"Aquinas's Search for God:
Faith Meets
Philosophy"
When Philosophy is used in the service of Theology, wrote St. Thomas
Aquinas in
the 13th century, "water is turned into wine." An important strand of
the
Christian tradition turns the discerning and sometimes critical eye of
reason
toward the mysteries of faith. For some, this examination occasions
strong
objections to traditional understandings of whether God is and what God
is. For
others like Aquinas, rational inquiry is but a way of continuing the
journey
towards God, a desire of the understanding to lovingly embrace the truths
of
faith. The meeting place between theological thought and philosophical
reflection is where this course takes place. We shall orient our focus
around
the writings of Aquinas, one of the great minds of history and a man
proclaimed
by numerous popes "The Universal Doctor of the Church" and celebrated
most recently in Pope John Paul II's encyclical, 
