Author : Jack Kristensen
Publisher :
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 20,21 MB
Release : 2023
Category : Aquinas
ISBN :
Thomas Aquinas (ca. 1225-1274) affirms that the natural moral virtue of religion has a high place among the virtues when he considers the human person as a moral agent in the Secunda Secundae Pars of his Summa Theologica. Far from suggesting that he advocates for an emotionless, merely duty-based conception of religion, the fact that Aquinas considers religion a natural human virtue speaks to a powerful and perhaps-shocking belief: that being in right relationship with the true, living God of the Old and New Testaments perfects-and does not destroy-our humanity. He says that the natural moral virtue of religion "excels among the moral virtues" which "are [all] ordered to God as their end." This is because "religion approaches nearer to God than the other moral virtues, in so far as its actions are directly and immediately ordered to the honor of God." Thomas cites Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC), a Roman pagan, often in his discussion of the virtue of religion, even taking the definition of the virtue from Cicero's De Inventione. Cicero himself struggled personally with the question of what "true religion" was and he shares the labors of his personal search most explicitly in his works De Natura Deorum and De Divinatione. This thesis, which is a historical and comparative analysis of the virtue of religion for Cicero and Aquinas, has three goals: to articulate Cicero's conception of the natural human virtue of "religio" in his own terms as he thought of it in his ancient Roman and pagan context; to articulate Aquinas's conception of "religio" in his own terms as he thought of it in his medieval Catholic-Christian context; and to offer a concluding reflection on how Aquinas hypothetically might argue that Cicero's ultimately unresolved, Academic-Skeptical response to the question of "true religion" could find a more deeply spiritually-and-humanly-fulfilling answer in the Catholic faith. While this is not a theology thesis, in order to compare Aquinas and Cicero's understandings of religious practice, theology will be needed to fill in the background of their two distinct philosophical starting points. While Aquinas believes that one could know much more about God through human reason than what Cicero or his contemporaries articulated, Aquinas also affirms that there are certain truths about the divine nature, and even about the nature of the universe, that human reason alone is not able to definitively settle. Therefore, in the conclusion, we will discuss how Aquinas supplements and perfects Cicero's articulation of true religion using human reason aided by Christian revelation. In the conclusion, I will also offer a potential way to understand the diverse religious practice in our contemporary world in light of a Thomistic, Christian conception of the virtue of religion.