting and enabling human beings to make free and responsible choices. In this way, God forms a relationship with humanity. We know God as we know ourselves, in the intimate experience of freedom to choose, and in the call to act responsibly. God is both the infinitely inaccessible creator and basis of being, and the close conscience and call of freedom. “…a Christian believes that there is a path to freedom which lies in going through this imprisonment. We do not seize it by force but rather it is given to us by God insofar as he gives himself to us throughout all of the imprisonments of our existence” (Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith). We must go through difficulties and hardships in order to receive the ultimate freedom that God gives us which is eternal life. God communicates the divine self without ceasing to be divine. The original possibility of being is also our object of adoration. “…everything is encompassed by the incomprehensible One whom we call God... and hence by someone who is incomprehensible and who ultimately cannot be situated in the calculus of one’s own life at a definite and definable point in which would be calculable” (Rahner, Foundations of