After having overcome the family opposition, it joined Cologne then Paris, where it studies under the direction of Albert the Large one. This famous German theologist, whose appetite of reading could be used as model to the character of Pantagruel, showed to the young Thomas brother all that the Christian thought could and was retain of philosophies Greek and Arab.  

Consequently, the life of Thomas will merge with his work and its teaching, in Paris, then in Rome and Naples. Its formation dedicated it to fight on two faces: on the one hand, against the Augustinian ones, disciples of Augustin saint, for whom philosophy gréco-Arabic introduced paganism into the Christian thought; other, against the averroïstes, for which philosophy was identified with the positions of the famous Arab philosopher Averroès. Its knowledge of Greek theology had made it choose as expert for the council of Lyon, during which was to be tried a bringing together with the Church of the East; but he died at the time of the voyage which was to lead to it, in 1274.  
 

Wisdom and theology
The intelligence is thus at the same time active and passive. Passivate, because if it modified what it knows, it would fall into the error. The demonstration must start from assertions which result from reality. But the intelligence is also active, because it must - and it is the major stage of the abstraction - draw the understandable one from the sensitive one, which contains it only virtually. This abstraction makes it possible to rise, starting from the experiment, with science and wisdom. Like science, wisdom is conclusive. But what it has moreover, it is that it examines the starting points of the demonstration, either by simple intuition, or by setting in contradiction of the unfavourable opinions, or by reference to the divine revelation. There are thus a natural or philosophical wisdom, and a wisdom based on the faith. One can be astonished that theology is a science, since it leaves not obvious assertions, but of the faith. However theology is a science only because it is based not simply on the faith, but on the divine science which appears in this one.  

Contents of the faith
The faith is not indeed an arbitrary decision in favor of opinions probable or reassuring, but the obligatory response of the man to the act by which God appears with him. Its contents could not be probable or attractive, because it exceeds the natural capacities of the man and can be accepted only because of confidence that this one, mû by a supernatural attraction, puts as a God. On the other hand, this confidence is not optional, because the reason can show that God exists, that it appears in the Bible. The confidence put in this teaching, because it rests on rational preconditions, is thus not an act of lightness: to believe is primarily a intellectual act, but where confidence as a God, volunteer and reflected, holds place of demonstration. The contents of the faith understandable and are thus expressed in conceptual terms by at the same time divine and human word of the revelation. But, as any knowledge have as a term reality, the faith and philosophy aim at same God and could not contradict itself.  
 
The simplicity of God

When the thought rises consideration of the beings sensitive to that of God, in particular by one of the five ways which make it possible to prove its existence, it is manifest for him that God is absolutely necessary, that it is a pure and absolutely simple act. As had affirmed it Aristote, God is an intelligence which does only one with its object, an absolute good which puts the Universe moving while attracting very at him. Because God is absolutely simple, its attributes are characterized only by the reason.  

God, causes existence of the Universe
However, God is not only the engine of the Universe, it is the creator: the Universe is produced by an action of God, who has the characteristic not to suppose a preexistent material. Thomas d' Aquin, exceeding Aristote consciously, claims to show rationally that God is cause of the existence of the Universe, and not only of its organization. Moreover, God is cause free, because it is intelligent and is not determined by a being higher than him.  

Creation
Only the assertion of a temporal beginning of the world concerns the faith properly, because this beginning is a stage in the history of the love of god for the man. The assertion of creation is in the center of the thought of saint Thomas d' Aquin. Philosophically, it implies that to exist is an act - the first of the acts - which has its ultimate source in the will in love with God. Théologiquement, the redemption is articulated on the creation, of which it is completion, contrary to the Augustinian vision, where God does nothing but extract some from the mass of perdition. Spiritually, charity - friendship of the man for God - is based on the consideration of the love that God has for us and whose our simple existence is constant testimony.  

Freedom and grace
The ingratitude not less constant of the man with regard to this testimony makes necessary the redemption, or release with regard to the sin. But if God were useful himself, to release the man, of the sin who had controlled it and in particular horrible crime by which incarnated wisdom was nailed on the Cross, the safety of the man is not reduced to an answer to the sin. The wisdom of God, who had created the Universe, clarifies the intelligence of the man and attracts his will towards God. In spite of the refusal of the man and thanks to the mercy of God, creation is carried to its completion: the transformation of the man into a God, whose ultimate means will be the sacrament of the eucharistie. It is seen that if the man can be saved only by God, still must it accept this safety and love its creator deliberately. This is why those which “are not elected” to be saved keep all the responsibility for it: for Thomas d' Aquin, the main cause of the failure to the grace comes from us. The design thomist of freedom and the grace, sometimes deformed by the commentators, will be called into question by the theologists Jesuits to the XVI E century.  
 

The unit of the man
From where the vigorous assertion of the unit of the man. The heart and the body are not two things, but two parts of the same thing: the man. Still the body is an human body only thanks to the heart which organizes it as tel. Thomas d' Aquin also rejects any division of the heart: it is the intelligence which is the “shape” of the body, and this is why, private of the body by death, the heart keeps a tendency to inform a body that God alone can satisfy by resurrection.  The immortality of the heart is thus philosophically demonstrable, but body death, punishment of the sin, are a state against-nature where the man is mutilated of an essential part of itself. It is understood why Thomas d' Aquin, recognizing all his place with the animality in the man, makes significant knowledge the starting point of any human knowledge.  

Virtues
However the man, intelligent animal, have as a character clean to have to be sophisticated by education. It carries out a really human life only by the culture, its intelligence being able to develop only by the language and in the company. This culture testifies to its destination to wisdom and allows him to acquire the virtues. From the point of view of the individual, the culture can be identified with the acquisition of the intellectual virtues and morals. But, this training not being possible that thanks to others, civilization is a common work which appears by the economic life and, especially, by the political life. Those, like it understood Plato and Aristote well, must be entirely subjected to the morals, which itself is dominated by the major vocation of the man to be assimilated to eternal wisdom.  

Charity
It is the direction of the thesis: charity forms virtues. All the value of our existence makes a point in the capacity of our decisions of bringing us closer well to the sovereign, who is God. The natural attraction of all to be towards God however finds his perfect satisfaction only in charity, friendship personal, of a supernatural nature (theological), of the man for God. Is this to say that the unbelievers are immoral? The refusal of the revelation is immoral because irrational, but simple ignorance is not guilty, and obedience with the good such as the reason defines it can then be regarded as an implicit act of charity. Thus, the morals of the love, far from condemning passions, seeks to put the man in a virtuous state where its passions as its actions will attest that it is with the image of God as much by his intelligent nature that by his usual answer to the attraction of the good.

Vis-a-vis a modern thought for which the man is not able to reach truth and the quite absolute ones, the thomists invite us today to rehabilitate the man as a God.

Posterity of Thomas d' Aquin

The limpidity and the rigor of the speech of Thomas saint contrast with the confusion and the darkness of the opinions which are allotted to him by its partisans or its adversaries. In spite of the efforts of the current neothomist and the political impact considerable of ideal “the personalist”, stated by the French thomist Jacques Maritain in 1934, the thought of Thomas d' Aquin, betrayed by its commentators, falsified by its detractors, still remains, for much, to discover.

Its works

- 1256-1259 Of the truth  
- 1258-1264 Summon against the nice ones.  
- 1259-1268 Of the power of God.  
- 1266-1273 Summon theology
- 1269-1272 Of the virtues.  
 - (not dated) Of the heart  
 - (not dated) Of the evil