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Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Theology and Non-western Philosophy Scholastic Theology and Non-Western Philosophy: the work of Thomas Aquinas ============================================================================= Western Christian Scholasticism bears testimony to a substantial engagement between Christian thinkers and non-Western philosophy in the mediaeval period.

The mediaeval West was surrounded by what Marshall Hodgson has referred to as the ‘Islamicate,’ Muslim dominated territories, but where there were Jewish, Christian as well as Muslim philosophers active.[^9] Western Christian scholastics knew and used Muslim and Jewish commentaries on and adaptations of the works of Greek philosophy, as well as independently composed Jewish and Muslim philosophical and theological treatises.

Christian scholastics were able to regard Jewish and Muslim thinkers as having something intelligible and useful to say about the fundamental themes of God, creation and human nature, even though Christian attitudes towards Judaism and Islam at that time were routinely very negative and condemnatory.

It was, after all, a period that witnessed both crusades against Islam and persecutions of Jews.[^10] The most influential of all Christian scholastics, Thomas Aquinas, was remarkable for the extent to which he used Jewish and Islamic philosophy and for the respect and courtesy he showed his sources. Aquinas makes reference in his works to Muslim thinkers such as Avicenna (Ibn Sina, d.

1037.and Averroes (Ibn Rushd, d.1198), to Jewish thinkers such as Moses Maimonides (1138-1204), as well as to the Liber de Causis , a Latin work of considerable importance in the Christian West based on an Arabic reworking of Proclus, ( Kitab al Khair , The Book of Pure Goodness ), on which Thomas wrote a commentary at the end of his life.[^11] Their philosophy exercises a considerable and positive influence on the development of his theology throughout the whole course of his work.

Sacra Doctrina and the Relationship of Faith and Reason What account, then, does Aquinas himself give of the relationship between theology and non-Western philosophy?

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