Write 1500-1800 words responding to the prompt below. Remember to avoid summarizing the material; instead, focus on making an argument that stays very close to the language of the texts, with plentiful evidence. Check that your thesis or argument is deep and specific enough that an intelligent person might argue against it. Include relevant contexts!
The medieval and early modern Christian worlds shared the conviction that humans were created in the image of God, and that a key element of that image was the human capacity of reason. Yet Christians also recognized that natural capacity of reason was constrained, by natural limits and/or by damage due to sin, and that this constraint was remedied by divine help (i.e. grace). Using their writings, compare the stance of two of the following on the capacities and limits of human reason in knowing things about Creation and things about God, and on the kind of help God provided: Thomas Aquinas and Dante Alighieri
It is imperative that you ONLY utilize these two specific sources and translations:
For Thomas Aquinas: The Essential Summa Theologiae: A Reader and Commentary (Second Edition)/ Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt [Publisher- Baker Academic]
For Dante Alighieri: The Divine Comedy/ Translated by Allen Mandelbaum (with Introduction by Eugenio Montale and Notes by Peter Armour) [Publisher- Everyman’s Library]
This paper is for an honors level liberal arts class in college that incoporates the development of western civilizations in the Renaissance and Middle Ages. It discusses philosophical, religious, historical, and literary componets.
