It has been said that the quickest way to get a question answered online is to prominently post the wrong answer. I feel like this was Aquinas's role in the development of western philosophy.
He's generally viewed as a net positive since Christiandom ruled the western world and Aquinas reconciled some Aristotelian and Neoplatonic views with the Catholic Church ("Nothing comes from nothing", "cause and effect", etc) But to Aquinas, those Neoplatonists from whom he derived his cosmology and philosophy were nothing better than pagans lining up to be burned in the good lord's holy fires—even though they figured the same thing about the way things appear to work.
That's true of any philosopher.
> to Aquinas, those Neoplatonists from whom he derived his cosmology and philosophy were nothing better than pagans
Ahistorical nonsense.
https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com//mobile/view/1...
Morally, he couldn't exalt a Pagan. He only brought himself to say that they essentially "weren't all bad", and beautifully illustrated. He was right, of course, about them—but ultimately he looked down upon them from a moral and ethical standpoint.
Neoplatonism well predates the church. It's beautiful, though.
Not Christianity in all its forms, sure, but Catholicism absolutely.
Just because Aquinas questioned if "pagans" could be virtuous in spite of their beliefs, does not mean he didn't believe they were destined for exclusion from God. He might have written more positively about them than his counterparts and colleagues in the church, but he was looking down his nose at them.
I don't consider adherents to a dogma reaching out in "charity" to be a relationship of equitable footing. It reminds me of that old English nonsense of "noble savages". Just because they called them "noble"...
edit:
Happy to remove my personal opinions.
I'm not making up these perspectives; this is dogma according to the Catholic Encyclopedia: https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/paganism. And it's literally in the abstract of the first paper linked to.
Aquinas, as a function of his adherence to that dogma, presumed all Pagans to be doomed as a function of their not adhering to the same dogma. He considered them possibly capable of virtue, but morally inferior.
Pagan is only one category of unbeliever. There are also:
1. Heretics (bad Catholics and all Protestants)
2. Schismatics (the Eastern Orthodox and splinter groups)
3. Infidels (Muslims and anyone else who acknowledges the Abrahamic God but denies Christ)
4. Jews (for having been God's chosen people and having denied the Messiah), see #3
5. Heathens ("spiritual but not religious")
6. Atheists
> if you're not adhering to Catholic Christianity then you are doomed
Strive to enter by the narrow gate.
As something issued by all bishops in the USA, it did at one time have official status in dioceses within the United States.
But it's not a place to cite 'official' Catholic teaching, because it's not a universal Church document the way a church council, a vatican statement, or the writings of one of the church doctors would be.
It's best to cite a source that the Baltimore Catechism would have used as the authoritative source.
There are plenty of interesting things to discuss about Aquinas in his historical context. The last thing we need is to replace that with generic (and therefore tedious, and eventually nasty) arguments about "dogma" and (god help us) "the errors of modern Christianity".
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
I was defending my statement on Aquinas, and so I had to draw out the conclusion. I think that's fair.
I never directed any remark at anyone's beliefs, so I think this is all heavy-handed, but just the same I removed the offending opinions and tuned my comment to suit HN's mode.
The more important point here is that it's best to avoid generic tangents [2], especially on classic flamewar topics.
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
I don't think this is flamebaiting personally, but maybe I have thick skin.
The only thing he's 'wrong' about is that not every non-Catholic is considered a pagan. Some are schismatics or heretics. Again, that's not my opinion or his/her opinion. That's just a statement of what the church publicly proclaims to believe about non-catholics.
I hadn't felt I was launching into any arguments even with my opinion laced in, but it may also be that I don't tend to be patient with my wording. So what seems only matter-of-fact to me may come across more cold-hearted to others than I intended.
Either way, I appreciate your insightful additions. You'll probably be more helpful on this subject already than I've been.
The problem here isn't that the GP posted opinion rather than fact, or something like that; it's that the comment was a dramatic swerve into generic flamewar territory. More explanation if it helps: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu....
>846 How are we to understand this affirmation, often repeated by the Church Fathers?335 Re-formulated positively, it means that all salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is his Body:
>Basing itself on Scripture and Tradition, the Council teaches that the Church, a pilgrim now on earth, is necessary for salvation: the one Christ is the mediator and the way of salvation; he is present to us in his body which is the Church. He himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and Baptism, and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which men enter through Baptism as through a door. Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it.336
>847 This affirmation is not aimed at those who, through no fault of their own, do not know Christ and his Church:
>Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience - those too may achieve eternal salvation.337
>848 "Although in ways known to himself God can lead those who, through no fault of their own, are ignorant of the Gospel, to that faith without which it is impossible to please him, the Church still has the obligation and also the sacred right to evangelize all men.
I wonder if you might be mistaking Aquinas for Augustine? Augustine introduced huge amounts of Neoplatonism into Christianity very early---little more than a century after the original Neoplatonist, Plotinus himself. It's also worth noting that Plotinus was a disciple of the mysterious Ammonius Saccas, one of whose other disciples was none other than Origen, a very influential early Christian writer (albeit later considered a heretic).
Augustine was the foundation of Neoplatonism in the Medieval church, which was it's guiding philosophy (to some great extent) for centuries.
The works of Aristotle were lost to them. They knew of Aristotle but didn't have his writings. Around the time of Thomas Aquinas, Aristotle's works were rediscovered, having been preserved in the Muslim world. Aquinas' great task was reconciling them with the existing church.
This wasn't particular to Aquinas, but fairly common among Scholastics:
* https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/41999/what-is-th...
In some ways you're trying to steel man (as opposed to straw man) the opposing arguments. It was a reflection of the oral debating style used in universities at the time.