The Existence of God
The Existence of God
“Hence in the last resort all that man knows of God is to know that he does not know Him, since he knows that what God is surpasses all that we can understand of him.” -Thomas Aquinas
Part I, Question 2 of the Summa Theologica is perhaps the most often read of Aquinas’ writings and it deals with the question of the existence of God. Yet, in his day, it was hard for Aquinas to be passionate on this point because proof of God was like “convincing” people today that technology is important and here to stay. In short, no one in the thirteenth century questioned the existence of God.
Jews, Muslims, pagans, even heretics of various expressions, and certainly the Pope believed in God. Most would offer that it was not necessary to prove God’s existence. The revelations of Scripture and the immutability of Church doctrine were proof enough. Before Darwin, who maintained that by chance and natural selection the natural world evolved, most people accepted the existence of a grand Creator-designer of a magnificent natural design.
Aquinas had a religious experience, so for him, this “sense experience” data was sufficient proof. It is said that when he completed his Summa he appeared ill. His scribe asked what the matter was and Aquinas said that compared to what he had seen and experienced, everything else was straw. But the scientist in Aquinas (Note: To the medieval thinker, science was more than gaining knowledge through controlled observation and measurement of the material world as we think of science today. Like any good Aristotelian, scientia was any activity that involved reasoning from principles to conclusions) led him to his discourse.
To reason the divine being, Aquinas conceded, was difficult, but he did believe it was possible to talk, and therefore know something of God, a meaningful pursuit, though limited. His doctrine of analogy would serve this purpose. The pitfall for many in how Aquinas argued for the existence of God. Aquinas stated that by applying natural philosophy in the same way all natural phenomena were discussed, we can get to know God just as we can know other mundane realities. That Aquinas believed the intellect could grasp the innermost nature of God, even if grace were required, was as radical to metaphysics as what Newton did with physics. Many considered the inclusion of sense experience and reason to be heretical and pernicious to faith.
The question stands: How can we come to know such an ineffable being? Aquinas, the theologian, referred to Scripture, quoting God’s definition of Himself to Moses: “I am what I am.” He called God, “He who is.” But he refused to take God’s existence strictly on faith. Joining theology and philosophy, Aquinas argued that God reveals himself in Scripture and in the natural world. It was not scientists as we understand the discipline, then, who studied the natural order, but philosophers who studied God as Creator and source. Theologians talked about the nature of God and the Scriptural revelations of God. Aquinas did both.
In the Summa Theologica Aquinas wrote five proofs for God, referred to as The Five Ways, which became important to both Catholics and Protestants. They were all based on the thinking of his predecessors. The First Way argues that things change. One needs look no further than a tree in one’s back yard to notice changes, either dramatic or subtle, over time. This proof is very clear, because it is available to the senses. To explain the existence of motion or change, there must, therefore, be a prime mover. Nothing can change itself from potentiality (the tree’s leaves will turn colors in the fall) to actuality (now the leaves are turned). As Aquinas put it, “omne quod movetur ab alio movetar” ---whatever moves must be moved by something not itself. For Aquinas, God is First Mover, and the cause of God’s own existence.
The Second Way closely resembles the First. Here, he argues that there cannot be an infinite series of causes. Just as something can’t move itself, something cannot cause itself. There has to be a beginning cause. Imagine people standing in a line one behind the other, to infinity. One person tells the other she will step out of the line if the other does. Merely saying she will move if the other does does not constitute a move. Someone’s move has to not be contingent upon another’s moving. At the beginning of time, argues Aquinas, someone had to start things up. The first uncaused cause is God whom Aquinas calls “the first efficient cause.”
The Third Way, propounded by an Arabic writer, Ign Sina, adopted by Aquinas, claimed that God is “The Necessary of Existence.” A very familiar phenomenon in the world is that things come into being and they pass out of being. Aquinas called all ephemeral beings ‘possible beings’ because by their nature they can exist and not exist. He argued that if they are dependent on something beyond themselves, there was a point they did not exist.
“The being having its own necessity in itself”---or a necessary Being--- is God.
What Aquinas posed in the first three Ways is “why is there anything, instead of nothing?” Just because something has the potential to actualize does’t mean it will. Something has to actualize its potential.
The Fourth Way reflected Plato’s concepts of ideal forms, or degrees of perfection in the world. A fully developed human being was ‘better’ on Aquinas’ metaphysical hierarchy than a less developed, younger version of that human being. If things could be rated ‘more’ or ‘less,’ ‘better’ or ‘worse,’ there must be a perfect standard against which to measure. Somewhere there was a superlative, one whose “noblest” compared to one’s “noble.” That one is God.
The Fifth Way, Aquinas based on the thinking of the Eastern ninth century Theologian, John Demascene. He posited that natural things tend to act in an intentional, deliberate way, thus with a goal or purpose in view. Aquinas believed that human intentions were ‘good,’ even if the purpose was faulty. Of course, other creatures who can’t reason don’t pursue goals with ‘good’ in mind or with a purpose. They simply behave on instinct. For those who can’t reason a goal or a purpose, a higher intelligence must direct them, like the archer aims and releases the arrow to its target. The archer, of course, is God. Order and purpose can’t be just by chance, a notion that would be challenged later by astronomers and evolutionists.
Some may argue that this theory can’t hold water today, for the central reason that “God” is relegated to the status of the others in the infinite line of physical reality, and since astronomy and Darwin have entered the conversation. The warning to readers of the Summa, is to not limit God to “Best Being of all” status, for God is ground and condition for all other beings, a reality of a different order altogether.
How does one talk about God? Only by means of analogy, according to Aquinas.
Ultimately, God is ineffable, but again, Aquinas maintains rational beings can get a glimpse of divine nature. If humans can encounter the perfection of “wisdom” or “knowledge,” then, to some extent humans can know something of the nature of the divine. We can’t know about God directly, but we can know about the creature as proportioned to the Creator.
We can observe, like a modern scientist, through sense experience, and from those empirical observations we can infer about God. God is the standard of excellence, and the physical or moral characteristics we observe in the natural world, say, ‘beauty,’‘honor,’ ‘integrity,’ are reflections of a much more excellent God. The expressions of ‘beauty,’ for example, are not equivocal, that is, on the same continuum.
God’s ‘beauty’ is distinct from the creature’s. God is the ultimate and true exemplar of creation. And given that essence and existence are distinct with respect to humankind, and are the same with respect to God, Creator and creature cannot belong to the same class.
God as first cause and ground of being, supreme Form (an active principle, a dynamism) drawing nature forth. God cannot be “captured,” “boxed in,” or fully known. Even Aquinas, with the exceptional tool of his intellect, and in spite of accusations to the contrary, would never arrogate that he could, through reason, explain God. Qui est: “He who is” was as close as Moses got and as close as we could expect to get.