Thomas Aquinas

Thomas Aquinas was a religious scholar whose history in the classical liberal arts curriculum, and life during the 1200s, informed a new view of knowledge. With the introduction of Greek and Arabic texts and increased beliefs in natural versus omnipotent knowledge, Aquinas sought a balance between religious reasoning and secular science. He is noted for his acceptance of Aristotelian philosophy. Although he disagreed with Aristotle on certain ideologies, Aquinas valued Aristotle’s intellectual reasoning. Aquinas spent his life bridging the religious and secular intellectual divide and eventually built a pedagogy that merged the two constructs. Aquinas believed that learners possess natural knowledge that is ignited through questioning. By intensifying the common model of reading texts, group discussion, and dialogue of ideas, Aquinas sought a deeper pedagogy where both the student and teacher posited questions that both formed and informed the learning experience. He summarized his ideas in the Summa Theologica.