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Thomas Aquinas—Why he was Wrong Thomas Aquinas did not originate his material. It was argued by "scholastics" for several decades before he entered their group. He was their ace student; so he wrote up their results. Scholasticism was the first blush at academic activities after the dark ages. You can't understand scholasticism until you believe the following hinge point on the subject, and you won't find it at the universities. The dark ages were caused by an inability to heat houses. In southern climates like Italy and Palestine, houses didn't need to be heated. But the center of activity moved to upper Europe during the dark ages due to the success of the Visigoths in defeating the Romans. In upper Europe, the inability to heat houses changed the culture from intellectual activities, which had focused on philosophy, to outdoor activities, which focused on riding horses and fighting wars. The renaissance marked the end of the dark ages. It was the result of a new invention for heating buildings, which was the wood stove. A wood stove is nothing like a fireplace. A fireplace cannot heat a dwelling, because it requires that doors and windows be left open before smoke will rise through a chimney. The heat goes out with the smoke. The wood stove is totally enclosed. It allows smoke to go out with almost no air entering the enclosure beyond trace amounts needed for combustion. The exiting smoke creates a vacuum in the wood stove, which prevents smoke from entering the room while it draws in the necessary amount of air. Once the wood stove was invented, it allowed dwellings in upper Europe to be heated, which totally changed the culture and created the renaissance. The first result was scholasticism. What then is scholasticism? It is what theologians produced when they found that they could get together and discuss intellectual subjects. The most available texts were Greek philosophy, which they integrated into their theology. If there had been a continuous line of theological studies through the dark ages Greek philosophy would have been viewed with more skepticism. Scholastics used a verbal format rather than a written medium. Greek logic was designed for verbal argument. After several decades of such argument, a write-up was needed, and Thomas Aquinas was assigned the task. A negative feature of scholasticism, which was carried from the traditions of the dark ages, was authoritarianism—defined as misused authority. The dark ages bred misused authority because of perpetual squabbles and absence of intellectual activity. In that environment, scholastic theologians were quite arbitrary and arrogant in assuming that their results would be perfect truth resulting from God's work within them. Whatever distilled out of their arguments was assumed to be God's perfect and unquestionable truth. God, however, does not perfect anything humans do. One reason why is because impostors who work for satan would claim that their results were God's perfect truth, and criticism would not be allowed to correct it. They have been doing exactly that, since theologians claim that God's infallible truth is produced by church authorities. "Natural law" is a product of scholasticism which says that God placed moral awareness in minds when he created them. It contradicts Jeremiah 31:33 which says Christ will place his law within his people and write it on their hearts, after human life ends and sin is overcome. "Awakening" natural law is the task of church authorities. Awakening it cannot involve the study of morality by the individual, because doing so would be "eating the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil" (Genesis 2:17) according to the pope's document titled Veritatis Splendor (see web page 32.). Natural law is a substitute for the morality which Christ taught. Any substitute would replace the moral responsibilities which Christ taught. The concept of natural law would not have originated with Thomas Aquinas, because the procedures of scholasticism required arguing a subject for several years to determine the truth. The result was a group product. The net effect was to refine corruption and immunize it to criticism from like-minded persons, while it was sheltered from external criticism. Words can mean anything; and therefore, the manner in which they are applied needs to be looked at to determine what they mean to each person. The manner in which natural law is applied by the pope is to claim that it is a sin for individuals (nonchurch authorities) to study morality, because church authorities must arbitrate it. The manner in which it is applied by the adherents of Thomistic theology is to claim that their sinfulness is virtue, because it stems from God's work within them. They use Thomism to sanctify their arrogance, elitism, nihilism, mockery and degradation by which they deal with critics, opponents and vulnerable persons in contempt for everything Christ and the prophets taught about morality. One cannot say whether Thomas Aquinas had the purpose of corrupting theology. He was duped into assuming corruption was God's work because of his stupidity and an environment of consensus and authority in a closed group of elites arguing in isolation from external criticism and evolved truth on the subject. Natural law was a meticulously designed substitute for moral truth. It withstood the arguments of theologians who were out of contact with reality, dead to sin, too stupid to think straight and sanctified by church authorityReturn to Thomas Aquinas |