THOMAS AQUINAS ARGUMENT ON THE EXISTENCE OF GOD.

1.      INTRODUCTION

God is the first cause, who causes other causes to be. God is said neither to have a beginning nor an end. He began without time and can never be a subject to time or even limited by time. Generation and the motion following from generation cannot explain his existence or define his being, even the motion that leads to corruption and corruption itself is not be able to depict or deny his existence. God is the first Being from which other beings have their being. And being the Being from which other beings have their being, God is unqualifiable. God cannot be seen as a proto or pure matter because God is not in potency and can never be a potential being. Is it not an absurdity for man to question the existence of such a Supreme Being; A Being conscious of his limitations to nature?

This argument might be termed hair-splitting. However, the idea concerning the existence of God has been a thought provoking and mind boggling question in the history of philosophy. The concept of God has been a debatable issue both in philosophy and Theology. Many philosophers have posited fallacious arguments about the concept God and their greatest rewards were criticism, some have fallen into delusion on account to ratiocinate their stand. The pre-Socratics philosophers possess an affirmative position on the existence of a Supreme Being, even though their concepts vary in their diverse schools of thought with some trying to rationally disproof or proof the existence of God.

In this presentation, we will be concerned with the stand of the mediaeval philosophy. And as a way of understanding the discussion, we will take as paradigm, Thomas Aquinas’ proofs of God existence which is found in his famous book “Summa Theologica.” Critically we shall journey into his last three proofs. However, our presentation will then take a tour into modern perspective of this Thomas’ view. And also try to model it to the modern sciences, which we shall be summarizing with the conclusion.

2.      THE NOTION OF GOD AND GOD’S EXISTENCE

According to Anselm the notion of God is attributed to that of which nothing greater is thought.[1] This implies that nothing can be predicated of it, for it holds supremacy over other beings since nothing greater can be thought of it. From this notion we can come to term that he holds a stand in the hierarchy of beings. God is separate from the material world but transcends other beings; thus causing their existence.[2] 

Although Thomas was not so much at home with this notion of God but he use it to explain our inability to understand separated substance because they cannot be demonstrated. They bear no actual existence in our material world rather they are in the forms of ideas as Plato will put it. From this position Thomas took his argument and opined that for us to know God, we have to use things that are more knowable to us, i.e. things with less being thereby limiting the actual being. This is because actual being is separated from nature and cannot be grasped by the human intellect.[3] They are intelligible in themselves but since the human intellect cannot grasp their essence, we tend to attribute non-intelligibility to them but this is rather an absurdity. We are making a general supposition of the transcendental being when even the mind cannot fully conceive it.

For Thomas the name ‘God’ has no actual or concrete existence rather it exists in the mind. God is his own existence, the prima causa, the puntum punti, the summum bonum, the primus moven immobilis and many other attributes he gave to God. Although these attributes only diminish the greatness of God because we are using human language to describe him. However, God is a perfect being and is incapable of change after all; change must either be from better to worse or the otherwise. God cannot change for better because it is impossible to improve perfection. And God cannot change for worse since this would result in his becoming less than perfect. Thus, on the contrary it will negate the immutability of God and place him within the realm of motion and make him a potential being.[4]

3.      THOMAS AQUINAS THREE LAST PROOFS AND THEIR OBJECTIONS

Thomas Aquinas argues that apart from the scripture, the existence of God can be proved following rational processes. We shall focus on the three last proofs Thomas gave.

i.                    Argument from possibility and necessity

ii.                  Argument from gradation of beings

iii.                Argument from design

3.1.ARGUMENT FROM POSSIBILITY AND NECESSITY

Almost everything in reality is liable to corrupt. With this; Thomas tries to show the corrupt nature of things, for contingent things have a characteristic of dependency. There are things in nature that are possible to be and also possible not to be. This is because they are generated and can corrupt. Aquinas showed the impossibility of these contingent things to persist in existence. For if all these things are generated, there should be a time when nothing would be in existence. However, if there were nothing in existence, it will be absurd to say that these contingent things are possible to persist. For him, there must be something that persists through which all of these contingent things proceed from. Things that exist come from a pre-existing being. If this be the case, then there must be something which is necessary to exist for other things to come to being. These necessary things are also caused by another thing since a thing depends on another as its cause. Thomas says it will be absurd to continue in this infinite regress and thus, he postulated that there must be a necessary being which do not depend on anything else for its existence. This being has the ability of causing others to exist but cannot be caused. This necessary being is what Aquinas calls God.[5]

