The Nature of Marriage in the Doctrine of Santo Tomás
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This paper is the product of the direct study of those works of St. Thomas that deal with the nature of marriage. In the Introduction the author draws attention to the fact that the best way of getting to know and of interpreting St. Thomas' teaching on marriage is by making a direct comparative study of alL the works in which he considers the subject. The author begins with the three main aspects of marriage as considered by Aquinas: its essence, its cause and its effect («in matrimonio est tria considerare. Primo, essentiam ipsius, quae est coniunctio… Secundo, causam eius, quae est desponsatio… Tertio, effectum, qui est proles». Summa Theologiae, Suppl., q. 44, a.2), and develops his argument with the consideration of five fundamental points: marriage as an institution of Natural Law; as a sacrament; its essence; its ends and its essential properties; the essence of marriage and consent. It is worth while drawing attention to an interesting feature of the present study, which is that it achieves a synthesis of the Thomistic teaching on marriage that, without being false to the genuine thinking of St. Thomas, which must naturally be linked to historical circumstances different from ours, is mindful of the more recent problems that have arisen from present-day thinking on marriage. Special attention is given, for example, to the relationships between love and the essence of marriage in St. Thomas, and a link is indicated between love and the ends and the essential properties (unity and indissolubility). In this way the richness of the Thomistic teaching is harnessed to deal with the doctrinal problems that are current nowadays, which have not always been considered with the pro foundness necessary in a question of such importance as marriage.
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