Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274 A.D.)

Philosopher

By Richard E. Noble

Now here is a guy who is a real study. He was a military brat of the thirteenth century. His dad was a descendent of the Lombard kings and a nephew to the Holy Roman Emperor. All of his brothers were Army men.
Thomas was a big brute of a guy, with a rather large head to match his rather large belly. He was said to be as big as an ox, and because of his propensity to silence and thoughtful contemplation he was labeled by his classmates to be not only as big as an ox but as dumb as one also. He didn't want to be a soldier and consequently kept running away from home. His dad finally had a couple of his brothers capture him on one escape attempt and lock him up in the tower of their castle. They tried to reason with him but from their point of view he was not one who could be "reasoned" with.
His parents had doubts about his manhood. He didn't want to fight and kill like all the other boys and he didn't play with the girls either. So his mother picked out the prettiest girl of the realm and sent her up to his room in the tower. Tommy flipped out and chased her away with a burning log from the fire place, calling her bad names and accusing her of being a seductress of the Devil.
Finally they gave up on little Tommy and he went skipping off to the seminary.
After years of study, debate and quiet contemplation he decided to prove once and for all to even the infidels of the world that God existed, and that His existence could be proved with logic, reason and common sense. He set down his five rational proofs for the existence of God in his Summa Theologica, along with a good deal more.
His five proofs of the existence of God remain today as the logical foundation stones of all faiths. If anyone gives you any rational explanation for the existence of God even today, it can be traced back to one of the five proofs of the rational existence of God proposed by Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century.
So there you have it. The leading historical thinker and defender of a rational explanation for the existence of God, the foundation stone of all faiths, was an unreasonable, oversized, little rich boy who was the butt of his classmates jokes and jibes, a boy of dubious sexuality who ran away from home in order to avoid the 'draft'.
Well go figure, huh?