by Henry Piper (all rights reserved)
Introduction
As we have seen, Anselm (1033-1109) claims to prove the existence of God using a deductive, indirect proof. This means that his proof relies on nothing other than our own power of a priori reasoning with no dependence on empirical experience; moreover, recognizing that we cannot know what God is or anything about God since God must utterly transcend human being and comprehension, Anselm grounds his proof on the assumption that God does not exist to determine whether such an assumption can logically stand. From this ground, Anselm observes that the very transcendence of God that makes direct approach impossible must mean, by definition, that if God exists then God must be “that than which a greater cannot be thought.” Even “a fool” can understand the meaning of that phrase, Anselm observes, and, upon reflection, we can not fail to see that the phrase itself entails the existence of that to which it refers, namely God. As an analogy to Anselm’s proof, though we cannot directly observe the sun since seeing it means blindness, thus making it invisible to us, we can confirm that it exists, indirectly, by observing that we could not see anything but for the sun’s light.
Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), by contrast, in his Summa Theologica (I, Q.2), argues that Anselm’s method of proof is not valid; specifically, Aquinas claims that to understand mentally that God must be “that than which a greater cannot be thought” does not entail that such a thing exists actually. Thus, Aquinas insists that we must look rather to what we observe of the world, such as the existence of motion, that, he will conclude, could not exist in the absence of God. There is an indirectness in Thomas’s approach as there is in Anselm’s, indeed it may seem that the sun analogy applies equally if not more aptly to Aquinas since Aquinas’s argument begins with our observation of certain observable, physical effects (like motion) and proceeds to conclude that their cause must necessarily exist, without however claiming that we can directly observe the cause (i.e. God). Certainly, both philosophers are agreed that we cannot observe God, but it should also be noted that the indirectness of Aquinas’s proof is not at all like that of Anselm’s, since Anselm begins by positively assuming (as “the fool says in his heart”) that “there is no God” and, moreover, depends on no “observation” of anything—it requires no more than a purely deductive mental exercise. In short, Aquinas’s method of proof is based on our own, direct observation of worldly phenomena and so is empirical, whereas Anselm’s is purely a priori and strictly indirect since it derives from the assumption that God does not exist, and so the element of blindness, we might say, does not apply to Aquinas with the same force it does for Anselm. Thus, just as Plato offers the sun as a metaphor for the Idea of the Good—source, in Plato’s metaphysics, of all Being, Knowledge and Truth—so we might see the sun playing the same role—as metaphor for God—in Anselm’s thought, particularly as Anselm takes his metaphysical inspiration from Plato whereas, as we shall see, Aquinas takes his from Aristotle.
In what follows I shall first consider Aquinas’s critical response to Anselm, then turn to a brief consideration of Aquinas’s own method of proof and finally I shall discuss Aquinas’s own “five ways” that prove the existence of God.
Aquinas v. Anselm: God’s Existence is Not “Self-Evident” (Summa I, Q.2)
In Article 1 (of Summa I, Question 2), Aquinas poses the question, “Whether the existence of God is self-evident?” Aquinas interprets Anselm’s proof as claiming that God’s existence is self-evident in that Anselm’s proofs, as strictly mental exercises, focus exclusively on the very “self” of God, so to speak—that is, they are based strictly on what everyone understands the term “God” to mean. Aquinas asserts that Anselm’s proof of God is not valid because the existence of God is not “self-evident.” Although God in some sense “exists naturally” in us, says Aquinas, this is not “to know absolutely that God exists” since the knowledge of God “implanted in us by nature… exists in a general and confused way… just as to know that someone is approaching is not the same as to know that Peter is approaching.” (Reply to Objection 1) In other words, different people clearly have different ideas of what “God” might be or might mean; therefore, it cannot be that God’s nature is implanted in us in so uniform or distinct a way as to make universal recognition of God’s existence possible.
Aquinas offers a specific refutation of the validity of Anselm’s method of proof in his Reply to Objection 2. Even if we might understand, mentally, that God is “that than which a greater cannot be thought,” that is not the same as to understand that it exists actually. Indeed, as we consider Anselm’s proof, the fool only acknowledges, presumably, that God is “that than which a greater cannot be thought” if God exists; this is why Anselm stresses that this concept does nevertheless exist in the understanding of the fool since the fool “surely understands what he hears… even if he does not understand that it exists [in reality].” To this Aquinas replies,
granted that everyone understands that by this name God is signified something than which nothing greater can be thought, nevertheless, it does not therefore follow that what the name signifies exists actually, but only that it exists mentally. Nor can it be argued that it actually exists, unless it be admitted that there actually exists something than which nothing greater can be thought; and this is precisely not admitted by those who hold that God does not exist.
Aquinas’s second point here seems to be that we cannot argue that God actually exists unless we first admit that God exists (thus blatantly committing the logical fallacy of “begging the question”―arguing in a circle by first assuming what it is we are claiming to prove). This point, however, seems to ignore the fact that Anselm is not arguing directly that God exists but rather that we simply understand the meaning of the phrase “that than which nothing greater can be thought” which, per Anselm’s proof, a) can only refer to God, and b) must exist if we really in fact understand what it means; in other words, Anselm might respond by claiming that his proof does not rest on the prior assumption of the actual existence of “that than which a greater cannot be thought” since it proceeds indirectly by first assuming the non-existence, in reality, of “that than which a greater cannot be thought”—in short, Anselm would claim that Aquinas is reading too much into the assumptions on which Anselm’s proof is based. But this takes us to the real substance of Aquinas’s objection to Anselm’s proof, which consists in the distinction between existing “mentally,” on the one hand, and existing “actually,” on the other: Aquinas is surely claiming that the mental existence of the phrase “in the understanding” entails nothing about the actual existence of what that phrase signifies—in short, that Anselm’s proof is hiding an invalid “leap” from thinking to being. (On a technical note that is beyond the scope of this chapter, this may anticipate Kant’s objection to Anselm’s method—namely that “existence is not a predicate”—though Kant’s objection arguably does not precisely address Anselm’s approach).