Furthermore, we are also aware that some beings come into existence and go out of existence, precisely the possible; they can either exist or cannot exist. But these possible cannot give themselves existence; there must ultimately be a Necessary being that gives them actuality. Hence, this necessary being is understood as God.[6] However, we see that in nature things are possible to be and not to be since they are generated and are subjected to corruption. It is impossible for these always to exist, for that which cannot be at some time is not. If everything cannot be, then at a time nothing was in existence. If this were true, it would imply that even till now nothing is in existence because that, which doesn’t exist, gets existence from something already existing, on the contrary it is absurdity. Hence, Thomas talks on the necessity. Consequently, we cannot deny the existence of some being having in itself its own necessity, and not receiving from another but rather causing in others their necessity. This Necessity spoken of is God.[7]

3.2.ARGUMENT FROM THE GRADATION OF BEINGS

Thomas Aquinas tries to use the gradation found in existing things i.e. beings, to arrive at the conclusion that God exist. In beings, there are some that possess more good, virtue, beauty, truth or any attribute you can think of. The lesser the truth in a being, for instance, the less truth it is. More and less things are predicated of different things in their order of resemblance to the thing which is the maximum. Take for instance beauty, a thing can be said to be beautiful when it shares in the beauty character of beauty. The nearer a thing is to the closeness with beauty. Hence the more the human soul approach beauty, the more the soul is beautified.

This is so because there are things which are truest, noblest, and best in themselves. Other things that are predicated of these qualities share their being or aim toward the being that has the maximum. Following these there should be something which is uttermost being, for the truer a being is, the greater its being. He continues to give an instance using the genius of being. The being that has the maximum is said to be the archetype through which others have their being example is fire, being the maximum in the genera of hotness. In the same sense, there must be something which is the cause of their being beautiful and every other perfect attribute. This we can call God.[8]

3.3.ARGUMENT FROM THE GOVERNANCE OF THE WORLD

This is basically his last proof. In nature, we observe varieties of natural things which do not exist without purpose rather each one of them aim at achieving something. Even though these objects do not have consciousness but unintelligent and inanimate, they act towards the best possible purpose. These natural bodies act for an end. Now, it will be absurd to suppose an unintelligible thing to act on its own. The mode of action is organized in such a way that it takes the same order always or nearly always. Thomas argues that whatever lacks knowledge cannot act towards an end. There must be a being endowed with knowledge and intelligence directing all these things.  In other words, this being with such intelligence and power to control and directs all these things is what we call God.[9]

4.      OBJECTIONS TO THOMAS’S LAST THREE PROOFS

Pascal wager refuted Thomas’s five proofs of God existence. Still within our discussion, we shall focus on the objections against the last three proofs. To begin with the argument of Possible and Necessary being, pascal pointed out that it commits an elementary logical fallacy. That is; in the conclusion of the cosmological argument, there exists a being who owes its existence only to itself and nothing more. But one of the basic premises of the argument is that no being owes its existence to itself and as such, contradicts the final conclusion, which states that God is the being that holds its existence to itself.[10] Furthermore, he indicated another fallacy, petitio principii; assuming the conclusion that is already in a premise. He proves this; we say no finite being holds its existence to itself, God being an infinite Being owes his own existence therefore no being holds its own existence except God.[11] On another hand, David Hume in one of his Dialogues argued that since God exists necessarily because of some unknown attributes, why should not the universe itself have such attributes to make its existence necessary?[12]

On the argument of gradations of being, Aquinas suggests a maximum and ultimate thing that is objective to which other things are graded and compared as ‘less or more’. But the objection is that values such as good, true and noble do actually have assessment and change across different cultures and historical period. So therefore what is acceptable for one may not generalize the case for others.

