Summa theologica how many pages

Open Preview See a Problem? Details if other :. Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. Summa Theologica, 5 Vols by Thomas Aquinas. Creating a summary of all human knowledge may not be the sort of undertaking we begin in the twenty-first century, but there is still room on our bookshelves for a classic--Summa Theologica, one of the world's oldest and greatest masterpieces.

Thomas Aquinas has much to teach us--most especially how to confront the classic questions that are still with us after centuri Creating a summary of all human knowledge may not be the sort of undertaking we begin in the twenty-first century, but there is still room on our bookshelves for a classic--Summa Theologica, one of the world's oldest and greatest masterpieces. Thomas Aquinas has much to teach us--most especially how to confront the classic questions that are still with us after centuries of thought.

Get A Copy. Hardcover , pages. Published January 1st by Christian Classics first published More Details Original Title. Other Editions Friend Reviews. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Summa Theologica, 5 Vols , please sign up. What is Thomas Aquinas teaching in Summa Theologica? Georgina Brandt he teaches about Aristotle's philosophy and also about the Catholic hierarchy of angels and demons which lead to his later Sainthood.

Are these books available in any Public Domain? Anthony Yes this book is available in the Public Domain. See 2 questions about Summa Theologica, 5 Vols….

Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 4. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Start your review of Summa Theologica, 5 Vols. Jun 04, Bojan Tunguz rated it it was amazing. A few weeks ago, after nearly three and a half years of on and off reading, I finally finished St. 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 finish it. The fact is, though, that I probably would have never ventured into reading it cover to cover in the first place were it not for electronic publishing.

The Kindle edition, on the other hand, costs 99 cents. Yes, it costs less than a dollar. Over the years I would be reading Summa on my Kindle, iPhone, iPad, and in all sorts of common and unlikely places — my desk, my bed, while waiting for my haircut, while waiting for the plane to take off, on the elliptical machine in the gym, while listening to a boring lecture, and sometimes even while waiting for the light to turn green at the traffic stop.

I know, I know. Summa is not an easy read by any stretch of imagination. It is a densely argued treatise on almost all topics of Christian theology. It is also written in terms of concepts and categories derived form Aristotelian and Medieval philosophy, which are largely unfamiliar to the modern readers. Reading it can oftentimes feel like going through a large advanced mathematics textbook, with all the proofs and carefully precise reasoning that this entails.

I knew all of this fully well before taking this plunge, but it did not deter me. However, at the end of it all I believe it was a more than worthwhile endeavor. First of all, it made me renew and deepen my appreciation for the Catholic Theology.

It reminded me of the old saw that the Catholic Church is much bigger from within than form without. Catholic Theology is a vast repository of knowledge and insight that is well worth exploring throughout your whole lifetime.

The erudition, the intellectual firepower, and the appreciation of human knowledge in all of its forms and all of its extent is clearly at display in this monumental work. Thomas spent most of his professional life at the University of Paris, and the university system that we have to this day has been formed throughout the Catholic Europe around this time.

This system fostered and sustained scholarship and research in all branches of human knowledge. All of us, whatever our field of expertise, owe a huge debt of gratitude to these efforts. Modern world without this strong foundation would never have gotten into the existence. At the heart of this system, and at the etymological root of the very term University, is the ideal of universality of all knowledge.

This idea shines brightly in Summa. Unfortunately in recent times we have diverged from this ideal. Perhaps going back to Summa would be exactly the medicine for what ails the modern University. Finally, for me reading any type of good theological work is never just an intellectual exercise. It is, foremost in fact, a form of devotion. Theology for me is the place where I can fully and completely love my God with all my heart, all my soul, and all my mind.

I am grateful to St. Thomas for leaving us this great book that can help us in our Christian vocation. More than that could not be asked from anyone. Thomas Aquinas, pray for us.

View all 6 comments. Feb 28, Conor is currently reading it. I started to read the Summa from the first question yesterday. I should finish by the age of View all 5 comments.

Mar 13, Kazango rated it it was amazing. One of my favorite books. I am reading it for the second time now. They should also possess the minimal intellectual virtue required to focus on something other than their own obsessions with pelvic issues, if they have them. I am dismayed by One of my favorite books. I am dismayed by the number of people who disparage Aquinas or his work without even bothering to take the time to read him, to say nothing of understanding him.

Sep 02, Manny marked it as to-read. You see how vicious the academic world is? And speaking from personal experience, it's worse when neither of the parties involved is a saint. View all 4 comments. May 01, Daniel Wright rated it it was amazing Shelves: old-books , xenoglot , medieval , religion , christianity , latin , xn-theology. It's done. Some parts made me cry 'Amen, brother' aloud; some parts were a real challenge to me personally; some parts caused serious head-desk collisions 'how could you possibly think that??

