St. Thomas Aquinas

Some may ask why today I am celebrating the feast of St. Thomas Aquinas: after all, isn't he a Catholic saint? Well, yes. However, I think it is good and right to remember those saints who went before us and what they did (more on that when I get to St. Martin Luther, later in the year).

So what to say about St. Thomas Aquinas? He was a man who sought Truth and saw all Truth as God's Truth and the Truth that set him free. Aquinas saw a world created by God and man as a fallen creature who nonetheless still bears the image of God. Aquinas tried, and to an extent succeeded, in creating a system where all truths are inseparable from the Truth about God. He, and the other scholastics of his day, saw that all things are interconnected. In other words, he saw that education and philosophy must be wholistic.

This idea, I think, has been largely abandoned by many in education who would rather be shut up in their own disciplines and study them in isolation. Aquinas, however, saw all truth as connected. He saw that science is linked to philosophy and philosophy to theology and theology to political theory and literature. It was for these reasons that Aquinas wrote his monumental Summa Theologica, which would be referred to by both sides in the Reformation and to which John Calvin was indebted in his own Institutes.

So today, let us celebrate the life and legacy of true philosopher: one who loved the wisdom of God.

~Roccondil