Saint Thomas Aquinas was Not an Atheist

1) Great Bishop of Geneva! : Saint Thomas Aquinas was Not an Atheist ; 2) Creation vs. Evolution : CMI Cites Bible Text Supporting St Thomas over St Bonaventure

Some people have found in Saint Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologiae words like "it would seem there is no God, for if of two opposites one is infinite, the other is null, but God per definition is infinite good, however, there is evil, so there is no infinite good, there is no God" or some paraphrase of Occam's Razor (before Occam even lived) used against existence of God as superfluous in explaining things.

If the complaint is simply about a Christian stating the case for Atheism, for whatever purpose he may do it, I cannot defend him by saying the words are not there. They are. But if it is meant as proving he was himself an Atheist, that is quote mining. Today Lita Cosner had to answer a question about quote mining. Here is part of her answer:

It would be like an atheist quoting the Bible as affirming their belief in atheism, because 15 places in the Bible say “There is no God”. Of course, the Christian would point out that they are in contexts like, “O Lord, God of Israel, there is no God like you” (1 Kings 8:23) or “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God’” (Psalm 53:1). The surrounding words completely change the meaning, so it is dishonest to quote only the words that say what you want it to say.

Well, in Saint Thomas Aquinas too the surrounding words change the meaning. Before the two statements quoted he has asked something like "article three, whether there is a God" (in article two he had dealt with whether existence of God could be proven, answering yes, and that against those saying it could not be proven because self evident, and you cannot actually prove grass is green, because that is a primary fact used to prove other things, same with God existing). So the immediately preceding words might imply Saint Thomas was referring to some kind of debatable question. And the following words completely destroy the proposition "there is no God". First there is a Bible quote (Exodus 3:14 - not overlookable to π fans since the day when a Catholic bishop divided the Bible chapters into verses on a hunt), then he gets to a rational proof of God's existence. The first three parts could eventually mean there were some kind of impersonal unmoved mover, uncaused cause, necessary existence giving its existence to non-necessary items - modern Atheists would of course say that atoms are necessarily and eternally existent and the things we see are accidental configurations thereof - and this side was when he wrote not as easily and readily explainable in an Atheists sense, and that will on top of this also be further destroyed when he analyses "unmoved mover" in questions like whether God is a body or material or composed or multiple (with no, no, no, no answers all the way), but there are two more items even in this question that directly point to God being personal. Ordering wisdom - and most noble of nobles, in a clear hierarchy of values of the valuable existent things. Ordering wisdom as well as unmoved mover type of omnipotence is of course the approaches we use now against Atheism - as Geocentrics and as Creationists. A Universe where Venus and Mars are dancing around the Sun which is dancing around the Earth and all this within an aether turning westward around the Earth each day is too complex a thing to be set up by chance. Tychonic cosmology makes this even clearer than the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic one which Saint Thomas in his time had access to. Echosystems, the contribution of the Heavens to keep them alive on Earth, the cell, all of these defy atheistic explanations.

Then, after all the discussion which I have paraphrased for modern readers rather than quoted, converging to the conclusions that unmoved mover, uncaused cause, necessary self-existent existence, most noble of nobles and most wise ordainer of the order of Creation by everyone (back then) is (was at least) called God, Saint Thomas answers the two cases of atheism:

Reply to Objection 1. As Augustine says (Enchiridion xi): "Since God is the highest good, He would not allow any evil to exist in His works, unless His omnipotence and goodness were such as to bring good even out of evil." This is part of the infinite goodness of God, that He should allow evil to exist, and out of it produce good.

Reply to Objection 2. Since nature works for a determinate end under the direction of a higher agent, whatever is done by nature must needs be traced back to God, as to its first cause. So also whatever is done voluntarily must also be traced back to some higher cause other than human reason or will, since these can change or fail; for all things that are changeable and capable of defect must be traced back to an immovable and self-necessary first principle, as was shown in the body of the Article.

Now, to CMI (as I know from Jonathan Sarfati quyoting Saint thomas) it is no big news he was no atheist. But some people, both Protestant and perhaps even among the Orthodox, will still resort to accusing Saint Thomas of Atheism on account of some quote mining done by some anti-Catholic Anglican Divine of the 18th or 19th Century (unless it goes even further back).