On the argument of the grand designer, Thomas posited that ‘things are processed by a director towards an end which he calls God’. The rejection here is that inanimate things appears to act towards the best result as directed by an intelligent being, but what does it actually mean when we say processes are tending towards the best result?[13] For example, the environmental condition of the planet seems to have been the best result for things living in it. What then could be the best result it is tending to achieve? Thus, the expression that inanimate things and processes are acting towards an intelligent end is untenable.

5.      CRITICAL APPRAISAL

Having shown in a concise manner, the three last proofs Thomas Aquinas gave for the existence of God; we will like to shift the face of this presentation into a more systematic inquiry. Without being biased or prejudiced, we will look critically with the aid of other outstanding philosophers so as to come to a broad understanding of the arguments and thus have our own stand.

The five proofs of God’s existence cannot be said to have come directly from Aquinas rather he owe some of the ideas to Aristotle, and his famous translators Avicenna and Averroes. Aristotle believed in god but his concept of God differs from that of Thomas. In Aristotle’s metaphysics, there is a notion of the unmoved mover. This simply suggests that he has already watered the ground from which Thomas Aquinas took his position. We can say that Aquinas got his idea from him but not entirely. This is not to annul the fact that Aquinas do not painstakingly work on refurbishing Aristotle’s idea to suit his Christian philosophical thinking.

Now looking at the origin of this doctrine of the ‘primus moven immobile’, we can see it coming from the idea of Plato. In one of his dialogues called Law, in the discourse of the soul, Plato recognizes motion and the mover. When everything moves, our trace of the movement will seem as an infinite regress and if we can posit that the infinite regress of movers is impossible then there must be the first mover. For him, the first mover was never moved by any force outside of itself but the first mover moves itself.[14]

It will be good to understand that the five ways of Thomas Aquinas do not in any way set limits to the proof of God’s existence. It does not intend to exhaust the defense of this argument rather it sets the ball rolling for further verification and proofs. In this argument, Thomas tries to study one aspect of the debate of God. The other aspect can be directed to the nature of God. He uses the metaphysical idea of full being to make his argument appealing. God is the full being and being the purest being he was able to assign his attributes to other beings.

Looking at the third way, we can relate it to the ancient philosophical concept of cosmology. They recognized twofold of finite being; those that can corrupt i.e. having corrupt nature and those that are incorruptible. The corruptible ones were regarded to be composed of matter and form while the incorruptible ones were regarded to be separated substances devoid of matter. If we look deeply into this third way we can observe that modern physics might not agree with it. Thomas Aquinas recognized the existence of incorruptible nature. This we might say conflicts with modern physics because for them everything is corruptible.[15] Although we may say that Thomas recognizes just like Aristotle and Plato, the transcendental beings that are beyond the physical but there is a sharp contrast of conceiving their ideas of the transcendental beings which this paper is not aimed at exploring.

6.      CRITICS AND CONTRIBUTIONS OF OTHER PHILOSOPHERS

We will first look at the criticism Bertrand Russell levelled against Aquinas's philosophy. His criticism can better be presented in his very words.

“He does not, like the Platonic Socrates, set out to follow wherever the argument may lead. He is not engaged in an inquiry, the result of which it is impossible to know in advance. Before he begins to philosophize, he already knows the truth; it is declared in the Catholic faith. If he can find apparently rational arguments for some parts of the faith, so much the better; if he cannot, he need only fall back on revelation. The finding of arguments for a conclusion given in advance is not philosophy, but special pleading. I cannot, therefore, feel that he deserves to be put on a level with the best philosophers either of Greece or of modern times.”[16]

Also, we will look at Immanuel Kant in his Critique of pure reasoning; Kant put forward an argument that the idea of necessary being is incomprehensible. It is not possible to have a proof of a possible being since there is no effective criterion of possibility in our possession to apply. The only criterion we have for our existence is that of connection to actual sensation. Thus, since God cannot be perceived, the category of existence cannot apply to him.[17]

