Some philosophers have concluded that a philosopher can only perceive truth through the creation of a consciousness that precedes his or her own feelings. He must create «pure consciousness» before he can perceive the world, and thus he will gain access to the essence of things or knowledge about it. With a pure consciousness, a Christian can see what the Lord has seen, and he can become the unique being that God created him to be. Christian mysticism views nature as a living being created by the hand of God; without the power of Christ, nature is considered a meaningless mass of material.
Comparing this with Thomas Aquinas, it becomes obvious that he distinguishes his ideas from those of Plato and Aristotle. His concepts can be summarized as follows: «Faith, not reason, determines what can be cognized, and reason determines what cannot be cognized.»
Thomas was not aware of the various philosophical doctrines that developed after his death, it is more likely that he tried to synthesize different ideas and developed his own.
Thomas Aquinas in his work «Sum against the Gentiles» noted that although God is the only possible reason to believe in His existence, a person can perceive and know the existence of God through other reasons (namely, experience and logic) … In many cases, these «alternative causes» are obvious only to those who are not in the immediate presence of the object in question.
Later, Thomas developed and expanded these ideas in his later works to such an extent that they turned out to be his own ideas, rather than the ideas of the ancient philosophers with whom he was inspired.
In Christianity, Augustine Hippopotamus created his own theory of knowledge based on reason and experience. Augustine believed that the world is a single organism, and all things are products of one essence – God. Augustine believed that the intellect of God is active and separate from the physical intellect of the world; physical intelligence could only comprehend the world through experience. Using this concept, Augustine wrote that an ignorant person cannot have true knowledge of the world, but can only gain imperfect knowledge given to him through experience. An example of this would be if an ignorant person describes his experience with a tree; the knowledge of God will be expanded through real experience.
Augustine taught that for true knowledge of the world it is necessary to know the place, qualities and characteristics of various things in the world, but this knowledge was often very difficult to obtain. Augustine believed that nature should be greater than physical; it had to be experienced spiritually and immaterially. In his City of God, Augustine expands on his ideas about knowledge by saying that one must receive revelation through faith in Jesus Christ in order to truly know the nature of God. Augustine also noted that a person’s relationship with God is a relationship of love, not commitment.
Augustine believed that the true knowledge of the Lord was superior to any other knowledge, and that his knowledge was separate from the knowledge of other people. This was similar to Aristotle’s belief that human knowledge in nature was very limited because the human mind had not fully developed its potential.
Augustine also wrote that any true knowledge of the nature of God or the meaning of life comes to man through faith in Jesus Christ. Augustine also created his own cosmological system of the universe, in which he believed that the earth and all other natural objects are a physical manifestation of the divine. To truly understand the universe or the true meaning of life, you need to have faith in Jesus Christ and salvation.