Hans Georg Lundahl
Bpi, Georges Pompidou
Sunday and Vigil of
the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary
7-IX-2014

CMI : Feedback archive → Feedback 2014
‘What if Jesus tells you you’re wrong?’ (named after first letter, I was quoting answer to the second one)
Published: 7 September 2014 (GMT+10)
http://creation.com/what-if-wrong

Newadvent/Summa : First Part : Question 2. The existence of God : Article 3 Does God exist? (down to ad 1, ad 2)
http://newadvent.com/summa/1002.htm#article3

Now, that was true: "If the Papacy is not the Antichrist, then there is no point to the Reformation separation from Papacy."

On a list over Reformers who considered Papacy to be Antichrist, the compiler* ended with these remarks:

The Papal reaction — the "Counter Reformation." In an attempt to divert the undermining influence of the Protestant Reformation, a two-pronged counter attack was made.

Praeterist school of interpretation	Futurist school of interpretation
founded by Alcazar, a Spanish Jesuit in 1614.	founded by Francisco Ribera and Robert Bellarmine
The fulfillment of Revelation is in the past with the Fall of Jerusalem or the Fall of Pagan Rome, before the Popes ever ruled Rome.	The fulfillment of Revelation is in the future with an individual man as the Antichrist, Man of Sin, and a literal rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem.

Around 1590, Francisco Ribera published a 500-page book on Revelation. The first chapters of Revelation he applied to the time of the early church. From Revelation chapter 4 onward he applied literally, to a literal 3-1/2 year reign of an individual man, Antichrist. He taught that Antichrist would rebuild the temple in Jerusalem, deny Christ, pretend to be God, and conquer the world.

Robert Bellarmine, one of the most renowned Jesuit cardinals, taught that the Antichrist would be an individual Jew, who would reign a literal 3-1/2 years in Jerusalem, in whom would dwell all the power of the devil.

Paving the way for Papal-Protestant Union. The Evangelical Fundamentalist interpretation of Antichrist and Man of Sin as follows Ribera's and Bellarmine's Futuristic viewpoints. Not only has the Futuristic interpretation negated the powerful Reformation interpretation against Papacy, but it also allows room for ecumenism between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. If the Papacy is not the Antichrist, then there is no point to the Reformation separation from Papacy.

I agree heartily that there is no - godly** - point to the Reformation separation from Papacy.

It has indirectly served good, but not directly.

Kent Hovind and C. S. Lewis have done part of the work of the Lord, both separated from Rome, but neither of them has done it because he was separated from Rome. Gilbert Keith Chesterton started out that way too, but became a Roman or "swam the Tiber" as the modern phrase goes. When Kent Hovind does something good about defending Biblical inerrancy, he often does so (I have found from a limited experience of either) in agreement with one Calmet, who was a Catholic priest and a Frenchman. But nevertheless he also thinks it is his duty to take a distance from Rome. Not just or even primarily the present day Rome of Modernism, but the historical Rome.

That flaw I do put down to his having been influenced by the Reformation.

It is a baleful thing. It was a bloody atrocity.

One of the last Spanish Inquisitors estimated that from 1480 to 1808 the Inquisition had executed 31.912 people. He may have been right. Or he may have been wrong because misreading some of the evidence. Or, he may also have been misquoted. But those are 328 years and that adds up to 97 per year. Reformations all over Europe - or what is Protestant of it - would have been at work over a much shorter time before they cut off populations from Catholicism. But typical of those times, the very times when Protestant culture was being formed (except insofar as it consisted of heritage from Catholic periods of the same countries) were bloodbaths perpetrated on Catholics.

Sure, Catholics did some killing too.

But their doctrines were not made while killing. They had inherited a Truth and defended it - any honest historian who even may not be Catholic and even may not agree that they held THE Truth would agree to that. He would agree that they had inherited what they conceived as a truth and that the time of their defending it did not involve adding new things to it not there before the Reformers came along, or not as much as among Reformers, and not in the sense of adding completely new things, rather in the sense of uniformating things previously debated.

That is why it is difficult to be other than dedicated fanatic of this Protestant fad of identifying historic papacy with Antichrist - and still cling on to it. Reformers are more clearly anti-Christian than Catholics. Bellarmine is a better Christian than James I.

