City of God

St. Thomas Aquinas agreed with St. Augustine that Church is necessary to secure eternal good but at the same time, like Aristotle, he believed that the state is necessary to provide the condition for a good life. Thus, Aquinas combine both reason and faith in his ideas which are called scholasticism. He try to integrate revelation with reason. Aquinas believed that the function of a state was to enable humans to lead virtous lives for eternal salvation. However, people cannot achieve salvation without the guidance of church. It is true that man is a social animal and, therefore, state is natural to man but is the church alone which has the universal spiritual authority. According to Aquinas, human beings are guided by four kinds of laws: a)univesal law; b)eternal law; c)natural law; d)human law. Universal law are divine law and, therefore, perfect. In human law, there is a possibility of errors. Therefore, he argued that a secula rule could fuction best only if he rules under the guidance of the Church. The Church being the controlling guide of the state, the Papal authority is superior to temporal authority.