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Augustine presented the idea of the 'City of God' versus the 'City of Man', emphasizing the superiority of the church. Aquinas held a more nuanced view, teaching that the state, while distinct from the church, also has a divine purpose and the two can work in harmony.

Augustine believed in divine illumination as the source of truth and knowledge, contrasting with Aquinas’s position that knowledge originates through the senses and is abstracted by the intellect, with divine grace complementing natural reason.

Augustine emphasized predestination and the necessity of divine grace for salvation, often highlighting the weakness of human free will. Aquinas balanced human free will with divine grace, suggesting that while grace is essential, human beings can cooperate with it.

Augustine’s moral theory is based on love (caritas) and the will, influenced by Christian doctrine. Aquinas, while also incorporating Christian ethics, presented a more systematic virtue ethics based on natural law and the integration of Aristotelian philosophy.

While Augustine’s views were influenced by Neoplatonism, holding that the soul was created directly by God, Aquinas took an Aristotelian approach, teaching that the soul is the form of the body and is intrinsic to a person's nature.

Augustine used the ontological argument for God's existence based on rational introspection, whereas Aquinas formulated five ways to demonstrate God's existence, emphasizing empirical evidence and a posteriori arguments.

Augustine is credited with the early development of just war theory, arguing for the necessity of war under strict conditions. Aquinas further refined this theory by incorporating Aristotelian principles, detailing the conditions under which a war is just.

Augustine attributed evil to the absence of good and held that it originated from free will. Aquinas also saw evil as a departure from the good and potentiality in nature, but further developed a theodicy that includes the concept of privation and God’s ultimate goodness and omnipotence.

Augustine emphasized the Platonic view of God as immutable and timeless, while Aquinas, influenced by Aristotle, described God as an 'act of being' (actus essendi) with metaphysical simplicity and pure act (actus purus) without potentiality.