Summa Theologiae
Summa Theologica — the unfinished systematic theology in three Parts (Prima, Prima Secundae and Secunda Secundae, Tertia)
Tradition: Western Catholicism / Scholasticism / Thomism
Faith and reason in concord — Aristotle baptised, Augustine systematised, the act of being made foundational
The Summa Theologiae is the most ambitious single work of Christian systematic theology ever attempted and the central text of the Thomistic tradition. Aquinas treats God (Prima Pars), the moral life and the virtues (Prima Secundae and Secunda Secundae), and Christ and the sacraments (Tertia Pars). The Prima Pars's opening twenty-six questions on the existence and nature of God — the Five Ways, the doctrine of analogy, the simplicity, immutability, and eternity of God — are the philosophical heart of the work. Throughout, Aquinas integrates Aristotelian philosophical resources with Augustinian theological substance: faith does not contradict reason; grace does not destroy nature but perfects it. The work was made the official philosophical theology of Roman Catholicism by Leo XIII's Aeterni Patris (1879) and remains so.
Author
Editions cited
- Summa Theologiae (English Dominican Fathers, Benziger 1947, repr. Christian Classics)
- Summa Theologiae (Latin/English Cambridge edition, 61 vols, Blackfriars 1964–1981)
- A Shorter Summa (Peter Kreeft, Ignatius, 1993, abridgment of Prima Pars)
School Embodiments
The Summa is the defining text of Thomism. Every later Thomist development — Cajetan, John of St Thomas, the Salmanticenses, twentieth-century neo-Thomism, the Lublin School — refers back to its texts as authoritative.
"It is necessary to arrive at a first cause, to which everyone gives the name of God." (Summa I, q.2, a.3, the second of the Five Ways)
Aquinas's Aristotelianism is the textbook source of Christian hylomorphism: the soul as the substantial form of the body, the unity of human nature, the analysis of substantial change.
"The soul is the form of the body." (Summa I, q.76, a.1, citing Aristotle's De Anima as authoritative)
Aquinas's moderate realism — universals exist in things, not in a separate Platonic realm, but really, not as mere names — is the position from which most subsequent philosophical realism descends.
"The intellect understands universal things by abstracting from the individuating conditions." (Summa I, q.85, a.1)
Reformed scholasticism (Turretin, Voetius) used Thomistic argumentative form extensively, even when reaching different conclusions. The Five Ways are accepted by serious Reformed philosophers (Bavinck, Frame, Sproul).
"Whatever is moved is moved by another." (Summa I, q.2, a.3, the First Way — accepted across confessional lines)
Less an embodiment than a conversation partner: Orthodox theology has criticised Aquinas's actus essendi metaphysics and his treatment of the essence/energies distinction, but serious modern Orthodox theology (Florovsky, Lossky, Zizioulas) engages the Summa directly.
"God's essence is His existence; and this we name God." (Summa I, q.3, a.4 — the doctrine Orthodoxy contests)
Thomist tradition.
Internal Tensions
The Summa's integration of faith and reason has been disputed in two directions ever since: the Augustinian-Reformed wing thinks it gives too much to philosophical reason, the modern philosophical wing thinks it gives too much to revealed theology. The treatment of grace and free will (q.83 and Prima Secundae q.109–14) is the point at which all the later Catholic controversies — Molina, Bañez, Jansenism — divide. Aquinas's text supports more than one reading.
I. Time
Aquinas distinguishes God's eternity (the simultaneous, complete possession of unending life, q.10, a.1, citing Boethius) from aeviternity (the changeless duration of angels) and time (the measure of change in corporeal substances). Time begins with creation; God knows future contingents eternally without thereby making them necessary (q.14, a.13 — one of the most subtle medieval discussions of foreknowledge and freedom).
Attributes
II. Space
The Aristotelian-Ptolemaic cosmos is presupposed: a finite, spherical, hierarchical universe. Place (locus) is the inner surface of the containing body, exactly as in Aristotle. God's omnipresence is treated carefully: God is in all places by essence, presence, and power (q.8) without himself being a spatial substance.
Attributes
III. Matter
Hylomorphic matter receives substantial form; prime matter (materia prima) is pure potentiality, taking on actuality only when informed. Matter is created by God ex nihilo, conserved by his continuing causality, and locally interactive. The whole Aristotelian apparatus of substantial and accidental change is taken over and integrated.
Attributes
IV. Observer
The Thomist observer is the rational animal — a body-soul composite whose intellect can abstract universals from sense experience (q.84–88) and whose will pursues the good. Knowledge is immediate in origin (it begins from the senses, against innatism) but completed by the beatific vision in patria. Agency is active under God's primary causality (the doctrine of secondary causation, q.105). Observer Number is plural — human beings are genuinely individuated substances.
Attributes
V. Energy
Esse — the act of being — is the energetic core of the Thomist metaphysics. Every creature has its essence and exists by participating in being; the act-of-being is the deepest metaphysical actuality, given continuously by God. Energy in the physical sense is conserved within creation and locally dissipative in the manner of medieval physics.
Attributes
VI. Information
God's knowledge of creatures is their archetype (q.14–15); creaturely intellects participate in divine knowledge. Personal information is conserved: the soul is incorruptible (q.75, a.6), survives the body, and at the resurrection is reunited with a glorified body. The whole creation participates in the divine ideas — substantival informational realism at the cosmic scale.
Attributes
Personas that cite this work
Films that reference this work
Personas with the nearest attribute fingerprint
Historical figures whose own classification on the same six-dimensional grid lands closest to this work's. Computed by attribute-agreement on coordinates both address.
Computed school proximity
The work's attribute fingerprint scored against all schools using the same quiz scorer. Useful as a sanity check on the hand-curated embodiments above.
How Summa Theologiae resolves each dilemma
48 resolved positions across 4 dimensions, including 7 distinctive where the majority of schools go the other way · 9 unaligned.
Each dimension is sorted so minority positions come first. Mainstream positions are folded into an expandable list.
Time · 9 dilemmas, all mainstream
Matter · 7 dilemmas, all mainstream
Observer · 37 dilemmas · 5 distinctive
Mind, agency, and the knower's relation to the known.