What is the Tale of Thomas?

- Is it true that at the end of the Day of Judgment, some Christians will abandon their faith and convert to other religions or faiths?
- I could not find an answer to it; please help me with it.

Dear Brother / Sister,

Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) was one of the most important philosophers and theologians of the Middle Ages. He is a highly respected figure in the Catholic Church.

His most famous work, Summa Theologica (The Theological Summing Up), is a fundamental source for the logical defense and explanation of Christian faiths. In this work, he explains the existence of God, the moral responsibilities of man and the order of the universe. He addresses many important religious and philosophical questions by combining Christian beliefs with philosophical thought.

Aquinas blended Aristotle’s philosophy with Christian beliefs and discussed the relationship between reason and faith.

Aquinas was declared a saint by the Catholic Church and was recognized as a Doctor of the Church in 1568. His ideas had a great impact on the Western world from the Middle Ages onwards. Even today, his theological and philosophical ideas are among the cornerstones of religious and philosophical debate.

However, it can be said that Thomas was a defender of TRINITY who, mired in the swamp of medieval scholastic philosophy and who tried to explain the Christian faith with an Aristotelian philosophical doctrine.

In particular, he regarded this doctrine as an indisputable truth and criticized those who disagreed with it. In this context, he criticized the Islamic philosophers Ibn Sina, Ibn Rushd and Imam Ghazali, who, in some ways, expressed ideas in line with the philosophy of Aristoteles. He did this in order to show the fallacy of the intellectuals who tried to reconcile philosophy with Islamic thought and to defend that the religion that should be reconciled was Christian theology.

Thomas Aquinas’s views on Islam were influenced by the limited knowledge and misunderstanding of Islam in the Western world at the time. In terms of ideas, he heard the footsteps of the Crusades and influenced and was influenced by the Western scholarly world in this manner.

It was a period when the Crusades took place, the interactions between Christians and Muslims were intense and those interactions were reflected in the works. Aquinas, who grew up in such an atmosphere, was a thinker who both influenced and was influenced by this period. In particular, in this period when Christians displayed a negative attitude toward Islam or Muslims, the Crusades and the social events that followed were the result of such attitudes.

It is understood from all this that Thomas’s wrong views on Islam stemmed from both the misunderstanding of the period and his advocacy for the trueness of the Christian creed.

It will also be useful to mention the following points here:

a) First of all, the fact that hundreds of thousands of Western scientists today recognize the doctrine of Trinity as false and the belief in tawhid (oneness) as reasonable and true, renders Thomas’s thoughts null and void.

b) It was not possible for Thomas, who was rewarded by the Church with various honors, to break free from the Church’s dominance - known to have been dominant in the Middle Ages - and think objectively.

c) Despite the existence of superstitions in the Bible and the fact that the four different Gospels contradict each other in many places have been revealed for centuries, if a person pretends that these superstitions are supposedly true, ignores the truths of the Quran, which today’s scientific data confirm, and accepts Thomas’ nonsense, he must be insane.

d) Dozens of books have been written, such as “al-Milal wan-Nihal; Izharul-Haqq; al-Yahudiyyah wan-Nasraniyyah”, which show that Christian theology in general is false through scientific and rational evidence though they not directly aimed at refuting his ideas.

Questions on Islam