/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.10366886]

Where should I get started with Aquinas?

Also theology thread

[Anonymous No.10366904]

You don't.

[Anonymous No.10366917]

the two volume "Basic Writings of Thomas Aquinas" from Hackett are fantastic to start with
after that if you're actually interested in Aquinas, pick up his commentaries on Aristotle and Wheelock's Latin (if you get the workbook they won't let you access the digital answer key though)

[Anonymous No.10366928]

Feser has a good intro book on him

[Anonymous No.10366992]

Theological arguments -

First Cause : All events have prior causation, but if we expand on this thought, we would come to an infinite regress. There must be something that contains within it, it's own cause.

Counter-argument : Time began in the Big Bang, and it is nonsensical to talk of a "before" in regards to the Big Bang. However, if time is a rate of change of a system, there very well could be something outside of the system to begin it.

Necessary being argument : All phenomena are contingent existences. They exist dependent upon something else. There must exist something that possesses within itself the reason for it's own existence.

Counter-argument : The universe itself is self-existent. However, how does space-time, matter and energy gain it's substantiality, let alone from within itself? There is nothing in the abstractions of these phenomena that lends itself toward eternal existence. The universe is based upon reality itself first and foremost, and the idea of existence necessarily leads itself toward Awareness, Omniscience, Omnipresence and Omnipotence.

[Anonymous No.10367018]

>>10366886
Oxford Press publishes a selected writings.

[Anonymous No.10367026]

>>10366886
>“I can write no more. All that I have written seems like straw.”

The man himself considers his work trash compared to the higher vision that lies beyond the written word. Keep that in mind.

[Anonymous No.10367034]

>>10367026
>The man himself considers his work trash compared to the higher vision that lies beyond the written word.
That is literally every wise man

[Anonymous No.10367048]

>>10367034
Yep, people get too caught up in books and conceptual understandings. Thats a prime obstacle to the absolute truth which lies beyond.

Going beyond the level of mental comprehension involves a certain degree of disregarding all intellectual works, regardless of how "enlightened" they may appear.

[Anonymous No.10367099]

>>10367048
Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling talks about this, there comes a point where one must admit that nothing can be truly understood and thats where faith comes in.

[Anonymous No.10367108]

>>10366992

Counter-counter-point 1:
Time isn't necessary to even bother with. If the argument is just phrased in terms of a-temporal causes then you're fine.
1. Everything in the world has a cause.
2. It's not the case that an infinite chain of actual causes exists.
C. There is a finite cause of the world which is seperate to the world.

Counter-counter-point 2.
You have not understood this argument. The point of this argument is that, in absence of a necessary being, there are vast infinities of possible universes with nothing in them. In order to avoid the possibility of universes where nothing existed, we need to posit a necessary being (read: one which exists in all universes, a being of whom it can be said that it could not NOT exist.)

[Anonymous No.10367175]

>>10367099

That is smart, rational faith. Not to be confused with dumb, blind, dogmatic faith.

[Anonymous No.10367386]

>>10367175

Care to illustrate the difference? Where does "stupidity" in faith end and "rationality" begin?

[Anonymous No.10367478]

>>10366886
start with the Cappadocians

[Anonymous No.10367483]

>>10367099
>>10367175
Kierkegaard is an overrated proto-evangelical