The anonymous compiler - no, actually not, he is John Class*** and not anonymous - cites James I (or VI and I) as one godly and learned man who considered the Papacy as Antichrist. But James I was culpable of violently settling Protestant invaders in Ireland, like later Cromwell. He was culpable of wanting it both ways as to Holy Eucharist (or what he could get of it, i e a sham resemblance), agreeing with Reformers to deny Transsubstantiation or at least not to allow any direct defense of it, agreeing with Catholics who bow and kneel down to the species and give divine honours to Our Saviour who is present under them. This shilly-shallying involved him in demanding that one should bow and kneel down for what one considered bread and just as symbol of Our Lord or His Crucifixion - and rightly so, since a priest, even if validly ordained, who heartily agreed with the Reformation on this point would certainly NOT consecrate validly. He was also culpable of continuing the Inquisition of the English type of 1401 up to 1612 - same year before which he had issued a new Bible translation. How culpable? Because, not having the truth itself, Anglicanism was in no position to impose its "truth" on anyone. Because, attacking Catholicism for the Inquisition since many decades back (Foxe had Book of Martyrs published in 1563, same year the Council of Trent ended) it was rank hypocrisy to continue executing people for heresy oneself. Which James I as well as John Calvin did. Perhaps it was in the end lucky, perhaps it slowed down the advent of the later confusions, but nevertheless they could not do so with as clean a conscience as the Spanish Inquisition could.

Together with his brother Thomas, he° was put in prison for heresy in 1611. Thomas died in Newgate Prison, London, but Bartholomew's imprisonment was not a rigorous one. James I argued with him, and on several occasions he was brought before the Consistory court of London, but without any definite result. Eventually, after having threatened to bring an action for wrongful imprisonment, Legate was tried before a full Consistory Court in February 1612, was found guilty of blasphemous heresy, and was delivered to the secular authorities for punishment. Refusing to retract his opinions, he was burnt at the stake at Smithfield on 18 March 1612. Legate was the last person burned in London for his religious opinions, and died just three weeks before Edward Wightman, who was burned at Lichfield in April 1612, the last to suffer in this way in England.

That was Bartholomew Legate. "Oh, sure, we are all sinners, the Reformation was done by sinful men" ... was not someone just recently accusing Papacy and specifically because of Inquisition precisely to be, not so much sinful men as man of sin?

No, it is true, Reformation was a bad fix, the separation of Reformers from Papal Rome was a crime, and this is because Papacy as historically known up to now or pretty recently is NOT the Antichrist.

I have a hunch that perhaps Bergoglio is. And I have an apprehension, because he is promoting, very actively, a Papal-Protestant union. You see, though I like Kent Hovind and Jonathan Sarfati and a few more, I would very certainly not change Catholicism as it has traditionally been one whit just to suit them. I would like their conversion to Catholicism. But Catholicism does not need to convert to Creationism, since it has never left it. One other bad thing with Bergoglio is he is not exactlty stopping Catholics and even parts of his hierarchy from treating Creationism as if Catholicism had apostasised from it and it needed to go to suit their apostasy, mislabelled as that of the Church. I could very certainly use some intellectual in part support and in part simply pleasant company for this. Bergoglio, on the other hand, is being "sensitive" to the criticisms of the Reformers.

As to my love for certain Protestants, it is not because of their loyalty to the Reformation I love them. The Bible - and what they ar defending about the Bible - did very well without the Protestant Reformation, thank you.

So did the Futurist (with Bergoglio perhaps no longer all that futurist) view of Apocalypse (or of the chapters referring to end times tribulations and persecutions). It was there in St Thomas Aquinas or St Augustine well before it was championed by St Robert.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Feast of Corpus Christi
19/VI/2014

* No offense meant on that account, compiling is a thing that sometimes needs to be done and which I have done myself. Some use the word as an insult, I do not. I am sometimes myself a compiler as much as or in some few blogposts much more than an author.

** Some ungodly points, on the contrary, as in overemphasising work and company, and as in disparaging begging and solitude (Chesterton considered that even a normal man - married and working - needed to be half a hermit and I am sure he was right), and as vulgarising not so much the Bible as certain verses with certain misconceived interpretations (including a gratuitous insult to the Papacy).

*** In certain chapter studies he identifies the "I" of the apocalypse (St John the Gospeller) with "John Class". This might then be a pseudonym.