Still, I can now say I've done it, which not many people can. Aquinas can do more in one laconic section than most modern theologians, even analytics, can do in pages. If this were written with the self-consciousness of philosophers after the epistemic turn, it would probably be , pages or more long - and that's what you're getting. The roughly 7, pages the page edition is in double column of the ST is an entire library, exceeding even the Bible.

It doesn't seem entirely unjust to say that God inspired the Bible for the purpose of inspi Aquinas can do more in one laconic section than most modern theologians, even analytics, can do in pages. It doesn't seem entirely unjust to say that God inspired the Bible for the purpose of inspiring the Sanctissimae Thomae Aquinitatis to write this.

I'm only done with the first 27 questions, though I've probably read two volumes' worth of extracts over my life. As to change cosmic motion and coming-to-be, Aquinas says an infinite regress of all-together causation is impossible.

The Divine Nature. Aquinas provides a far more elaborate inquiry I, into the nature of the divine being. Thus, a First Being cannot be composite in any way: of parts, of components, of multiplicity, or even of really separate traits, like knowledge and power, or knowing and choosing.

For what exists on account of itself exists because of what- it-is, without any further explanatory feature. Being and Essence. In everything else, what-the-thing-is is really distinct from its being existing because a separate cause is required to make it come to be.

From the denial of any difference between the being and essence of God, the major elements of the divine nature follow: simplicity, first, as above, and then, immutability, intelligence, will, freedom, power, omniscience, omnipotence, and eternity, each by indirect proof.

For, supposing the denial of any of those, contradicts the real sameness of the divine being and essence by requiring some additional explanatory factor and some composition of unfulfilled potentiality with actuality.

Divine attributes are multiplied according to the plurality of human conceptions, not according to distinctions of divine being. So that opens the question I, 13 of the meaning of the words applied both to creatures and to God. Are they different in meaning? Analogy of Meaning. Both Aquinas and Aristotle make analogy of meaning a central tool in everywhere their philosophy, apart from its religious applications.

Aquinas reasons that a creature cannot be said to exist in the same sense as God does, because its being is derived, participated I, 44,1 , whereas God is what-is-because-of-itself ens per se subsistens.

The underlying idea is that human concepts are abstractive responses to realities, and as the realities differ proportionally in manner of being and causation, so do our conceptions for them; and since the meanings of words are concepts, and the meanings differ as the concepts adjust. Thus analogous realities are thought of with analogous concepts.

That is, it is literally, but analogically true that God exists and knows and loves the world I, 13,3 ; and God is correctly characterized reciprocally from relations things in the world bear to God I, 13, 7, ad 4 , but without standing in any real relationship to the world I, 44,3.

That deserves a pause. Real relations to God but not vice versa. Other things are really related to God: as effects, as dependent, imperfect, created, temporally ordered, foreknown, willed, planned, etc.

But God stands in no real relations to other things at all. Not even by creating, sustaining and governing the world. A thing has to begin to be, cease to be or change to come into a real relation to another I,46,3 ad 1 ; all change, beginning and ending, is in things other than God I, 45,3. There is no future to God who is unchanging, omnipresent by being and power and will, and to whom all is present at once.

It is all his present, and his doing, just as your present consciousness, and all its contents, is yours, continuously dependent on you, and would all disappear instantly with a change of your attention.

Aquinas quotes St. Aquinas does not, however, reject the pious practice of believers who describe God as if God had already seen in a common time what will happen and already decided as if in our past who is to be saved, etc.

Yet Aquinas is very clear that in the science of God, God does not change, does not have any temporal relation of past, or future, to anything else at all. It would, perhaps, have helped the perplexities of believers, if Aquinas had said that strictly, such claims about foreknowledge and predestination, are not true, as his theory requires.

It seems that he allows the discourse of piety as discourse according to the objective appearance, but not the science, of things. I, So too, all our future, as all our past, is relative to the temporality of human experience and also to the physical succession in nature cf. III, 91,2 ad 8. The Goodness of God and the Origin of Evil. The ontological goodness of things is their rational desirability. It is privation, like blindness in a person, not mere absence like blindness in a stone.

Natural evils, like animal blindness, suffering and death, lethal earthquakes, tornadoes, and the like, are only incidentally evil, that is, locally and relatively undesirable by affected creatures, if they are not caused, like some plane crashes, say, by immoral acts.

