Thomas Aquinas And The Existence Of God

Aquinas argued the existence of God with five main points. Aquinas began by saying that nothing can be a cause of itself; rather every event was caused by some prior event. Therefore event A causes event B that leads to event C and so forth. He believed in this cause and effect relationship but believed that there must be a first cause as a starting point. When contemplating this starting point Aquinas rejected the possibility of an infinite series of events. This means that the universe has not existed forever and there must have been something from which every single event stems. There must be an uncaused first cause, which Aquinas concluded to be God. The first cause is called the unmoved mover. The unmoved mover is what set all other events and beings in motion.

Than there has to be something that already existed to make everything exist and for that to happen that had to be someone, so that is God. Aquinas also pointed one in one of his earlier proofs of the First Mover. Aquinas says that anything moved is moved by another, so there must be a first mover (a mover that is not itself moved by another) and that first mover is God. Both of the philosophers used great methods to come to their conclusion about how god came into existence. They both used different thinking methods to get to their well respected arguments but did come to the conclusion that God does “exist”. I believe the key difference about the two philosophers was the time difference between the philosophers, Thomas Aquinas wrote his proofs in the medieval ages around the 1200’s while ( with no disrespect) Rene Descartes wrote his meditation in the 1600’s. There is a big 400 year gap between ideas are compared but that came down to the same conclusion

Thomas Aquinas also had a critique of the ontological argument, that we as humans cannot know Gods nature, humans will all conceive of God in different ways, some conceptions of God even assign him a body; this argument couldn’t apply to all these conceptions, some of which are contradictory, this would mean it’s impossible to conceive of God in the way that Anselm has put forward. In order for the ontological argument to work you would need to know God perfectly, and since only God knows itself perfectly, only God could use this argument. The phrase “a being than which none greater can be imagined” is far too vague to be used in a strong argument.

It could be restated without defining God, and by replacing “God” each time it is mentioned with “A being than which none greater can be conceived” . Despite this possible restatement, Aquinas had further critiques of Anselm’s argument and why it is unnecessary for proving the existence of God. Aquinas says that even if we were to assume that all people shared the same idea of God as a being that which none greater could be imagined, “it does not therefore follow that he understands what the word signifies exists actually, but only that it exists mentally” . This second critique is reasonable because although we can rehearse the line “a being than which none greater can be conceived” over and over in our minds, nobody knows what this sequence of words actually means. We can grasp the concept of finite things and that God is unlike any other reality known to us, but these concepts are so far from being an adequate description of God that we can easily say that they do not help us to get a detailed idea of who He is.

The analogy between God and creation is a metaphysical debate that Theologians and Philosophers are stilling struggling with today. It is only when Philosophy is thought of as a tool for Theology to discover meaning in the concepts used to describe the metaphysical that individuals are able to better understand divinity in either a equivocal or univocal sense. When language is used to describe the similarities and dissimilarities between the creator and creature in a metaphysical sense, disputes on whether or not connections can be made through conceptualizing still rage on today. “Thus, at the critical heart of the entire question, there stand, on the one side, the Joachimism of the West and East and, on the other, the Fourth Lateran Council and Thomas Aquinas: in the former case, gnostic or mystic, exemplary or rhythmic identity as the fundamental principle of theopanism or pantheism, in the latter, analogy as the utterly fundamental principle obtaining between God and creature” (Przywara, p.362). One of the main lessons

Is God real? This question has been asked for thousands of years. What proof do we have? So far no physical proof has been found, however Thomas Aquinas, a Dominican Monk, offered some of the best arguments for the existence of God In his book the Summa Theologiae. Aquinas describes five ways that god could be proven. His arguments began with empirical observations of how he sensed the world around him and are therefor a posteriori. Here I will list the premise of each of the five arguments and discuss their validity.