° http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartholomew_Legate

Quoted item on which I commented:

Reformers' Interpretations
of Anti-Christ
http://www.revelation-today.com/a6reform.htm

It can be added that the list includes Isaac Newton, who was an Anti-Trinitarian (like Bartholomew Legate) and a Sorcerer or Soothsayer. It also includes Savonarola, but that may be an error. It is pretty certain that its including Dante is an error. At least to me, as long as that is not documented. From his writings rather than from assessments like the list here.

It can also be added, my mother did not share this prejudice, at least not as to saying Catholics would need to leave Catholicism, while I was a child. I was allergic to it when other Protestants more decdidedly such forwarded it. One reason why I came to detest the Reformation was knowing Luther and the rest had come to this conclusion which is as unhuman as it is unbiblical. It is unbiblical because 3 1/2 years are NOT 1200 plus years. It is unhuman because it involves Satan making all nations HIS disciples (not during a few years or during paganism past, but during the time of grace), and it is ungodly because in doing so it implies a failure of God's orders to the 11 Apostles./HGL

Resurrection, Holy Eucharist, Holy Poverty (or, Why Was Wycliff Wrong)

The defense for the Resurrection is rather well put by the son of Craig Lampe, Ph.D.* Here, Joel Lampe on The Bible on Trial:

He also said he learned from his academic study of Jesus' disciples that, many of them experienced horrific deaths "and none even flinched."

"These were 11 guys who went 11 different directions (after the Ascension) and never saw each other again. They all told the same story and refused to deny what they saw. There had to be something to what they believed," he said.

They did stay together a few years as collective episcopacy of the Church in Jerusalem. With St Peter as their head. So, based on merely that, there is a theoretical chance they could have concocted a story, at least they had the time if you go only by that.

1. However, the Church started out with a Story told on Pentecost day. If they had been reshaping the story after, they would have lost adherents. So, in fact they did not have more time than 52 days between Crucifixion and Pentecost.
   
   
2. If they had agreed on it in spite of facts known by them (supposing there had been such as would have invalidated their story) they would not have died unflinching deaths under torture, or, as for St John, faced a naturally inevitable death under boiling oil and then survive miraculously.
   
   Nor been in the mood for the show they did on Pentecost day. And the miracle of Languages would not have happened. God does not make miracles for liars.
   
   
3. If they had been mad, they would not have been able to agree on a story and would not have been able to guide, in the open, a Church like that.
   
   Even sane people have trouble making homeless shelters agreeable for all concerned, perhaps they do not want to but want people to look for work so as to get away from them - but the Church in Jerusalem was people sacrificing their carreers so as to be able to live together.
   
   The Hippie Camps have tried to rival that recently - and mostly failed. And it started out 5000 men plus women and children. Not just Hippie camp, but Woodstock - and Altamont. As far as scale is concerned. But the Church had no Altamont. And even Altamont was not ran by madmen, it just went wrong anyway.

One more quote from Joel Lampe:

A couple of years later, he said, he began studying the lives of William Tyndale, John Rogers, Thomas Cranmer and John Wycliffe - biblical publishing pioneers who were persecuted or killed for challenging the authority of the Roman Catholic Church.

Big trouble number one with that story: the question what happened to the Church between the Apostles (or possibly Saint Jerome) and John Wycliffe.

Bible says the Church cannot fail between Ascension and Return of Our Lord. Our Lord's words, end of Gospel of St Matthew.

Big trouble number two with it: his Father Dr Craig's* solution the Bible teaching was kept pure and alive by a "secret society called the Culdees".

Bible says the Church cannot be a secret society. "A city built on a mountain cannot be hidden". "No man lighteth a candle/lamp so as to place it under a bushel" - and would God who lit the beacon of Light for our souls, whose word is a lantern for our feet put his candle** under a bushel? Or allow it to be put under a bushel by evil men for any longer time?

Even in Russia, 1917-1990, lots of people knew the Gospels because they were known before, from the time of the Czars. And that obscuration was not even reducing the Church to a secret society, since Orthodox and in some parts Catholic priests were openly celebrating Mass and preaching the Resurrection on Easter.

Now, let us therefore look on Craig's story about Wycliff, from The Forbidden Book.

John Wycliff was a product of the chosing of that secret society...

