St Thomas Aquinas and the Cosmological Argument

Authors Avatar

St Thomas Aquinas and the Cosmological Argument

Background of Thomas Aquinas

  • St Thomas Aquinas (1224-74) was born at Roccasea, near Aquino in Italy. He was of aristocratic background and studied at the Benedictine monastery of Monte Cassino before entering the University of Naples.
  • Aquinas was a Dominican and hence a friar, he committed himself to the Order, to live and work wherever they instructed him. He went to Cologne where he was a pupil of St Albert who wanted to provide an account of the newly discovered and translated work of Aristotle.
  • Albert moved to the University of Paris, and Aquinas followed. He began studying for a degree of Mater of Arts, which he completed when he was 30, writing a commentary on The Sentences of Peter Lombard. He wrote many commentaries on Aristotle and other authors.
  • He is best known for his two great Summas, Summa Contra Gentiles and Summa Theologicae.

The Five ways and the Cosmological Argument

  • In “Summa Theologica” Aquinas gives his five ways for the existence of G-d, the first three are better known as the cosmological argument.
  • He rejects the Ontological argument, as he says an argument that says G-d’s existence is self-evident we cannot use as we can’t see the self evidence. He argued we need to argue to G-d from evidence that we find in the world. This is quite an Aristotelian concept.
  • UNMOVED MOVER: - Argument from motion (change). This is the first argument...some things in the world are in motion, whatever is moved, is moved by another and another and so on. It is impossible in the same way a thing could be both mover and moved. Whatever is moved is moved by another in a chain of movable objects. This cannot go on forever as there would be no first mover and hence no subsequent mover. Therefore there must be a first unmoved mover, who is G-d. CONCERNED WITH THE THINGS THAT CHANGE.
  • FIRST CAUSE: - nature of efficient causes. In the world we find an order of efficient causes. There is no case where a thing is found to be its own efficient cause; it would have to exist before itself, which is impossible. Efficient causes cannot go to infinity because the first cause is the cause of the middle and the middle cause of the end cause. Without a cause, there is no effect. If causes went to infinity, there would be no intermediate cause and no present effects for us. There must be a first efficient cause, which is in itself uncaused, who everyone calls G-d.
  • NECESSITY AND CONTINGENCY: - Aquinas observed that, in nature, there were things with contingent existences. Since it is possible for such things not to exist, there must be some time at which these things did not in fact exist. Thus, according to Aquinas, there must have been a time when nothing existed. If this is so, there would exist nothing that could bring anything into existence. Contingent beings, therefore, are insufficient to account for the existence of contingent beings: there must exist a necessary being whose non-existence is an impossibility, and from which the existence of all contingent beings is derived. This is thought to be G-d.
Join now!

Arguments

Uncertainty of Cause

  • David Hume observes that while we may perceive two events that seem to occur in conjunction, there is no way for us to know the nature of their connection. Based on this observation, Hume argues against the very concept of causation, or cause and effect. We often assume that one thing causes another, but it is just as possible that one thing does not cause the other. Hume claims that causation is a habit of relationship. He notes that when we repeatedly observe one event following another, our assumption that we are ...

This is a preview of the whole essay