Furthermore, we can also consider in this line the father of modern philosophy, Rene Descartes. He says in his Meditations on first Principles that if he tries to see everything as doubtful and unreal there are still within him things that do not depend on his mind for existence. There are things that he can conceive even without seeing them, giving an example of a triangle. For him, the mere fact that he had the thought of God simply brings him to the awareness that there is certain knowledge of God infused within him even without his awareness. If his mind can conceive the existence of God, it is not possible to say that there is no existence of God for it will be impossible to conceive something that has no existence.[18] Even though his argument is somehow faulty, we can still see some traces of sense in it.

In the book titled New Essay on Human Understanding by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz; he tried to put a critical insight into Anselm and Descartes’ ontological argument. For him, the arguments still have some gaps to be filled. In his critique, he argues that the idea that mere conceiving the idea of God in our mind is a sure sign of his existence, pictures a misleading sign. If it be so, we can conceive of a flying horse and believe that it exist since our mind can conceive it. Meanwhile his last contribution shows his support in the existence of God, following what he said;

“I believe indeed that almost all the methods that have been used to prove the existence of God are sound, and could serve the purpose if they were rendered complete; and I don’t at all think that we should ignore the proof based on the order of things.”[19]

7.      MODERN IMPLICATIONS AND RELEVANCE IN SCIENCE

Science makes use of empirical observations, and this has contributed to a large extent in weakling the strength of their experiment because there are lots of phenomena that empirical observations cannot dictate or explain. These things are still a subject of great confusion and amazement to scientist. Thomas posited the argument from design which was his last argument.

In the Astronomical field, it is very amazing to astronomers to see how the universe is designed in such a way that no one can ever deny the handwork of an intelligible being also the arrangement of the stars. Even in biology, we see in human body the arrangements of millions of nerves which no man can think of numbering them except with machine. In botany, we observe the efficient classification of tree, which took rigorous time of great botanist to bring to reality. This is because they might have been influence by or through a prior knowledge of Thomas’ gradation of being in the universe. This also applies to animals. Prior to Western civilization, human beings can be exchanged in place of animals or materials of value, but science has developed such a way that they create robots. The creation of robot is not to devalue humans but to create something that can work efficiently not like animals but human beings. It is with this idea of gradation of beings in nature that they were able to do this. Also, this gradation has some implications. And one of the implications may be for instance, let us use the animal kingdom; higher or stronger animals tend to prey on the weaker and smaller ones. Science has adopted a method to control pest through this method which they call natural predators. This is used mostly what farmers in developed countries use to control pests.[20]

8.      EVALUATION AND CONCLUSION 

From the foregoing, we have been able to show the three last proofs given by Thomas Aquinas on the existence of God. These last three ways are likely to be self-explanatory but we have tried to bring a vivid picture of his arguments through the mirror of other philosophers.  We have also sighted few philosophers to make an in-depth exploration and evaluation of the arguments.

This also took two faces viz-a-viz criticisms and appraisal. Despite these criticisms, it is interesting to see how these arguments persist in history, hence it will not be necessary trying to venture into refuting these well explained arguments rather an open mind should be employed when evaluating these arguments so as not to take a biased position. It is also obvious that it holds high acceptance even in the contemporary philosophy of religion and likewise in Metaphysics.  In a nutshell, the five basic arguments given by Thomas Aquinas has been an anchor upon which every other argument in favor of the existence of God takes its hold.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Aquinas, Thomas Summa Theologica. 1 q. 2.a.1

Aquinas, St. Thomas Stephen F. Brown. On Faith and Reason. Hackett Publishing, 1999.

Bailey, Andrew. First Philosophy: Fundamental problems and understanding in philosophy Canada: Broad-view Press Ltd, 1969.

Burges, George. Works of Plato Vol. 5. Bungay: John child and son, 1852.

