Contra Gentiles
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles
Thomas Aquinas, of the Order of Preachers
Written for men about to walk into a room where nobody grants a word of their book.
- Catch rate
- 10 / 255
- Base research
- 190
- Stat total
- 308
Base stats
Every stat is a checkable fact about the actual book, not a designer's mood. Bars are drawn against the highest value any book reaches.
Why these numbers
The game's own explanation, as a reader sees it in the backpack.
Four books, complete, and written to be carried and used rather than shelved.
It works out what the other person actually grants before it argues, which is why it lands where a proof text would slide off.
Composed for missionary training in thirteenth-century Spain, where every claim in it was going to be tested out loud by somebody who disagreed.
Well known, and still the first thing named when anyone asks how to argue without a shared Bible.
Cited for this book
Book 1, chapter 2 names four audiences and gives each a different starting point according to what it already accepts: the Old Testament with Jews, the New with heretics, and with Muslims and pagans neither — so, reason. On Muhammad the book is far harsher than Timothy I of Baghdad was two centuries earlier, and the difference is worth noticing rather than smoothing over: one man was training missionaries, the other was a guest at the table.
Development
A book develops as it is read — the fragment becomes the work, the work becomes the corpus.
Moves learned
By levelling up. A book that develops keeps what it knew and learns the rest on its new schedule.
| Lv | Move | Type | Cat. | Pwr | Acc | PP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | No Shared Scripture | Rationality | Argument | 75 | 100% | 10 |
| 1 | Random Verse | Bible | Argument | 10 | 100% | 30 |
| 35 | Chapter… | Bible | Scripture | — | — | 12 |
| 39 | The Five Ways | Natural Theology | Argument | 78 | 100% | 10 |
| 42 | Sent in the Power of Arms | History | Argument | 72 | 100% | 10 |
| 44 | Grace Perfects Nature | Rationality | Argument | 68 | 100% | 15 |