Contra Gentiles

Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles

Thomas Aquinas, of the Order of Preachers

Written for men about to walk into a room where nobody grants a word of their book.

Catch rate: 51 / 255
Base research: 190
Stat total: 360

Base stats

Every stat is a checkable fact about the actual book, not a designer's mood. Bars are drawn against the highest value any book reaches.

Stamina90

Contend96

Defend90

Popularity84

Total360

Why these numbers

The game's own explanation, as a reader sees it in the backpack.

Stamina 90

High. Four complete books, written to be carried and used, not shelved.

Contend 96

High. It works out what the other person already grants before it argues, which is why it lands where a proof text would slide off.

Defend 90

Composed for missionary training in thirteenth-century Spain, where every claim in it was going to be tested out loud by somebody who disagreed.

Popularity 84

Well known, and still the first thing named when anyone asks how to argue without a shared Bible.

Cited for this book

In Book 1, Aquinas names four audiences and starts from what each already accepts: the Old Testament with Jews, the New Testament with heretics, and reason with Muslims and pagans. He is much harsher on Muhammad than Timothy I of Baghdad had been. One was training missionaries; the other had been a guest at the caliph’s table.

Development

A book develops as it is read — the fragment becomes the work, the work becomes the corpus.

Contra Gentiles→
Lv 40

Thomas’ Corpus

Moves learned

By levelling up. A book that develops keeps what it knew and learns the rest on its new schedule.

Lv	Move	Type	Cat.	Pwr	Acc	PP
1	No Shared Scripture	Rationality	Argument	75	100%	10
1	Random Verse	Bible	Argument	10	100%	30
1	Chapter…	Bible	Scripture	—	—	12
39	The Five Ways	Natural Theology	Argument	78	100%	10
42	Sent in the Power of Arms	History	Argument	72	100%	10
44	Grace Perfects Nature	Rationality	Argument	68	100%	15
49	Affirm	—	Status	—	—	1
50	Speak Latin	History	Status	—	100%	5
50	Rest	Spirituality	Rest	—	100%	5

The quotes behind its moves

How to read these. In Scholar’s Dream, books argue with each other. Each thing a book can do in a debate is a move, and most moves carry a real quotation — the words the book puts on the table when it uses that move.

Strong against lists the opposing books and arguments a move was written to answer. Used against one of them, it hits much harder than usual: ×2 means twice the normal force, ×4 four times. It is the game’s way of saying: this is the sentence that answers that argument. Open an entry to read why.

“…some of them, like the Mohammedans and pagans, do not agree with us as to the authority of any Scripture whereby they may be convinced, in the same way as we are able to dispute with the Jews by means of the Old Testament, and with heretics by means of the New: whereas the former accept neither. Wherefore it is necessary to have recourse to natural reason, to which all are compelled to assent.”
Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles 1.2 (trans. English Dominican Fathers, 1924, public domain). (trimmed quote)public domain

No Shared Scripture

RationalityArgument · power 75 · 100% accurate

In the gameWork out what the other person actually grants before arguing. Where no book is held in common, the only ground left is reason — so start there.

Strong against

×2.5The Triumph of the Crossa book · why?

Savonarola wrote the Triumph of the Cross to do for his age what Aquinas’s Contra Gentiles did for the Middle Ages. This is Aquinas’s own opening move.

×2.5The Two Truthsan argument · why?

No Scripture is held in common here — so Aquinas starts exactly where this debate actually is.

“The existence of God can be proved in five ways. The first and more manifest way is the argument from motion… it is necessary to arrive at a first mover, put in motion by no other; and this everyone understands to be God.”
Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q.2, a.3 (trans. English Dominican Fathers, public domain). (trimmed quote)public domain

“There is no case known… in which a thing is found to be the efficient cause of itself… Therefore it is necessary to admit a first efficient cause, to which everyone gives the name of God.”
Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q.2, a.3, the second way (trans. English Dominican Fathers, public domain). (trimmed quote)public domain

“Therefore we cannot but postulate the existence of some being having of itself its own necessity, and not receiving it from another… This all men speak of as God.”
Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q.2, a.3, the third way, from contingency (trans. English Dominican Fathers, public domain). (trimmed quote)public domain

The Five Ways

Natural TheologyArgument · power 78 · 100% accurate

In the gameFive arguments that start from things anyone can see — motion, cause, contingency — and walk to the same place. The move draws one of them.

Strong against

×3Why I Am Not a Christianan argument · why?

Russell attacks "everything must have a cause." Aquinas never wrote that. The Second Way is that nothing can be the efficient cause of itself — a different claim, and the one he walked past. The reader carried the real arguments out of the Philosopher’s Hall.

×2The Possible and the Necessaryan argument · why?

Aquinas builds the same argument from possibility and necessity — and then spends the rest of the book arguing that what it arrives at is one, simple, good, and provident, which is most of the way to the God actually worshiped.

×2The Two Truthsan argument · why?

Aquinas held that faith and reason cannot truly contradict, because God is the source of both. His Five Ways reach God by reason alone, with no need for a second truth.

“Nor did he add any signs of supernatural agency, which alone are a fitting witness to divine inspiration… but he asserted that he was sent in the power of arms, a sign that is not lacking even to robbers and tyrants.”
Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles 1.6 (trans. English Dominican Fathers, 1924, public domain). (trimmed quote.) Written to train Dominican missionaries, and far harsher than Timothy I of Baghdad was in 781 — compare Signs and Miracles.public domain

“Hence by a cunning device, he did not commit the reading of the Old and New Testament Books to his followers, lest he should thereby be convicted of falsehood.”
Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles 1.6 (trans. English Dominican Fathers, 1924, public domain). The charge is that the claim was kept away from the documents that would test it — which is the one habit this whole game is built on.public domain

Sent in the Power of Arms

HistoryArgument · power 72 · 100% accurate

In the gameAsk what attested the claim. Aquinas has just argued that the faith spread while promising its converts nothing but hardship, and sets the comparison against that.

Strong against

×2The Triumph of the Crossa book · why?

Savonarola followed the plan of Aquinas’s Contra Gentiles, and this is one of its arguments.

“Since therefore grace does not destroy nature but perfects it, natural reason should minister to faith as the natural bent of the will ministers to charity.”
Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q.1, a.8 (trans. English Dominican Fathers, public domain). Close to a thesis statement for the whole faith-and-reason tradition.public domain

Grace Perfects Nature

RationalityArgument · power 68 · 100% accurate

In the gameReason is not faith’s rival and not its replacement — it is the thing faith takes up and uses. The book’s own Defend may rise as it says so.

Strong against

×2.5Platoa book · why?

Nobody here says Plato was wrong. The claim is that he was unfinished, and that what he was reaching for came down and finished it.

“For in him we live, and move, and have our being. As some of your own poets have said.”
Acts 17:28 (WEB) — Paul at the Areopagus, quoting the Athenians’ own poets back to them.

Affirm

Status

In the gamePick the part of the opponent’s case that is true and affirm it. That point can no longer be used against you, and the opponent’s Defend falls sharply. It deals no damage. Affirm something false and you have only agreed with an error.

“…the will is made actual by the appetible object, which stills the movement of its desire. And the will’s desire is satisfied by the divine good alone as its last end.”
Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles 3.88 (trans. English Dominican Fathers, 1928, public domain). (trimmed quote)public domain

Rest

SpiritualityRest · 100% accurate

In the gameBreak off and rest. Stamina is restored in full and any trouble is slept off, but the book is then ASLEEP for a turn (two turns, one time in five) while the other side does as it likes.