Aquinas And Augustine Similarities

Augustine and Aquinas are both very well known for their philosophical and theological explorations. They are both known for trying to prove that ancient philosophy and Christianity were connected, they both took two different paths. Augustine is known for following a Platonic path and Aquinas an Aristotelian. The two both talked about faith, reason ,and knowledge.

Thomas Aquinas was born in 1225 into a noble family, where he lived in southern Italy. His family decided that he would be a church leader so at the age of six they sent him to the Benedictine monastery of Monte Cassino, and at fourteen he was sent to the University of Naples for further studying. When he joined the scholarly dominican order at the age of 20, he wanted to pursue

a normal average life. When his family found out, they kidnapped him and placed him in the family castle. When his Family realized that he wasn’t going to lose his scholarly ambitions, they let him go and he continued his studies and writings at the University of Paris, and also in Cologne, Rome, Naples, Viterbo, Orvieto. He contributed to philosophy and christianity, by using a combination of Aristotle's Philosophy and Christian doctrines.
During the Middle Ages came with birth of the idea that religious belief were not derived from faith, but reason, the idea was possible thanks to Augustine. Augustine believed that faith and reason had to coexist in order to get an understanding of God, but faith would always be the best to know and establish a relationship with God, but yet again we only have these traits thanks to the grace of God. Augustine believed that using reason and logic like science and history are beneficial to clarify the Christian faith. He believed that a Christian did not have to take help from philosophy because he felt faith was greater when it comes to the belief in God, he felt that faith came first, even if reason is the complete opposite of scripture.
Thomas Aquinas had a different point of view . Although his distinction between faith and reason weren’t as vivid , as Augustine's. He did believe that all creation and truth is came from God. He did not believe that reason and faith were against eachother, but there are truths that reason cannot attain that faith can’t, this idea was known as the two fold truth. He said that something can be true of faith, false of faith, and maybe not even correspond to philosophy, but it can in no way be the opposite. Aquinas believed that faith and reason, are a necessity, and that knowledge is essential in the act of faith. He tells us that faith is an act of reasoning, and its object is truth, so, any truth will lead to faith. Aquinas also claims that people cannot comprehend God as an object. Aquinas sort of, kind of, agrees with Augustine on reason and scripture. Aquinas mentioned that there may be not be evidence from a sensational experience,but we must trust in the articles of faith in which he refers to as divine testimony, or scripture. For example, though there is no sensational evidence for the world not being eternal, Aquinas believed through his logical arguements that we must accept this as fact.
Augustine came up with most of his theory, from Plato, especially in his need for certain knowledge rather than changing or impermanent knowledge. Augustine was not an empiricist( believer in a theory that states that knowledge comes only or primarily from sensory experience) Augustine believed “that the truth is found from within, through a process of illumination, and not by observing the world of nature.” It had been Plato’s ideology that such knowledge comes from a process of remembering the past existence, which was made possible by the Good illuminating the mind to remember. Augustine builds upon these ideas by plato he but alters them heavily. Augustine is with Plato in the sense of the idea that, true knowledge come from within, the only difference is Plato believed it came from remembering and Augustine believed from illumination. Both Plato and Augustine believed that these certainties could not be taught but Augustine thought these ideas came from illumination through Christ, the holy divine teacher. This is why Augustine believed reason to be a gift from god “because understanding is made possible by the light of Christ and therefore is a gift from God”. Augustine believed that in any instance an idea is formed in the rational mind of any human being, it is because Christ placed that idea there. so it is rationality divine.
Both philosophers thoughts that it was not possible to get knowledge through the physical world. This idea comes from or is derived from the Platonic theory of knowledge, that the material world is ever changing and unreliable as a source of information. Just as Plato believed it was an impossible source of information about his Good, which we can liken to Augustine’s God, there is no way for Augustine to learn about God through a world that is constantly changing. Augustine did not believe that we form abstract concepts from seeing multiples of certain objects, or learning of a concept, but also through illumination, similar to Plato’s belief that one must simply remember abstract concepts.
Both Aquinas and Augustine agree that faith is important inorder to understand God , but As sensory information goes there beliefs are very different.

Aquinas,was more empiricist because he followed the route of Aristotle. As to Augustine who wasn’t empiricist. Aquinas believed senses are how we find the truth, opening your eyes to the bigger picture. Aquinas simply believed that abstraction is a process that takes place in the human mind, and that person, thats seeing multipl objects, such as a basketball, will be able to create this random idea of a basketball in their mind, which would be done by by the ideology of “active intellect” a process in which Aquinas concieved. Aquinas built from the ground up using Aristotle’s ideas of the intellect and how we understand information we come across. Aquinas was conflicted by the fact that or minds can understand something he refers to as internal copies of what we see, feel, smell, or hear. The “passive intellect” is the the intellect that knows material objects, thats what Aquinas believed to be how we know all objects. To know what phantasms actually are, we require a passive intellect to actually know understand what we are seeing. The active intellect is the part of the mind that is able to create from knowledge of the passive, kind of like a memory card. Again Both Aquinas and Augustine agree upon the fact that God is the ultimate knowledge and nothing or nobody can or will ever know as much as God, this is

something else they agree upond.
Both of these philosophers were theist, so they kept there ideals that were greatly influenced by Christianity, but both Aquinas and Augustine sort of defended thier beliefs in there seperate ways.

Aquinas and Augustine's showed their philosophies ,that were derived ancient philosophers, when they spoke of faith and reason, both of them tried to get there point out in there own way. Aquinas and Augustine both had one goal and and that was too prove that Christianity was somehow intertwined with philosophy and Both of them did just that, many people may or may not agree with these philosophies but it just depends on the type of person you are. Many people like to live off fact and know for certain, but like Aquinas and Augustine we all have our own philosophies, we choose what to believe and what not to believe. We are not machines nor are we controlled by one. We are after all humans and have free will, what we want to believe in is ours for the

taking