# 65 - Saint Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas was born in 1225 and died in 1274, he was canonized by Pope John XXII in 1323 and became Saint Thomas Aquinas. Saint Thomas was from Roccasecca near Naples-Italy. He was the seventh and youngest child of a wealth and very influential family. Against the wishes of his family at the age of nineteen, Thomas decided to join the Dominican Order, which had been founded only about 30 years earlier: the members of the new order were inspired to develop a "mixed" spirituality. The order was both active in preaching, and contemplative in study, prayer, and meditation. Thomas Aquinas attends the university of Naples and there he was introduced to the teachings of Aristotle, Averroes, and Maimonides. In 1252 at the College of St. James in Paris, Thomas started a teaching career to which was to involve him in every great intellectual conflict of the time. Beginning as a bachelor, he lectured upon the Scriptures and the basic theological textbook of the day. He enjoys great popularity as a teacher. One of his students later recorded that: Thomas introduced new articles into his lectures, founded a new and clear method of scientific investigation and synthesis, and developed new proofs in his argumentation; although the university required that a master in theology be at least thirty-four years old, Thomas, after a papal dispensation, was given his degree in 1256, when little more than thirty-one years old, and he was appointed to fill one of the two chairs allowed to Dominicans at the university. In1272 Thomas was recalled to Naples by his superiors to reorganize all the theological courses of his order. There at the university he lectures on the Psalms, and St. Paul, commented on Aristotle’s, and worked on the third part of the Summa. (Summa Theologica) or Summary of Theology, often referred to simply as the Summa, which is the best-known work of Saint Thomas Aquinas, with more than 3 thousand pages It is a compendium of all the main theological teachings of the Catholic Church. Today the Summa is used as a guide for theology students, including seminarians and priests. The Summa shows the reasoning for almost all points of Christian theology topics with a cycle that start with: God, Creation, Man, Man's purpose, Christ, the Sacraments, and back to God. From the Summa first part II - the existence of God. Thomas Aquinas refers to Augustine who said: “since God is the highest good, He would not allow any evil to exist in His works, unless His omnipotence and goodness were such as to bring good even out of evil.” St. Thomas replies this is part of the infinity goodness of God, that He should allow evil to exist and out of it produce good. Aquinas five statements about the divine qualities: God is simple, without composition of parts, such as body and soul, or matter and form. God is perfect, lacking nothing. That is, God is distinguished from other beings on account of God's complete actuality. God is infinite. That is, God is not finite in the ways that created beings are physically, intellectually, and emotionally limited. This infinity is to be distinguished from infinity of size and infinity of number. God is immutable, incapable of change on the levels of God's essence and character. God is one, without diversification within God's self. The unity of God is such that God's essence is the same as God's existence. Saint Thomas Aquinas, Averroes, and Maimonides are among the greatest religious philosophers of the Middle Ages. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/uirapuru/message