Nothing, in so far as it has being, is or can be evil. For in so far as it is made, the thingis rationally desirable. Further, there is nothing that absolutely ought not to be, not even the worst evil actions of free rational creatures.

Still I, 49,2 , God can be the cause of what ought not to be, by causing a penalty fitting to justice I, 49,1 , for creaturely wrongs, but never can, as angels can I, 63,1 , and humans can, cause evil by fault I, 48,5.

He reasons that it is within the perfection of a divine agent to make a created order in which the natural and imperfect causes produce effects that people deem evils, like plagues, pestilences, bugs and beasts that harm us; for, of course, finite causes will be imperfect agents.

So, genuine evil requires what ought not to be from that cause. Hence God cannot be the cause of evil as such. And moral evil is caused incidentally by created free agents acting for what they deem to be goods, angels acting to enjoy pride; or humans, acting for pleasure.

And furthermore, no one rightly says such freedom ought not to be at all, because without freedom, nothing among creatures could be right or praiseworthy. And there is no evil from which God cannot bring divine good: forgiveness, redemption and salvation. The innocent e. Is it better that there be no evil by there being no creature able tofall from the good by its ability to do good, or for God to bring good out of evil, no matter what humans do?

The human measure of divine mercy is the magnitude of human evil. Aquinas, like Augustine, thinks it is contradictory to say a creature has freedom but can do no evil in its earthly condition, even given that it has a divinely assisted holy will; for that would take away the indeterminacy of the agent between what is good and what is not, and so, would have to presuppose the presence of a completely fulfilled will that is not naturally possible.

I, 63,7 who believed in supra-earthly beings, by Scripture, e. Daniel Vii, 10, and by spiritual writers like pseudo- Dionysus, Aquinas wrote I, 50,3 that there are innumerable created immaterial spirits angels.

From the 24 Questions on Angels I , already mentioned, and the later exploration of angelic being, of their being human guardians, and of the agency of demons I, , it seems that Aquinas considers the Earth to be a small part of the natural drama of the cosmos, just as it is of the created things of the cosmos.

But from a supernatural religious standpoint, the Earth is the locus of a most extraordinary, personal and permanent divine activity: the special creation of man, the fall, incarnation, redemption, and salvation of humans, with the coming Messianic kingdom, and a universal judgment and transformation of humans forever.

But such entirely immaterial things, the angels, must be intelligences with free choice, and, furthermore, cannot differ from one another materially, and so, have to differ in species, I, 50,4. Aquinas draws out his philosophical principles to answer questions about their powers of understanding and will, their memory, knowledge of one another communication, the relation of such spirits to bodies, to movement, place and time, and to error, wrongdoing, and its relation to human evils I-II, 80,2, and I, All material things of any kind are composites of form structure and matter stuff out of which.

So a crystal may consist of molecular parts matter structured formed to behave a certain way chemically, like salt. Form, structure, is the intelligible feature of the physical, --what can be understood and represented by humans in a formula-- and is the explanation of what each thing is able and disposed to do. Humans are a special case of living things: rational animals who are persons. Thus, they are a composite of soul psyche and body.

But people are not two conjoined things; for rationality is not added to animality as a power of it, as Locke later supposed, but is a manner of animal being. Being human is a kind of being animal. And he is speaking of soul as it were, software as the organizing form that makes the human alive and to operate as one single thing, a thinking animal. What was for centuries hard to grasp is commonplace now: software that makes a thing what it is, and to do what it does: that is form.

And soul is a kind for form. Creating a summary of all human knowledge may not be the sort of undertaking we begin in the twenty-first century, but there is still room on our bookshelves for a classic--Summa Theologica, one of the world's oldest and greatest masterpieces. Thomas Aquinas has much to teach us--most especially how to confront the classic questions that are still with us after centuries of thought.

Thomas Aquinas, 5 Vols. What would you like to know about this product? Please enter your name, your email and your question regarding the product in the fields below, and we'll answer you in the next hours. Summa Theologica of St. By: Thomas Aquinas. Stock No: WW Thomas Aquinas was a deeply learned Dominican monk, philosopher, teacher and scholar.

His path-breaking ideas encompassed sources as diverse as those contained in Aristotle, Plato, Cicero, Augustine of Hippo, Apostle Paul and many others, along with Christian, Muslim, Eastern and Oriental texts. There are many references in the Summa to the great teachers who influenced Thomas Aquinas. Prima Pars First Part Questions is intended mainly for lay clergy or beginners. Here, many basic premises of Christianity, the Creation and the Existence of God are discussed.