Doctrine of God and Theological Ethics according to Thomas Aquinas

Horizons ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan Patrick McLaughlin

This essay explores the much-debated question regarding the extent and viability of Thomas Aquinas as a theological source for expanding Christian ethical concern for the nonhuman creation, particularly nonhuman animals. This exploration focuses on the intersection of two foundational issues in Aquinas' theological framework, nature and teleology, as well as the effects of this intersection in Aquinas' work concerning nonhuman creation. From these examinations, I suggest that Aquinas can provide significant contributions for augmenting concern for the welfare of nonhuman animals because his theological framework demands that humans preserve the natural order through conservation. However, Aquinas' ecotheological ethics of conservation is foundationally anthropocentric and only permits indirect moral concern for the nonhuman world.


Author(s):  
Celia E. Deane-Drummond

Why do humans who seem to be exemplars of virtue also have the capacity to act in atrocious ways? What are the roots of tendencies for sin and evil? A popular assumption is that it is our animalistic natures that are responsible for human immorality and sin, while our moral nature curtails and contains such tendencies through human powers of freedom and higher reason. This book challenges such assumptions as being far too simplistic. Through a careful engagement with evolutionary and psychological literature, it argues that tendencies towards vice are, more often than not, distortions of the very virtues that are capable of making us good. After beginning with Augustine’s classic theory of original sin, the book probes the philosophical implications of sin’s origins in dialogue with the philosophy of Paul Ricoeur. Different vices are treated in both individual and collective settings in keeping with a multispecies approach. Areas covered include selfishness, pride, violence, anger, injustice, greed, envy, gluttony, deception, lying, lust, despair, anxiety, and sloth. The work of Thomas Aquinas helps to illuminate and clarify much of this discussion on vice, including those vices which are more distinctive for human persons in community with other beings. Such an approach amounts to a search for the shadow side of human nature, shadow sophia. Facing that shadow is part of a fuller understanding of what makes us human and thus this book is a contribution to both theological anthropology and theological ethics.


Author(s):  
Kenneth Oakes

Four different pictures of Thomas Aquinas can be found in the works of Karl Barth: Thomas as representative of Roman Catholic theology; Thomas as forerunner to positions later adopted by the Reformers and the Reformed scholastics; Thomas as an ally in countering aspects of Roman Catholic theology that Barth deems problematic; and Thomas as a common doctor of the Church. Additionally, Barth agrees with Thomas on many issues regarding the Trinity, the doctrine of God, the relationship between God and the world, providence, and predestination, while he disagrees on with Thomas on issues related to the natural knowledge of God, the relationship between nature and grace, and the analogy of being. Barth’s interpretation of Thomas Aquinas’ theology was influenced by Erik Peterson and Erich Przywara, and his main sources for understanding Thomas were the Summa contra gentiles and the Summa theologiae.


1962 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 400-412 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Deegan

This final part of the third volume of Church Dogmatics contains Barth's theological ethics in so far as this subject belongs to the doctrine of God as the Creator and as it applies to man in his responsibility as the covenant-partner of God. Here we turn to the consideration of what God wills from man in choosing him for fellowship with Himself.


2018 ◽  
Vol 79 (2) ◽  
pp. 339-355
Author(s):  
Eugene R. Schlesinger

This article responds to Pope Francis’s call in Laudato Si’ for an ecological expansion of mission and seeks to provide it with theological support. This support comes by way of a trinitarian rendition of the missiological concept missio Dei. Drawing from Thomas Aquinas and Bernard Lonergan’s accounts of the trinitarian missions, it articulates a theological ecology (as opposed to an ecological theology), in which the traditional doctrine of God is the controlling motif. Through the missions of the Son and Holy Spirit, God transforms the moral-intellectual-volitional comportment of humanity and recruits them into a shared mission of environmental concern.


Author(s):  
Carl R. Trueman

Despite early Reformation anti-Thomist rhetoric, the thought of Thomas Aquinas proved a useful resource for seventeenth-century Reformed and Anglican thinkers, albeit modified within a distinctly Protestant context. There were a number of reasons for this: the establishment of Protestantism within the university context, the sharpening of doctrinal divisions at the Council of Trent, and the increasing sophistication of post-Reformation theological polemics. While rejecting his views of the sacraments, orthodox Protestants were able to utilize his thinking within the areas of metaphysics, the doctrine of God, and natural law, areas in which significant common ground existed between Protestantism and Thomism. While there were still differences with Thomas in some of these areas—for example, Protestants did not typically discuss ethics in terms of virtues but rather law, Thomas was a significant source for Protestant thought.


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