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Who Is Thomas Aquinas Suma Contra Gentiles?

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Thomas Aquinas was a prominent philosopher and religious thinker who lived in Italy in the 13th century. He was a member of the Christian faith and worked to spread its word around the world. Thomas Aquinas wrote Summa Contra Gentiles so that it would be used as a tool for missionaries in convincing others to convert to the Christian faith. In the work Aquinas attempts to explain the reason for some of the facets and rules of Christianity through what he calls natural reason. In one section, he discusses the reasons that he believes demonstrate why marrying within the family is not allowed. However, his arguments opposing incest are not logically sound. One of Aquinas’s arguments is centered upon the supposed “natural shame” that exists between …show more content…

The basis behind his argument is the concept of “multiplicity of loves”. He begins his argument positing that copulation destroys a person’s good morals. He also states how those related to each other also possess a mutual love as family members. Given that relatives have a mutual love, then if they were to marry, Aquinas states that there would be too much love for a soul to remain uncorrupted, “there would be in them the love arising from community of blood and nourishment in addition to the love of desire and, in consequence… the soul would be all the more a slave to pleasures” (Aquinas 376). This argument is flawed because it supposes that when marrying someone outside of the family a person will not have the love from family members. When someone marries they will have the “love of desire” from their partner along with the “love arising from community of blood and nourishment” from their family member. Given Aquinas’s argument that this love is corrupting to the soul, it does not seem relevant whether these two sources of love come from one person or multiple persons. In either case, a traditional marriage or incestuous one, there will be both sources of love present. Aquinas claims that the love sources multiply and have a greater impact, but there is no logical reasoning that would support this

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