Summa theologiae

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Work · Medieval & Scholastic

Summa theologiae

1273 · by Thomas Aquinas

The great synthesis: God, humanity, virtues, law – with the “Five Ways”.

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Introduction

Thomas wrote the Summa from 1265 onwards as a textbook for “beginners” in theology, as the prologue puts it. It has three parts: the first on God and creation, the second (itself divided in two) on human action, virtues and law, the third on Christ and the sacraments. Every question is split into articles that follow a fixed pattern: objections, a counter-authority (“sed contra”), Thomas’s answer and replies to each objection. In December 1273 he stopped writing in the middle of the third part; according to a report by his companion Reginald, he said that all he had written seemed to him like straw. Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical “Aeterni Patris” (1879) made it the reference text of Catholic philosophy.