Slideshow image

Thomas Aquinas is one of the most famous Christian thinkers, and one of his big ideas was that you don’t need to rely only on the Bible to know that God exists. He believed people could figure out some truths about God just by using their brains, observing the world, and thinking logically. This approach is called natural theology.

So, what exactly is natural theology? It’s the idea that you can look at the world around you—like nature, the stars, or how things work—and conclude that there must be a Creator behind it all. Think about it: when you see a beautiful painting, you know someone had to paint it, right? In the same way, Aquinas believed the complexity and beauty of the universe point to God.

During Aquinas’s time in the 1200s, the Church faced a tough challenge. It had to explain Christianity to people from other religions or no religion at all, like Jews, Muslims, and pagans. Many of them didn’t accept the Bible as true, so just quoting scripture wouldn’t work. Aquinas realized that if Christians wanted to share their faith with these groups, they needed to start with something everyone could agree on: reason and logic.

Aquinas explained this in a book called Commentary on the Sentences. He said that humans have the ability to think and reason, which allows them to figure out big ideas, like cause and effect. For example, if you see smoke, you know there’s fire. In the same way, when you see the universe, you can reason that something must have caused it—something bigger and more powerful than the universe itself. That “something,” Aquinas argued, is God.

One of Aquinas’s big ideas about God is found in his work De Ente et Essentia. He described God as “pure existence,” which means God isn’t just a part of the world or something that helps things exist—He is existence itself. Think of it like this: God isn’t like a flashlight that can run out of batteries. He’s more like the sun, the ultimate source of light and energy that never runs out. Everything that exists comes from God, but God is much greater than everything He created.

Aquinas also believed that people have an inner awareness of God, even if they don’t fully understand it. He said, “To know that God exists in a general and confused way is implanted in us by nature.” In other words, we’re born with a sense that there’s something bigger than ourselves, and that “something” is God. This natural awareness points us toward God and our purpose in life.

Thomas Aquinas’s ideas are a reminder that faith and reason don’t have to be enemies—they can work together. Whether you’re looking at the stars, studying science, or just thinking about life, everything points back to God. For Aquinas, reason was a gift from God that helps us see the truth about Him, even before we open a Bible.