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Thomas's reference to Anselm is in a discussion in which he argues that 'God exists' is not a self-evident truth. At first blush, this seems incompatible with his other view that knowledge of God is natural, easily had, widely shared, kind of unavoidable. There is no incompatibility because the latter claim, that knowledge of God is natural, means that men easily make the requisite inference as, e.g., from the order in the world.
Does not the burden of proof then fall on the shoulders of the skeptic? Yes. And the skeptic is the first to admit this-or at least to exemplify it. I would hazard the view that more attention is paid to theism, religious belief, the existence of God, as a problem to be dealt with, as something that is an intellectual task, by the skeptic than by the believer. I have met many more militant skeptics than I have believers who look as if they were going to toss and turn all night unless they developed an airtight proof for the existence of God.
The Thomist distinguishes rigorously between theism and Christianity in terms of the distinction between praeambula fidei and mysteria fidei. The preambles of faith are truths about God which happen to have been revealed but which had been discovered, independently of revelation, by the pagan philosophers. Theism, call it natural theology, establishes truths about God on the basis of other truths which are accessible in principle to any human being. Mysteries of faith, on the contrary, are truths about God which cannot be established as such by grounding them in or deriving them from what anyone knows.
This distinction would seem to imply that even if the best conceivable results were obtained on the level of theism, this would do nothing to establish the truth of the mysteries of faith, precisely those truths which are the heart and soul of Christianity, viz. that Jesus is both human and divine, that there is a Trinity of persons in the one divine nature, that we are called to an eternity of blissful union with God, etc. The distinction between nature and grace, between the natural use of human reason and reasoning which is aided by grace and revelation, makes it clear that while Thomas holds that theism is natural and relatively easily attained, he does not regard this as making the further step into Christian belief as a continuation of the same sort of thinking.
It is, of course, within the ambiance of his own religious faith that Thomas makes such distinctions, just as it is in reflecting on revealed truths and on what philosophers have accomplished that he distinguishes the preambles from the mysteries. Given the distinction, there would be no way in the world that the believer can respond to the nonbeliever's demand that he show that the central truths of Christianity are true. Current day skeptics doubtless think that theism is in every bit as much trouble as Christian mysteries and thus that the distinction does not make much difference.
Indeed, the skeptic might well say to me that my suggestion that the burden of disproof is on him in the case of theism should lead me to the same claim with respect to Christian mysteries. That is, he might say, an awful lot of people over the last two thousand years and an awful lot of people today are Christians. Do I accordingly think that it is natural to be a Christian and that until proven otherwise Christianity ought to be accepted as true?
Of course the parallel does not hold. It is the Christian who makes the distinction. St. Paul says that the misbehaving Romans are inexcusable because they can come to knowledge of the invisible things of God from what God has made. Just as men have a law written in their hearts which is not identical with the law of the Gospel. It is the Christian who insists that it is only thanks to the grace of Christ that he has accepted the word of God.
It might seem that the believer would have no particular interest in theism. From the point of view of the fullness of revelation the truths about God men could learn on their own are few in number and relatively exiguous. There are several reasons why someone like Thomas Aquinas exhibits such an interest, but let me stress only one here, the one which enables him to formulate an argument for the reasonableness of belief.
The truths of faith, the mysteries, are truths about God whose truth cannot be established by natural reason. (Nor can their falsity.) Does this mean that Thomas is a fideist if by fideist we mean one who holds that nothing we know counts either for or against Christianity? No, because Thomas has devised proofs on behalf of the claim that it is reasonable to accept as true propositions whose truths we cannot now comprehend. And one of those arguments makes use of the preambles of faith.
It is not that preambles of faith provide premises from which mysteries of faith could be concluded to be true. That would of course erase the difference between preambles and mysteries. The argument is rather this. If some of the truths about himself that God has revealed can be known to be true (the preambles), it is reasonable to hold that all the rest (the mysteries) are true. It is that argument, and its far reaching implications, that explains the historic interest of Christian believers in theism and natural theology. If theism is accepted by the non-believer, he has one less obstacle to accepting the grace of faith. The believer believes on the basis of Romans 1:19, and the Roman Catholic on the basis of Vatican I, that men can come to knowledge of God by natural reason. The believer does not need such proofs. He does not fret when relevant objections are brought against his own efforts to formulate one. He will return to the task, not to shore up his own faith and certainly not in search of something that will argue another irresistibly into the faith. There is only one way to come to believe.
This is why, in discussions with skeptics, the believer confines himself to philosophical theism. His aim is not to triumph, to crush, to embarrass, even simply to succeed, since success in natural theology has such an oblique relation to what is truly important, that all men recognize and accept the pearl of great price. If there is something that makes the believer toss and turn it is the thought that he might become an impediment to another's acceptance of the gift of faith.

My position is solid, you gave no real response, you remain defeated because you refuse to explain why God does not exist. It takes alot more faith to accept a flat-earthism concept of an osscilating universe than it does the existence of a Creator. I am still waiting for you to provide one reliable astro-physicist that accepts it, something else you ran away from and started a new thread over.

[/quote]Quote: PASTORAL CONSTITUTION ON THE CHURCH IN THE MODERN WORLD
GAUDIUM ET SPES
CHAPTER I THE DIGNITY OF THE HUMAN PERSON
15, 19, 20, 21, 22
http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_...et-spes_en.html

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yet more fallacies: ad hominem, confirmation bias, appeal to faith, argument from authority.

This is not a reply whatsoever.

See my first paragraph. Don't pretend you read this one. The dignity of the human person is a reality, not some airy principle.

Truth has no bias, or it wouldn’t stand on its own merits.
1) On Whose Authority does the Catholic Church make infallible proclamations?

2) Is the killing of innocent unborn human life moral?