Crawley, Mick. Natural Enemies: The Popular Biology of Predators. Oxford: Blackwell Scientific Publication, 1992.

Davis, Brian. The Thoughts of Thomas Aquinas. Great Britain:  Biddles Ltd, Guildford & LKing Lynn, 1993.

Descartes, Rene Meditations on the First Principles.

Hepburn, Christianity and Paradox.

Kant, Immanuel Critique of Pure Reasoning. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1965.

Lee C, Archie, Thomas Aquinas, ‘The Argument from Efficient Cause,’ Philosophy of Religion. June 26, 2006.

Leibniz, G.W. New Essays on Human Understanding Book IV: Knowledge Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Lois Malcoln. God: The Source of Christian Theology. Kentucky: Westminster, John Knox Press, 2012.

Nash, H. Ronald The Concept of God: Contemporary Evangelical Perspective, Theology

Noah Porter. The Human Intellect. Bedford: Apple Wood Books, 1887.

Onyeocha, Izu Marcel. Introfil: A First Counter with Philosophy. Owerri: Assumpta Press, 1996.

R. Swinburne, 2004, The Existence of God, 2^nd edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Russell, Bertrand. A History of Western Philosophy. London: Simon and Schuster, 1967

Stunpf Enoch, Samuel Philosophy: History and Problems. U.S.A: McGraw-Hill Inc., 1971.

Zondervan: Harper Collins Publication, 1983.

INTERNET MATERIAL

www.ccel.org/ccel/pascal/pensees.iv.html, accessed May 15, 2012, in Pensées.

http://www.theopedia.com/arguments-for-existence-of-god

http://www.rejectionofpascalswager.net/aquinas.html

URL=<http://philosophy.lander.edu/intro/cause.shtml>.

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[1] Cf. Andrew Bailey, First Philosophy: Fundamental problems and understanding in philosophy (Canada: Broad-view Press Ltd, 1969), p. 25

[2] Cf. Lois Malcoln, God: The Source of Christian Theology (Kentucky: Westminster, John Knox Press, 2012), p. 129.

[3] Cf. Noah Porter, The Human Intellect (Bedford: Apple Wood Books, 1887), p. 643.

[4] Cf. Ronald H. Nash, The Concept of God: Contemporary Evangelical Perspective, Theology (Zondervan: Harper Collins Publication, 1983), p. 99.

[5] Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica. 1 q. 2.a.1

[6] Cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, Stephen F. Brown. On Faith and Reason (Hackett Publishing, 1999), p. 118.

[7] Cf. Samuel Enoch Stunpf, Philosophy: History and Problems (U.S.A: McGraw-Hill Inc., 1971), p. 669.

[8] Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica. 1 q. 2.a.1

[9] Cf. Izu Marcel Onyeocha, Introfil: A First Counter with Philosophy (Owerri: Assumpta Press, 1996), p. 149.

[10] http://www.rejectionofpascalswager.net/aquinas.html

[11] Cf. Hepburn, Christianity and Paradox, p. 44.

[12] Archie, Lee C, "Thomas Aquinas, ‘The Argument from Efficient Cause,’" Philosophy of Religion (June 26, 2006) URL=<http://philosophy.lander.edu/intro/cause.shtml>.

[13] http://www.rejectionofpascalswager.net/aquinas.html

[14] Cf. George Burges, Works of Plato Vol. 5 (Bungay: John child and son, 1852), p. 2.

[15] Cf. Brian Davis, The Thoughts of Thomas Aquinas (Great Britain:  Biddles Ltd, Guildford & LKing Lynn, 1993), p. 26.

[16] Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy (London: Simon and Schuster, 1967), p. 463.

[17] Cf. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reasoning (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1965), p. 560.

[18] Cf. Rene Descartes, Meditations on the First Principles.

[19] G.W. Leibniz, New Essays on Human Understanding Book IV: Knowledge (Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 438.

[20] Cf. Mick Crawley, Natural Enemies: The Popular Biology of Predators (Oxford: Blackwell Scientific Publication, 1992), p. 412.