{"id":2392,"date":"2011-05-27T01:06:52","date_gmt":"2011-05-27T01:06:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2018\/12\/08\/1984-revision-v1\/"},"modified":"2019-07-12T11:45:06","modified_gmt":"2019-07-12T11:45:06","slug":"thomas-aquinas-five-ways","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2011\/05\/27\/thomas-aquinas-five-ways\/","title":{"rendered":"Thomas Aquinas’ Five Ways"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thomas Aquinas<\/a>\u00a0spent the last twenty years of his life writing the famous\u00a0Summa Theologica<\/a><\/em>; a guide to the\u00a0divine<\/a>. The\u00a0Summa<\/em>\u00a0included the\u00a0quinque viae<\/em>, the “five ways” by which the existence of\u00a0God<\/a>\u00a0can be proved. A few months before his\u00a0death<\/a>, Aquinas stopped writing. When begged to continue he only said, “All that I have written seems as\u00a0straw<\/a>\u00a0to me.”<\/p>\n

The Unmoved Mover:<\/h4>\n

Living in the 13th century (1225-1274), Aquinas could take\u00a0advantage<\/a>\u00a0of the translations trickling out of\u00a0Spain<\/a>. The\u00a0Toledo school<\/a>\u00a0were translating Aristotlean texts unknown in Christendom for centuries, along with sophisticated discussions of those texts by Muslim (and Jewish) philosophers. Philosophers like\u00a0Averroes<\/a>\u00a0had rescued Aristotle from religion, proving that Aristotle did not contradict Islam, and that philosophy\u00a0could lead to god<\/a>\u00a0by natural revelation.<\/p>\n

Aquinas could use the rescued Aristotle for his own faith; and he did so throughout his writings, quoting “the Philosopher” as an unimpeachable\u00a0authority<\/a>. Aquinas used Aristotle’s proof of the\u00a0unmoved mover<\/a>\u00a0– the prime cause for all movement – as a proof for god.<\/p>\n

The first three proofs depended on a premise held by most ancient and medieval philosophers to be a truism: any continuous\u00a0infinity is impossible<\/a>. An infinite chain of events is impossible, and so there must be a prime event that is self-moved and responsible for all others.<\/p>\n

The First Efficient Cause:<\/h4>\n

Aquinas’ metaphysics was based almost exclusively on\u00a0The Philosopher<\/a>, and so assumed some\u00a0differentiations<\/a>\u00a0which are not always intuitive to the modern reader. This is even more confusing when Aquinas uses Aristotle’s terminology but changes their meaning. For Aristotle\u00a0efficient cause<\/a>\u00a0is the “how” of an effect, while for Aquinas it is the “how” of an existence.<\/p>\n

With that distinction, Aquinas has another argument for god: Everything has something which is responsible for its being, and since this cannot continue infinitely, there must be a first efficient cause: god.<\/p>\n

This way of thinking feels unnatural because it assumes an Aristotelean way of seeing the world. We<\/em>\u00a0normally think of the world as composed of underlying\u00a0bits<\/a> that come together to form things. Aristotle thought of the world as composed of underlying matter which could undertake forms; and that those things formed could, in turn, undertake properties. While this might all feel like wordplay, (and it might be), it has consequences for\u00a0discussion<\/a>. For while Aristotle saw substance\u00a0as<\/em>\u00a0mere being, for Aquinas and his Christian fellows, being was a bounty given by God to matter: existence is goodness.<\/p>\n

The Necessary Cause:<\/h4>\n

The third proof Aquinas offered followed the same pattern: All things are contingent hence they could not have come about unless there was something that was self-necessitating: god.<\/p>\n

Gradation of Being:<\/h4>\n

Aside from Aristotle, the\u00a0other<\/em>\u00a0great influence on Medieval philosophy was\u00a0Plato<\/a>. And although the 13th-century Latin philosophers barely had\u00a0any<\/a>\u00a0of Plato’s texts, various Platonic ideas had trickled through into mainstream thought through the\u00a0Neoplatonists<\/a>\u00a0of the previous millenia. This included the\u00a0idea<\/em>\u00a0that\u00a0ideas<\/a>\u00a0exist separately to our thinking them. (Here Aquinas\u00a0betrays<\/a>\u00a0Aristotle who did not quite agree).<\/p>\n

For Aquinas, something is hot if it partakes in Hotness (which is a real, separate thing). Hence if things are good there must be something that is the\u00a0ultimate Good<\/a>: god.<\/p>\n

Argument from Design:<\/h4>\n

The final proof, arguing for god from the world’s\u00a0apparent design<\/a>\u00a0is well known today, but took on a more basic form for Aquinas. Before Aquinas, Averroes had used\u00a0Aristotle’s physics<\/a>\u00a0to argue that the order and regularity of the world implied a teleology which was the work of a perfect intelligence.<\/p>\n

This approach is surprising nowadays, when it is common to\u00a0hear<\/a>\u00a0that biology implies intelligent design that implies god. Aquinas’ argument is simpler but more abstract: the very fact that the world is not random implies meaning and this implies god. Aquinas doesn’t need to appeal to the complexity of the eye for his god, it is fantastic enough that the moon or the planets should move in\u00a0regularity<\/a>.<\/p>\n

All that I have written seems as straw to me<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Most authors explain that Aquinas had some sort of\u00a0spiritual experience<\/a>, after which he lost faith in the ability of words to describe the divine. Aquinas stopped writing the\u00a0Summa<\/em>, leaving it incomplete, because the goal of religion is transcendental understanding, which can only be known by direct experience.<\/p>\n

The other explanation is darker and has, so far as\u00a0I can tell<\/a>, been previously left unstated: Aquinas had some sort of\u00a0spiritual experience<\/a>, and realised that everything he had written was irrelevant. Aquinas stopped writing the\u00a0Summa<\/em>\u00a0because the transcendental experience shows religion to be irrelevant; a mere distraction to true understanding.<\/p>\n

So what replaced the\u00a0Five Ways<\/em>\u00a0for Aquinas on his deathbed?\u00a0Another way<\/a>, or\u00a0none at all<\/a>?<\/p>\n

\n

* They can be found in Part 1, Question 2, Article 3. More elaborate arguments for God in Aquinas can (apparently) be found throughout the\u00a0Summa Theologica<\/em>, and also in the\u00a0Summa contra Gentiles<\/em>. A number of (especially) religious authors like to stress that the ways are only suggestive or illustrative, implying that their falsification is not relevant. A disagreement on this, based especially on the fact that Aquinas says explicitly that they are proofs, can be found\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

References: “A Shorter Summa: The Essential Philosophical Passages of Saint Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica” edited by Peter J Kreeft; Wikipedia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thomas Aquinas\u00a0spent the last twenty years of his life writing the famous\u00a0Summa Theologica; a guide to the\u00a0divine. The\u00a0Summa\u00a0included the\u00a0quinque viae, the “five ways” by which the existence of\u00a0God\u00a0can be proved. A few months before his\u00a0death, Aquinas stopped writing. When begged to continue he only said, “All that I have written seems as\u00a0straw\u00a0to me.” The Unmoved […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[159,204,20,190],"tags":[],"metadata":[],"class_list":["post-2392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all-posts","category-everything2","category-philosophy","category-religion"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1645,"url":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2005\/07\/06\/the-eyes-of-the-dragon-br-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":2392,"position":0},"title":"The Eyes of the Dragon (BR)","author":"meanwhile","date":"July 6, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"The Eyes of the Dragon\u00a0by Stephen King One of King's earlier novels, this story is more of a fantasy than the horror he is best known for. 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