Aquinas and Plato?

I haven't finished Aquinas, but what I'm gathering is that he has three different parts of the Summa Theologica including External Law, Natural Law, and Human Law.  Although he does reference "the commentator" (averroes) It seems as though he uses a form of question and answering. Maybe not exactly the same as one like Plato, but similarities are definitely there. They way he uses the "objection", and then "on the contrary" is kind of like Plato in a sense that he allows actors to oppose him and is open to it, and then gladly answers to them. On the contrary, his ideology is more geared to that of Aristotle, not Plato. He uses "The Philosopher" Aristotle as a reference for many of his answers as well as the Bible. Aquinas opposes Plato in most ways though, and my correlation of their questioning methods may be very off....just a thought though.


Although Plato's works are more dialogues instead of question and answer format, it still really is a Q and A, just more entertaining with named actors. I'm pretty sure that William of Ockham may have used a question and answer technique but I don't remember.  I guess the point is, that they saw it as effective, because they try to cover all bases of their opponents before their opponents can. In Plato's work, it can be viewed that Socrates appeared to be arrogant in his ways of covering all bases before his opponents, but Aquinas doesn't come off that way to me.