Nature and Grace: Selections from the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas

In this volume we have sought to present the view taken by Thomas Aquinas of the moral and spiritual world in which we live, and of the conditions of man??s self-realization which are consequent upon it. The final end of man lies in God, through whom alone he is and lives, and by whose help alone he can attain his end. The teaching of Aquinas concerning the moral and spiritual order stands in sharp contrast to all views, ancient or modern, which cannot do justice to the difference between the divine and the creaturely without appearing to regard them as essentially antagonistic as well as discontinuous. For Aquinas, no such opposition obtains between God and the world which he has made. Any evil which disrupts the continuity of the context of human endeavour after self-realization in God is due to corruption, not to nature, and such corruption is never absolute.