2/21 Class Synopsis

For this class, we continued to discuss the difficult issue of proving the existence of God and focused primarily on the arguments proposed by Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274). Beginning with the distinction between faith and reason, Aquinas claimed that there was a fundamental difference separating these two categories of knowledge. This major distinction between belief and knowledge is dependent on the ability to observe and draw conclusions from the effect of a cause, sometimes through scientific inquiry or possibly just through innate knowledge, but we can never have knowledge of what actually causes these effects. Using the example of a triangle, we cannot know what a triangle is without also knowing that it is three-sided, just as we cannot know of the existence of God without first accepting that there is a cause behind the many mysteries of the world.

However, Aquinas did not agree with Plato in assuming that knowledge of God was self-evident or intuitive knowledge, nor did he agree with Anselm’s ontological argument of God being something which nothing greater can be thought. Instead, Aquinas gave two kinds of self-evident (analytic) statements that were “In itself but not to us” and “In itself and to us.” His cosmological arguement explained that since we do not know the essence of God, the proposition is not self-evident to us but must be demonstrated by effects that are more known to us. The ontological argument stated, like before, that we can only know the subject (God, triangle) through its predicate (existence as a whole, three-sided), and also that the effects are not proportionate to the causes as no perfect knowledge of the cause can ever be obtained. These two kinds of demonstrations of God’s existence are known as A Priori (through the cause itself) and A Posterior (through the effect).

To streamline his argument into five major points, Aquinas created the Five Ways which included: (1) Minfestor Via, or the argument of an Unmoved Mover; (2) Efficient Cause, or that nothing can be the cause of itself without having existed first, making God the only uncaused cause; (3) Contingent and Necessary, which states that in nature there are things which can and cannot be generated and it is impossible for these things to always exist, requiring a source to initiate the entire sequence of being; (4) Gradiation, which uses Degrees of Perfection, Goodness and Truth, and Comparative Judgments to imply that there is an existence of the Absolute through the fact that we have comparative thoughts of perfection; and (5) Design Argument, which states that order and finality are doubtlessly the effects of an initial cause.

Regarding the question of what God actually is, Aquinas said that “Having recognized that a certain thing exists, we shall have to still investigate the way in which it exists, so that we may come to understand what it is that exists.” He said that via negativa, we can understand what God is not, namely that he is not corporeal but instead more than a body, and also that God is not potentiality (cause) but Pure Act (cannot be what is or what is not, but a constant state of being – God cannot be but what he is). Instead, Aquinas believed that God is simple and perfect, not just a composition of substance and form, but a fullness of being through one undivided and eternal act. As further evidence that God is not corporeal, we must confront some of the basic questions that would contradict these assertions such as whether or not he would take up space. What body characteristics would he have? Would his omnipresence physically push us away? Alternatively, Aquinas suggested our idea of God should be more abstract, like the concept of twoness, and rooted in the idea that we compose the very body of the bodiless known as God.