Aquinas

Question 1

What is Act?

Answer 1

What presently is.

Question 2

What is Potency?

Answer 2

What could be.

Question 3

What is Essence?

Answer 3

What it is.

Question 4

What is Existence?

Answer 4

That it is.

Question 5

What are the Five Causes?

Answer 5

1. Material: What the stuff is.
2. Formal: The organization and structure of the thing.
3. Efficiant: Who/what made the thing.
4. Final: What it is for.
5. Exemplary: The idea that the thing was patterned after.

Question 6

What is Substance?

Answer 6

That which exists in itself and the reality underlying and displaying Accidents.

Question 7

What are Accidents?

Answer 7

Things that only exist in various Substances with reference to those Substances.

Question 8

What are the 9 Accidents?

Answer 8

1. Quality: Modifies/completes a thing in its being/operation.
2. Quantity: Some material amount to a thing.
3. Relation: Refers/compares one real thing with another.
4. Time: Refers to the point/time at which a Substance was doing something.
5. Place: Refers to the location/position of at which a Substance is found.
6. Action: A change/influence proceeding from a thing.
7. Passion: A thing’s reception/receiving of an Action or being changed by something else.
8. Posture: Pertains to the arrangement of coordination of parts.
9. External Condition: A Substance is externally modified.

Question 9

Why was the Summa Theologia written?

Answer 9

It was for beginners in theology and to revise/reform the theological curriculum.

Question 10

How is the Summa Theologia organized?

Answer 10

• Prima Pars: God (Who is God?).
• Secunda Pars: Rational Creatures (Who is man? Who are the angels?).
• Tertia Pars: Christ (Who is Christ?).

Question 11

How does Thomas Aquinas refute heresies (Disputatio)?

Answer 11

1. Disputed question (answer can go either way).
2. Objections.
3. Sed Contra.
4. Respondeo.
5. Replies.

Question 12

What are the 2 kinds of Self-Evident Propositions?

Answer 12

1. First principles of reason.
2. Definition/knowledge of the essence.

Question 13

What are Thomas Aquinas’ 5 ways of showing that God exists?

Answer 13

1. The argument from motion/change.
2. The argument from efficient causality.
3. The argument from contingency.
4. The argument from gradation/perfection.
5. The argument from Final Cause.

Question 14

Who was Thomas Aquinas’s teacher, what did he say about Thomas? Why was Thomas called this?

Answer 14

Albert the Great: “The ox who would bellow and the whole world would hear him.”
Thomas was called “The dumb ox” by his classmates because he was a large and quiet student.

Question 15

Who was Thomas Aquinas?

Answer 15

1224-1274.
He was born in an Italian Aristocratic family and was taught by the Dominicans. Despite his family’s wishes, he became a Dominican friar.
He died on the way to the Council of Leon to reunite the Eastern Orthodox.

Question 16

What is Metaphysics?

Answer 16

Studying reality itself, its characteristics, its properties, and its causes (the study of being qua being).

Question 17

What are the 4 principles of Metaphysics?

Answer 17

1. Noncontradiction: It is impossible for something to be and not to be at the same time in the same respect.
2. Identity: A thing is the same thing as itself.
3. Excluded Middle: There is no middle ground between being and non being.
4. Sufficient Reason: If something exists, it has a reason or reasons for its existence.