What is the relation of faith, wisdom, and reason according to Aquinas?.
Thomas Aquinas' purpose in the Summa Contra Gentiles is to prove the existence of God as well as explain why Christianity is the only correct faith. He also explains why there is faith and why God cannot be fully explained and revealed by man. Unfortunately, he is a product of his time and uses the scientific knowledge (or lack thereof) to advance his arguments.
He asserts in chapter two that "of all human pursuits, that of wisdom is the most perfect, the most sublime, the most profitable, the most delightful.""(pg3) and that through wisdom we can be united with God. Though no matter how wise we are or what natural reason can explain, we can never fully know or explain God, "For certain things that are true about God wholly surpass the capability of human reason -(pg5) and that because for a man to understand something he must understand its essence as well as what it is, but it is impossible to understand Gods' essence "the human intellect is incapable by its natural power of attaining to the comprehension of His essence-(pg5). Aquinas does make it very clear that faith, is as important, possibly more important then reason and wisdom "a man would be exceedingly foolish, were he to suspect of falsehood the things revealed by God through the ministry of His angels, because they cannot be the object of reason's investigations.""(pg6). .
The most complete way to know God is to know as much through reason as can be acknowledged through faith about God. But the problem with reason and wisdom is that they take man years to master and the populace cannot concern themselves with only learning, therefore faith is the only other way that people can know about God without having to spend all their time studying becoming philosophers. "even some things which reason is able to investigate must be held by faith; so that all may share in the knowledge of God easily, and without doubt or error.