The existence of God is a question everyone asks himself or herself at one point or another. It is always being questioned. In many ways God can be proven to exist by logical arguments and many of these arguments can be disproved by a similar logic. The most compelling of the proofs that I have read is Anselm’s Ontological Argument. This argument in many ways has goods points about the conceptuality of truth, ideas, thought and how that translates to reality, but is written by someone who already believes in God. It can clearly be seen that Anselm is working from an already established belief and needs support of Aquinas’s five ways to strengthen his argument.

It cannot be refuted that philosophers have struggled with and tried the existence of God, not for years- but centuries. However the idea of God is yet to be exhausted. Aquinas makes the claim that God exists and specifies that the existence of God can be proven in five ways based on features of the world. The argument he makes is cosmological meaning it deduces God is real from facts or processes within the universe.

The question of the existence of God has troubled mankind for thousands of years. Many philosophers and theologians have always searched for prove whether God exists. Many of them constructed valid arguments which support theist believes. The existence of God was once never denied, as His presence, His existence was evident in miracles and the people 's faith. But time and the advancement of modern science have called God and His very nature into question. The Perfect Being has become the source of much doubt and controversy. The faithful, believing people have become unsure. It seems that we will never find the answer to this question, but I think that we should take a look at one of the most famous arguments that prove the existence of God: Ontological Argument. It was made in the eleventh century by Anselm who was one of the most important Christian thinkers of his time. He proved that God exists by relying only on a priori reasoning. We do not need any physical evidence of God to prove that he exist. We can prove it just by our ability to thinking about it.

It is difficult to arrive at a conclusion when debating for the existence of God, in my opinion. However, between the readings I would have to consider Aquinas’ proof to be the most compelling. This is mainly because when trying to defend the existence of God, all I usually hear is that He is the creator of everything, period. Aquinas however put different scenarios into his writing to defend this idea. God, must have been the first to create motion, the first to create a cause, the first to not exist from another being, He must be the only one to have created beings, and is an all- knowing being to which everything in the world is directed to. Aquinas, analyzes the idea that some things would be impossible without the presence of a higher

singularity there is no time and all of the laws of physics as we know

Aquinas postulates that there are only two ways to define truth or prove something to be truthful. Mainly his concentration is proving god's existence. The first thing needed to establish this as a truth is faith. You must believe in god in order to see his so called demonstrations of his existence. Because in reality it cannot be tangibly proven that God exists.

Does God exist? That question has been asked by people for centuries. Christians, Jews, and Muslims would all say that God exists. They would claim that He is the creator of all things and is of a higher being than man is. Others would claim either that God does not exist or that God is not what the Christians, Jews, and Muslims say He is. Both Anselm and Aquinas address this question: Anselm in his "Proslogion" and Aquinas in his "Summa Theologica." The opinions of Anselm and Aquinas as to the nature of God are the same, although Anselm lacks the proof to back up his claims.

To begin with, while reading Anselm and Aquinas’ views on how God exists, these important philosophers spent much of their time looking and searching for the idea that God actually exists. Therefore, of course there would be some mishaps along the way and people would try to argue against their idea of God’s existence. In this paper will be explained the proof of God and of course some objections against them that will make you wonder. With Anselm 's ontological argument and Aquinas’ ways, we can use that to help prove God’s existence. It would be self-contradictory to deny that anything greater than the all perfect God exists.

The existence of God is a question that has troubled and plagued mankind since it began to consider logic. Is there a God? How can we be sure that God exists? Can you prove to me that He is real? Does His existence, or lack thereof, make a significant difference? These loaded questions strike at the heart of human existence. But the real question is, can we answer any of them? These questions are answered in the arguments of St. Thomas Aquinas, Blaise Pascal and St. Anselm of Canterbury. For thousands of years, theologians, philosophers and scientists have been trying to prove or disprove God’s existence. Many, including the three mentioned above, have strong proofs and theories that attempt to confirm God’s existence. Although, without any scientific evidence, how can they be entirely sure? “Philosophical proofs can be good proofs, but they do not have to be scientific proofs,” (Kreeft). Gravity similar to God’s existence ; it cannot be seen nor explained, yet it still exists. With faith, reason, understanding and even some math, God’s existence can be verified rationally.