Theology Assignment: St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica

I. Identify the author/text for citations below (1 point each; 25 points total).
II. For 10 of them, briefly explain a) the central point being made in the excerpt itself, and b) its relationship to the larger argument made in the text from which it comes (5 points each; 50 points total).
1. I answer that it was necessary for the salvation of man that certain truths which exceed human reason should be made known to him by divine revelation. Even as regards those truths about God which human reason could have discovered, it was necessary that man should be taught by divine revelation; because the truth about God such as reason could discover, would be only known by a few, and after a long time, with the admixture of many errors.
St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica
2. I know that You are my God. For You are not, You cannot be the God of those whose deeds are the most horrific proof of their militant godlessness.
* This excerpt just shows how man should submit himself to God. In relation to the main text Summa Theologica, the importance of man’s submission to God is evident in the cycle of topics the which is the existence of God, creation, Purpose of man, etc.
Zvi Kolitz, “Yosl Rakover Talks to God”
3. I began to realize that the most profound wisdom of man is preserved in the answers given by faith, and that I did not have the right to negate them on grounds of reason and, above all, that it is these answers alone that can reply to the question of life.
Leo Tolstoy A Confession and Other Religious Writings
4. Despite the loftiness of the Torah and its great importance, it is not God’s only trustworthy source…but He has two other sources of knowledge for us. The first precedes this Book and the other succeeds it. The one that precedes is it intuitive knowledge…The one succeeding it is the knowledge transmitted by God’s messengers.
Saadia Ha-Gaon, Introduction to the Pentateuch Commentary
5. In the Christian and Jewish narrative of creation, God makes humans in his own image. Immigration cannot be discussed and debated only in the abstract, as it is ultimately about individual people, created in God’s image, who are immigrants. Each of these immigrants has value to God and to people who value what God has created.
Illegal Immigration: Seeking a Christian Perspective by Rev. Dr. Mark D. Roberts
6. In fact, [Thurmans’ grandmother’s] aural contact with the Bible left her free to criticize and reject those portions and interpretations of the Bible that she felt insulted her innate sense of dignity as an African, a woman, and a human being, and free to cling to those that she viewed as offering her inspiration as an enslaved woman and that portrayed, in her estimation, a God worth believing in.
Stony the Road We Trod: African American Biblical Interpretation by Cain Hope Felder
7. If the Catholic Church is truly to be a “church for the poor” in the United States, it must elevate the issue of poverty to the very top of its political agenda, establishing poverty alongside abortion as the pre-eminent moral issues the Catholic community pursues at this moment in our nation’s history.
* The main point of this excerp...