Thomas Aquinas Research Paper

Thomas Aquinas was an Italian philosopher and theologian of the Medieval period who raised valid arguments as to why evil exists. His first argument was that evil in fact does not exist but that there is only a “privation of the good” (Renick, pg 33). What this means is that God creates only good, therefore evil does not exist. Things only turn into bad when the good of an object of person has less of the good that it was initially given. Aquinas’s next arguments all go together; at least that is how I preserved it to be. Many question if we truly have free choice because our God is all-knowing and all-powerful. So, he would always know what we were going to do, where and when we were going to do it; therefore, we would not have free choice …show more content…
40). This here is another question that was brought up. This is questioned because many believe that if God exists, he is our “all-knowing (or omniscient), knowing perfectly everything that happens even before it happens” (Renick, pg. 40). If this is true and God is truly an all-knowing God, then we would not have free choice. It would contradict his power. An all-knowing God cannot ever be wrong. If he knew what was going to happen and every detail to anything then we were only following God’s wish not our free choice. Aquinas argued this, though. He claimed that if we did lack true freedom then God would be an unjust god and we would pretty much be punished for doing wrong when we had no control of us doing anything at all. One way that Aquinas tried to argue this point was to say that God was “timeless” (Renick, pg.43). Aquinas claims that God is beyond time. He sees the past, the present and the future all at once while we humans, are within time. I would disagree with Aquinas at this point. Not only do I think that it does not make sense, but I believe that God is an all-knowing god and even if he were timeless then that would still mean that he would be able to see the future, therefore making him the all-knowing God that he is. But, while he is an all-knowing God, I do also believe that we have free choice. This ties in with what I mentioned earlier about God allowing evil to be present. We have the will to choose between …show more content…
49). I loved this article for many reasons. The main reason why I did was because it was so relatable. These are questions that I have always asked myself. Never were they questions that I liked to verbalize out loud just because I never like it to be known that my faith is being questioned. Although this article was very relatable, I found myself not agreeing with many of Aquinas’s arguments. Just as many other critics in the past have, I too, found that Aquinas would try to solve some of the problems by being clever with “empty wordplay” (Renick, pg. 43). I found that especially true when he argued that God was timeless. My favorite argument made by Aquinas was that of God’s will to allow things to happen necessarily or contingently. I have always thought about this. I know that our God is all-powerful and all-knowing, therefore I know that although we may not always understand why things are the way that they are but we must understand that they are the way that they need to be for various reasons. I believe that this is where we must trust our God and have faith that he has our best interest at heart and that he only wants what is best for us. Having said that, he also wants to make sure that we know him and follow him. This would mean that we