A hasty look at medieval theology could identify St. Thomas with obscurantism and dogmatism. However, his adoption of Aristotelian philosophy was bolder than is usually recognized.
St. Thomas faced a system whose importance was increasing and seemed apparently incompatible with the Christian tradition. Despite this apparent contradiction, Aristotelism, rightly fascinated the thirteenth-century intellectuals: Aristotle had left the wise legacy of a totalising, coherent and majestic philosophical system.
So Thomas takes over Aristotle, and transforms his theoretical framework into the basic structure of scholastic thought, a fact that would be key to the future of philosophy in general. What then scholastics will enter into a dogmatic decadence, is a separate subject and does not necessarily reflect the apparent Thomistic intention. And it is in this sense that Thomas did nothing but render a great service to the Christian thought interpreted to Aristotelian philosophy from the perspective most compatible with his creed. Thus, his work had also the sense of separating Aristotle from Averroes. Of course, it is questionable whether his interpretation was entirely accurate, but it cannot be denied that his analysis was one of the most rigorous and remarkable of all Aristotle commentators that have existed.