Aquinas Five Ways

An important argument to try and prove the existence of God is the Cosmological Argument brought on by observations of the physical universe, made by Saint Thomas Aquinas, a thirteenth century Christian philosopher. The cosmological argument is a result from the study of the cosmos; Aquinas borrows ideas from Aristotle to make this systematically organized argument.

states that all wars are sinful, but if it is justified it is not a sin; however, I feel that just because one has authority over others, this shouldn't

Scientific reasoning has brought humanity to incredibly high levels of sophistication in all realms of knowledge. For Saint Thomas Aquinas, his passion involved the scientific reasoning of God. The existence, simplicity and will of God are simply a few topics which Aquinas explores in the Summa Theologica. Through arguments entailing these particular topics, Aquinas forms an argument that God has the ability of knowing and willing this particular world of contingent beings. The contrasting nature of necessary beings and contingent beings is at the heart of this debate.

When it comes to studying St. Thomas Aquinas, one of his main philosophies were the five ways. The five ways are claims and conclusions based on Aquinas’s beliefs. Aquinas theory is broken into premises and a conclusion. In Aquinas’s first way he explains how whatever is moved must be moved by another, meaning that something must come from something before, and before that. Aquinas believed that nothing could go on for infinity without no “first mover”. Aquinas continues his explanation when he says “This Cannot go on for infinity, because then there would be no first mover” (textbook). Aquinas concludes that the first initial mover was God.

Several hundred years ago, two great philosophers Thomas Aquinas’s and Rene Descartes used the method of ontological argument for the existence of God and used intuition and reason alone to get to each other’s theory. Rene Descartes wrote out several mediations, but the one we’re going to touch base on is meditation III that he wrote in the 1600’s; While Thomas Aquinas’s wrote his five proofs of God in 1270 that specifies God’s existence in each proof; the one that gives the best argument is the existence of God in his III proof. While both philosophers provide great information about their reason about God, Thomas Aquinas’s and Rene Descartes both attempt to prove the existence of God, but

Thomas Aquinas’ five ways are his arguments of the five proofs that God exists in some form, these five ways have standard abjections. The arguments are named as follows: argument from motion, arguments from causation, arguments from contingency, argument from gradations of goodness, and the argument of governance. These are Aquinas’ theories of why things change, whatever is changing is being changed by something else.

Aquinas, states that “Everyone in nature, therefore, is directed to its goal by someone with understanding, and this we all know and call God.. With his examples of five ways in which one can prove that there is a God.. 1. Obvious way base on change. 2. Based on the nature of causation.

In The Five Ways, from Summa Theologica, Thomas Aquinas gives the five ways in which an individual can prove that there is a God. In his arguments, Aquinas uses a posteriori and inductive arguments to help prove the existence of God. An a posteriori argument is an argument that uses statements that you cannot know through pure reason like the statement dogs are descendants of wolves. In contrast, an a priori argument is an argument that consist of statements you can know through pure reason like 2 is the square root of 4. Likewise, an inductive argument is an argument that is an attempt to provide premises that make likely the truth of the conclusion, which is used in Aquinas argument. In contrast, a deductive argument is an argument that attempts to provide premises that guarantee the truth of the conclusion.

As one of most valuable works on this topic one can name St. Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologiae, in which he states that existence of God, can be demonstrated in five different ways.

The atheist position that there is no God has gained popularity as the decades have gone by. However, many highly intelligent philosophers and thinkers have made arguments to prove God’s existence. Eleventh-century philosopher Thomas Aquinas created Five Proofs for the existence of God that were published in his book, Summa Theologica. While each argument is convincing due to their basis in reason, Aquinas’s Argument from Motion is the most evident. Aquinas's first argument is the Argument from Motion.

He believed in natural theology and thought that man could not understand God without God's assistance and guidance. The foundations of his proofs of God’s existence were based on his five basic beliefs about God. Aquinas wrote that God was: 1) simple as in having no parts, 2) perfect therefore lacking nothing, 3) infinite having no beginning and no end, 4) immutable as in never changing, and 5) one in essence and existence.

The main idea of the article The Aquinas Inquiry, is to explain or kind of conclude what a medieval philosophers panel would look like and how they would feel about the invasion of Iraq, Tony Blair’s decisions, and Saddam Hussein and determine the reasons. “The members of the ‘Aquinas Inquiry’ have already developed a set of six criteria which should be met in order for any war to be considered just.” The set of criteria will be used in this article to determine whether or not Tony Blair had just cause.

1.) Thomas Aquinas believes that humans are born with a clean slate in a state of potency and acquire knowledge through sense experiences by abstraction of the phantasms. His view on how man acquires knowledge rejects Plato’s theory that humans are born with innate species. Along with Plato’s theory of humans understanding corporeal things through innate species, Aquinas also rejects Plato’s theory that in being born with innate species, humans spend their lives recollecting their knowledge.

As it happens, Lonergan makes two illuminating statements about the five ways in chapter nineteen of Insight. First, he writes, “[T]he five ways in which Aquinas proves the existence of God are so many particular cases of the general statement that the proportionate universe is incompletely intelligible and that complete intelligibili¬ty is demanded.” Second, he writes, “[B]esides Aquinas’s five ways, there are as many other proofs of the existence of God as there are aspects of incomplete intelligibility in the universe of proportionate being.” These two statements illuminate what is central to Lonergan’s argument: the incapacity of proportionate being as such to satiate the mind’s demand for complete intelligibility. Alicia Jaramillo contends that Lonergan’s focus on this demand—something on the side of the subject—does not mark an abandonment of classical cosmological arguments.

St. Thomas Aquinas was an influential philosopher who strongly incorporated faith into his philosophy. In his Summa Theologiae, Aquinas uses his own arguments along with those of both Aristotle and Plato to strengthen his claims. First and foremost, Aquinas uses his own philosophy to back the Christian faith and the existence of God. However, Aquinas also extends his argument past the initial claim of God and Christianity, and it is here where he uses these other influential philosophers to help support his claims and arguments.