Thomas Aquinas His Work, Justice, the State and Taxation

Frecknall-Hughes, Jane and Gribnau, Hans (2025). Thomas Aquinas His Work, Justice, the State and Taxation. In: van Brederode, Robert ed. Christian Perspectives on the Role of the State, Justice, and Taxation. London, UK: Springer Singapore (In press).

Abstract

This chapter examines the work of one of the most important scholars of medieval Europe, namely St Thomas Aquinas, whose work became fundamental to the development of Roman Catholic doctrine. He was canonised in 1323 by Pope John XXII, declared a ‘Doctor of the Church’ by Pope Pius V in 1567; and in 1879, Pope Leo XIII decreed Aquinas’s work to be the epitome of Catholic religious thought – and Aquinas was made patron of all Catholic educational institutions in 1880. He remains to this day one of the most significant Western thinkers whose reach has been enormous.
Heavily influenced by the use of scholastic techniques arising from the rediscovery of ancient philosophy texts, notably those of Aristotle, Aquinas’s extensive writings show a man conveying the teachings of Christian theology through an Aristotelian lens, to cover all aspects of human activity, with the Summa Theologia being his best-known work. Essentially, his aim was to operationalise and distil (often arcane) theology into thoughts and actions with which his contemporaries and later generations could engage, hence his work is very wide-ranging. A chapter of this length cannot do justice to the full extent of his work, the meaning of much of which remains hotly debated by religious scholars and philosophers. Here we consider especially the political context of his life and times and his thoughts on morality and happiness, which he regarded as the ultimate aim of human life, in the context of the role of the state, justice and taxation.

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