---
title: "Thomas Aquinas | Scholasticism | Thought Archive"
number: "058"
slug: "058-thomas-aquinas"
author: "Wenzi / 文子"
language: "en"
canonical: "https://tongzai.space/en/thought-archive/058-thomas-aquinas/"
is_primary_text: true
---

# Thomas Aquinas（Scholasticism）



## Common research question

**What do Aquinas's Five Ways establish?**

Aquinas' Five Ways reason from motion, causal order, possibility and necessity, gradation, and governance toward the existence of what he calls God. They do not individually prove every doctrine of Christianity, and they are not arguments from modern Big Bang cosmology.

## Interpretive boundary

Read the Summa Theologiae in context and account for Aristotelian terms.

## Archive evidence

- [E-01 ｜ ST I q.2 a.3: the five ways](#E-01)
- [E-11 ｜ ST I-II q.3 a.8: perfect happiness lies in seeing the essence of God](#E-11)