Thomas Aquinas was the son of an Italian nobleman. He was educated in a monastery, like many children during Middle Ages. This 13th century friar said that faith and reason were often two paths to the same end.  He combined the philosophy of Aristotle with the Christian religion. He argued that without God there would be no universe: “To take away the cause is to take away the effect”. 

Aquinas said all living things have souls. Plant souls ensure growth. Animals have souls capable of feeling. People’s souls have the ability to reason. Angels are between human beings and God.

After hundreds of years in obscurity Greek philosophy was once again being studied. Aquinas read translation of Arabic texts. In the Dark Ages Greek philosophy was kept alive by the Islamic world. Among them and the greatest was a Persian physician and philosopher  Avicenna (Ibn Sina)  who profoundly influenced medieval Islamic Philosophy, while his synthesis of ancient Greek and theology also had a major influence on the Western thought especially that of the medieval Christian philosophers.

Aquinas  absorbed many of Aristotle’s ideas and used them as a platform for his own thinking.His aim was to prove God’s existence through reason (the tool of the philosophers). the result was two massive books in which he managed to weld  philosophy of Aristotle to Christian belief. He was made a saint as a result of his work.

After experiencing some kind of divine vision, Aquinas stopped writing, saying words were “mere straw”. It is said that Aquinas grew so fat he had to have a special niche cut into his table. Two years later, a bump on the head caused a decline in health. He ended his days in an Italian monastery, where he was discovered expired on the lavatory. Aquinas’ work became the approved philosophy of the Church and earned him a place with the saints. An interesting proof  of God’s existence reasoned by Aquinas is as follows:

…The second way [to prove the existence of God] if from the nature of efficient cause in the world of sensible things we find there is an order of efficient causes. There is no case known (neither is it, indeed, possible) in which a thing is found to be the efficient cause of itself, which is impossible. Now in efficient causes it is not possible to go on to infinity, because in all efficient causes following in order, the first is the cause of the intermediate cause, and the intermediate is the cause of ultimate cause, whether the intermediate cause be several, or one only. Now to take away the cause is to take away the effect. Therefore, if there be no first cause among the efficient causes, there will be no ultimate, nor any intermediate, cause. But if in efficient causes it is possible to go on to infinity, there will be no first efficient cause, neither will there be an ultimate effect, nor any intermediate efficient causes; all of which is plainly false. Therefore, it is necessary to admit a first efficient cause, to which everyone gives the name of God.