As already stated, the Culdees were not a secret society, they were Monks of the Celtic discipline. Iona was founded by some spiritual grandson or greatgrandson of St Patrick (whose biography I am now reading). By the way, it is not Culdee that means a certain starnger, but Chaldaeus, Chaldean. And St Joseph was not a Chaldean, he was a Hebrew, a Hebraeus. Culdee is not Latin but Irish: "Caol Dé" = "Companion of God". Just as "Socius Jesu" (the Latin for Jesuit) = "Companion of Jesus." But as little as the Jesuits in Spain, as little were the Culdees in the British Isles a Secret Society.

It is possible that certain Culdees after the Norman Conquest ousted the Celtic Church Discipline (and yes, Celtic and Roman Church differred only on discipline) degenerated into a secret society, just as it is possible that Templars after the burning of Jacques Molay in 1313 degenerated into a secret society more than they had become already by then (I mean Jacques Molay was no true and faithful successor of Hugues de Payns, unless he fooled - as I think he did not - the Council of Troyes of 1129, because quite certainly Hugues de Payns was not forcing - and would not have been allowed to start the order if he had been thought to force - new recruits to the order to tread on a Crucifix, as Jacques Molay was condemned for: some say Templars surviving in Scotland became the deplorable Freemasons, by infiltrating what had previously been Lodges of simple builders, and it is just barely possible but not at all likely that such degeneration happened to some Culdees as well).

But it is normally so that the Culdees who were not allowed to continue in their older discipline after Norman Conquests of the Celtic fringes (as well as Monks of Ely after Norman Conquest in England) took the Benedictine or later possibly Cistercian discipline. And on what basis could you say there were exceptions living on as a secret society or that new Benedictines even were secretly disloyal to the new Church discipline but at same time highly organised? Contemporary documents? - Not that I know of.

Wyclef stated he belonged to a secret society? - Would have been dangerous. Not likely.

Secret societies later claimed they continued the Culdees whose man Wyclef was? - That is in my opinion the very likeliest basis, unless it is just hysteria about Catholicism making secret society like behaviour a necessity for true Christians and trying to identify the "secret society Christians", picking Culdees for a reason or another.

Some have stated that the whole Reformation (like Freemasonry, like Bolshevism) is after all the product of people acting sometimes after the fashion of secret societies. These would be Jews, the sect that much earlier had crucified Our Lord. I find it barely likelier Jews by hatred of Christianity (which was offering them a status of second class citizens, after all) would have misunderstood or otherwise attacked the Holy Eucharist, picked out a man who did not shun them too much, talked to him and so on ...

But at least as likely if not likelier that some persecuted Waldensians - for there were times when they were persecuted - approached him.

If we can discount that, we can say he was his own deluder.

Here prepared a little tract called the Wicket, and it was a denial of Transsubstantiation.

That much is nearly sure that he denied Transsubstantiation. Or at least attacked it. Has the tract been preserved or not? Has if there is one its genuine descent from the pen of Wycliff been duly established?

Because the Bible did not support the idea that there is some kind of illusion or som kind of hocus pocus

The "refutation" of Transsubstantiation based thereon was refuted itself by St Thomas Aquinas:***

Summa Theologiae, III P, Q 75
http://www.newadvent.org/summa/4075.htm

and

Summa Theologiae, III P, Q 77
http://www.newadvent.org/summa/4077.htm

From the latter, A 1:

Objection 1. It seems that the accidents do not remain in this sacrament without a subject, because there ought not to be anything disorderly or deceitful in this sacrament of truth. But for accidents to be without a subject is contrary to the order which God established in nature; and furthermore it seems to savor of deceit, since accidents are naturally the signs of the nature of the subject. Therefore the accidents are not without a subject in this sacrament.

Reply to Objection 1. There is nothing to hinder the common law of nature from ordaining a thing, the contrary of which is nevertheless ordained by a special privilege of grace, as is evident in the raising of the dead, and in the restoring of sight to the blind: even thus in human affairs, to some individuals some things are granted by special privilege which are outside the common law. And so, even though it be according to the common law of nature for an accident to be in a subject, still for a special reason, according to the order of grace, the accidents exist in this sacrament without a subject, on account of the reasons given above (75, 5).

In other words, it is the real lightness or whiteness of bread you experience by touch or sight even when there is no real bread there any longer. And because the real whiteness and lightness is still there, same lightness and whiteness as when they were those of bread not yet consecrated, there is no deceit. There is no illusion.

