Author:
Piotr Roszak, Piotr Orlowsky
Location:
Espíritu: ISSN 0014-0716, Year 71, Issue 164, 2022, pages 327-340
Language:
English
Abstract:
According to Aquinas, the appropriate way in which the free will can be induced to act is by presenting it a persuasive good. This is relevant to Christian culture, which introduces the value of argumentation as an effective tool for persuasion. Thomas Aquinas was convinced that one could not be persuaded to believe except by argument, seeing the theology as argumentative. Against later voluntarism, the intellectualist position promotes a culture of persuasion on rationale, from which the tradition of disputation and Summa Theologiae grows. While the first studies of persuasion in the context of Aquinas’s anthropology and the gift of counsel as a persuasive goal-directing gift have appeared, this article will present three ways in which persuasion is present in God, angels and humans.
Key words:
biblical Thomism, apologetics, theory of will, argumentative strategy,
angels.