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Summa Theologica - Part 1

Saint Thomas Aquinas

Book Overview: 

The Summa Theologica is the most famous work of Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–1274) although it was never finished. It was intended as a manual for beginners as a compilation of all of the main theological teachings of that time. It summarizes the reasonings for almost all points of Christian theology in the West, which, before the Protestant Reformation, subsisted solely in the Roman Catholic Church. The Summa’s topics follow a cycle: the existence of God, God’s creation, Man, Man’s purpose, Christ, the Sacraments, and back to God.(Summary adapted from the Wikipedia)

This is part one of the Pars Prima (first part, or volume), consisting of the Initial Questions.

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Book Excerpt: 
. . .Hence love is naturally the first act of the will and appetite; for which reason all the other appetite movements presuppose love, as their root and origin. For nobody desires anything nor rejoices in anything, except as a good that is loved: nor is anything an object of hate except as opposed to the object of love. Similarly, it is clear that sorrow, and other things like to it, must be referred to love as to their first principle. Hence, in whomsoever there is will and appetite, there must also be love: since if the first is wanting, all that follows is also wanting. Now it has been shown that will is in God (Q. 19, A. 1), and hence we must attribute love to Him.

Reply Obj. 1: The cognitive faculty does not move except through the medium of the appetitive: and just as in ourselves the universal reason moves through the medium of the particular reason, as stated in De Anima iii, 58, 75, so in ourselves the intellectual appetite, or the will as it i. . . Read More

Community Reviews

204 days. It's done. Well, I say it's done - I did skip or lightly skim over large swathes of it, and after about a third of the way through I started just ignoring the objections/replies as I found them confusing. Some parts made me cry 'Amen, brother' aloud; some parts were a real challenge to me

obviously i have not read all the volumes, but everytime i open them i am astoished at the depth and insights that he had. he is honestly on of my heros

One of my favorite books. I am reading it for the second time now. Aquinas is incredibly important but ill-suited to our microwave and fast-food culture: he must be digested slowly, not scarfed down on one’s tailgate in the stadium parking lot :-)

Prospective readers should really have at least a min

I've seen this work described as "encyclopaedic," but I don't think that does it justice. While I don't remember it addressing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin (and I may very well have forgotten given that it's taken sixteen or so months of fairly consistent reading to get through), i

St. Thomas Aquinas is one of the greatest philosophers I have read. His structured writing and rational methodology will do incredible things to your mind.

I read selections from the summa (Aquinas on Nature and Grace, A. M. Fairweather), and while at times I found it confusing, I thought it was mostly absolutely illuminating. By reading this book I was not only able to understand better who God is, but what He did for us.

A few weeks ago, after nearly three and a half years of on and off reading, I finally finished St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica. It is a monumental work, which in printed form extends over five volumes and three thousand densely printed pages. So it is not surprising that it took me this long to

St. Thomas Aquinas was a beautiful human being, and his approach to Socratic Philosophy (which dominated the minds of his counterparts) blended with Unique Spiritual incite is breath-taking. I recommend it to the world... especially if you're looking for a pure (if slightly slanted) view on Life, Lo

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