First Things RSS Feed - Michael Nolan https://www.firstthings.com/author/michael-nolan en-us Copyright 2025 First Things. All Rights Reserved. ft@firstthings.com (The Editors) ft@firstthings.com (The Editors) Mon, 20 Jan 2025 16:56:50 -0500 https://d2201k5v4hmrsv.cloudfront.net/img/favicon-196.png First Things RSS Feed Image https://www.firstthings.com/rss/author/michael-nolan 60 What Aquinas Never Said About Women https://www.firstthings.com/article/1998/11/what-aquinas-never-said-about-women https://www.firstthings.com/article/1998/11/what-aquinas-never-said-about-women Sun, 01 Nov 1998 00:00:00 -0500 If the first casualty of war is the unwelcome truth, the first tool of the discontented is the welcome lie. Such lies cluster freely around Thomas Aquinas. Here I want to engage two frequently encountered in feminist literature: that he claims women are defective males and that he claims that the male human embryo receives a rational soul earlier than does the female. Aquinas nowhere makes the second claim, and as for the first, not only does he not assert it, he denies it no fewer than six times.

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]]> The Myth of Soulless Women https://www.firstthings.com/article/1997/04/the-myth-of-soulless-women https://www.firstthings.com/article/1997/04/the-myth-of-soulless-women Tue, 01 Apr 1997 00:00:00 -0500 Josh Billings remarked profoundly that “the trouble with people is not that they don’t know but that they know so much as ain’t so.” There are those who know John Chrysostom said that “the image of God is not found in Woman.” (Actually, he said that “the image of God is not found in Man or Woman.”) There are those who know that Thomas Aquinas said that a woman is a defective male. (Actually, he explicitly denies this no fewer than five times.) There are those who know that Aristotle said that a woman is a deficient male—a description based on an appalling mistranslation.

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