revelation. A person operating without divine revelation could logically conclude that the world had always existed. Silence Early in his career as a master, Thomas began a number of summaries of Christian doctrine: the Summa contra Gentiles, the Compendium of Theology, and his most famous work, the Summa Theologica. He completed only the first of these. At first, Thomas wrote his works with his own hand. His writing suggests someone left-handed, writing in great haste in the Latin shorthand of the time. Thomas’s