And they would serve the elements in a Cannibalistic way.

Not at all. Cannibalism means eating the body of a man dead, or possibly dying from the cannibalism, unless it is very limited as in modern perversions of ritual Vampyrism. It means taking away pieces or drops to eat by one man what would otherwise have been the life of another one.

But Christ is risen, and His Body and Blood are not there under their own dimensions. Each communicant takes into his mouth and swallows, under the dimensions of bread and wine, not a piece of Christ's body but all of it, not a drop of Christ's blood but all of it. It is not blood as being spilled, it is blood as running in the veins of the Risen Body. Communion is not Cannibalism, it is offering up one's body to be a place where Christ is in His Body and Blood. Cannibalism is eating someone else's death. Communion is eating God's life. Cannibalism is eating someone weaker than oneself, since already dead. Communion is eating someone stronger than oneself, since already risen and since the very Person of God the Son, of God Almighty.

However, if Wycliff himself made the charge - I am right now searching Wikipedia for "The Wicket Wycliffe Lollards" and I get: "Did you mean: The Cricket Wycliffe Lollards" because Wicket is also a term in the Cricket game - then he was basically agreeing with Jewish anti-Christian and earlier Roman Pagan anti-Christian polemics. The "Cannibal" charge against Christians was made due to the Holy Eucharist. The Cannibal charge made by Celsus.

While on search for The Wicket, I get to an Old Paths Publications where Wycliff is said to have "defended property rights against Rome." He did not, he attacked voluntary poverty, the state in which the Church of Jerusalem lived. He called people having sold all their property and given it to the poor and living as beggars "thieves" precisely as the Pharisees and Sadducees might have called the Church in Jerusalem.

Between St Jerome and the time of Wycliff, the Faith delivered to and through the Apostles was not kept alive by a secret society of Culdees emanating into Wycliff, but by the established Church - including the time when it condemned Wycliff.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Château d'Eau Library
Paris
St John of Matha, O. SS. Trin.
8-II-2013

* As per mail I received Craig Lampe is Ph. D. I am neither claiming nor denying it, he is claiming it. As to what University or what subject, I do not know. It is not Lund University's Faculty for History, nor for Classical Studies. I know a Historian there, I studied Latin there, such ignorance as his about the Latin Middle Ages is inconceivable there. At least if you are promoted to Ph.D. - as I was not but do not claim to have been.

** Probable reference not to the kind of candles or tapers of wax you seen in Church, but to oil lamps. These had wicks like candles, and I am quoting from memory.

*** His Summa Theologiae is available online, both Latin and English translation. It has five parts, of which he did the first four in context. Prima Pars (I P) is about God as Creator and about Creation in General. Secunda Pars is really two parts, it is about Human Actions and their principles and that means it is there you find definitions of Sin and Grace. Prima Secundae (I-II) deals with basic principles of human actions, there you find freewill and passions, law and grace and the charismata. Secunda Secundae (II-II) deals with diverse virtues and sins. There you can find definition of Faith, Hope and Charity - as well as of diverse sins against these. Tertia Pars (III P) deals with Incarnation, Redemption, Church and Sacraments. But III P is only the part he completed himself. It includes Baptism, Confirmation and Eucharist, but the general outline of the work is followed up by his disciples in Tertiae Partis Supplementum (III Suppl.), which takes the rest of the Sacraments, and in context with Penance deals also with Indulgences. After the Sacraments it goes on to Eschatology. Its words are his, but taken together from earlier works done on other plans, basically. Each of these five parts - I, I-II, II-II, III, (III) Suppl - is divided into sections not marked in citation but these are subdivided into Quaestiones that are numbered all through such a part. After one quaestio dealing with Theology and Holy Writ you continue counting the Quaestiones about God, as such, as Trinity, as Creator, and after that the numbering continues unbroken for the Quaestiones about Creation (Q 70 is about "The Work of Fourth Day of Creation" for instance), and each Quaestio is subdivided into closely related aspects, known as Articles. Each Article begins with the "Objections" against truth, continues one authority for truth known as "Sed Contra", then comes St Thomas' explanation of the main point in the "In corpore" and then his answers to objections in the final parts known as "Ad 1, ad 2 ..." enumerating the responses to each of the objections in same order.