So it seems that the dispute between Anselm and Aquinas, which we cannot hope to resolve, comes down to the question of what meaning the phrase “that than which a greater cannot be thought” really has for us. If we truly understand what that phrase means in itself—that is, without any reference to the existence of God—then Anselm’s proof can proceed; on the other hand, if the phrase is for us simply a series of imagined words or sounds the full logical implications of which we cannot grasp, then we can not really understand it without first assuming that God exists, which would mean that Anselm’s proof begs the question and so is invalid. Thus, Aquinas’s essential refutation of Anselm is that Anselm’s proof rests on the assumption that we can understand God’s “essence” as “that than which a greater cannot be thought,” but Aquinas insists that this assumption effectively and illegitimately assumes that we know more of God’s nature than it is possible for us to know; therefore, “because we do not know the essence of God, the proposition [“God exists”] is not self-evident to us, but needs to be demonstrated by things that are more known to us, though less known in their nature―namely, by His [sic] effects.” With this Aquinas affirms his affinity with Aristotle, while Anselm effectively follows Plato: whereas Aristotle insists that knowledge must be grounded in the physical world, Plato counters that the only genuine knowledge we can claim is the purely mental knowledge of things that genuinely are, in eternal, unchanging Being, such as mathematical truths (see the earlier chapters on Plato and Aristotle).
Aquinas: God’s Existence May be Demonstrated from His Effects
In Article 2 (Summa I, Q.2, a.2), Aquinas argues that God’s existence may be demonstrated from God’s effects. A “demonstration” is a proof that involves “showing” something to all who can see. Since we can all see the unfolding of events in the natural world, we can prove that God must exist if we can establish that such events, which are obviously the effects of some cause, can only have been caused by a being the essence of which can belong only to God even if we do not ourselves immediately comprehend this essence in itself. As Aquinas puts it, “since every effect depends upon its cause, if the effect exists, the cause must pre-exist. Hence the existence of God, insofar as it is not self-evident to us, can be demonstrated from those of His effects which are known to us.” This is so, moreover, even though the “effects” that we can observe are “not proportioned” to the cause; that is, even though the being of God is entirely beyond our comprehension and utterly disproportionate to God’s effects, which we can comprehend, “Yet from every effect the existence of the cause can be clearly demonstrated, and so we can demonstrate the existence of God from His effects; though from them we cannot know God perfectly as He is in His essence” (Reply Obj. 3).
Thus, says Aquinas (Reply Obj. 1), the existence of God need not be merely an article of faith, but may also be known by “natural reason” since natural reason comes before faith: “faith presupposes natural reason even as grace presupposes nature and perfection the perfectible,” so we needn’t have faith in order to have natural reason. Each of Aquinas’s five “ways” of demonstrating the existence of God, which we shall consider in turn, begins with and depends upon a basic observation of nature, which all of us can undertake and which all of us can understand by our common possession of natural reason. Though “the existence of a Primal Truth is not self-evident to us,… the existence of truth in general is self-evident.” Though we can not know the “Primal Truth”—that is God in-itself—we can understand and recognize truth in principle, as it reveals itself in nature; thus, we shall look to nature, and we shall determine, argues Aquinas, that it reveals to us that it can only be the effect of God’s creation (article 1, Reply Obj. 3).
Aquinas’s First Way to Prove that God Exists: The Argument from Motion
This proof derives directly from Aristotle’s argument that there must be a “prime” or “unmoved mover” (all the “five ways” are from Summa I, Q.2, a.3).
We all observe that things are in motion, and no object could now be in motion unless something had moved it: all material objects evidently have the potential to move, but in order for an object actually to move clearly something must move it. Thus, for an object to be in motion means that it has been moved from a condition of potential motion to one of actual motion; moreover, only something already “in a state of actuality” could bring about such a move. In Aquinas’s words,
Therefore, whatever is moved must be moved by another. If that by which it is moved be itself moved, then this also must needs be moved by another, and that by another again. But this cannot go on to infinity, because then there would be no first mover, and, consequently, no other mover, seeing that subsequent movers move only inasmuch as they are moved by the first mover; as the staff moves only because it is moved by the hand. Thus it is necessary to arrive at a first mover, moved by no other; and this everyone understands to be God.
This argument rests on the proposition that there can be no motion unless there is some agent of motion; simply put, things do not move themselves. This is the implication of the observation of Isaac Newton (1643-1727) that “an object at rest tends to remain at rest” along with its corollary, “an object in motion tends to remain in motion:” an object in motion must have achieved that state of motion somehow other than within itself. In other words, motion and the thing moved are two different kinds of things, and the motion is not intrinsic to the object that is moved: “Therefore,” says Aquinas, “whatever is moved must be moved by another.” So, whatever is in motion must have been moved by something else that was previously in motion, which in turn must have been moved by something else, etc.; but this cannot go back infinitely (an “infinite regress”), argue Aristotle and Aquinas, because, if it did, there would be no true agent of the motion: as we go back in time to seek it, we would never reach it, which is essentially equivalent to saying that it would not exist. But this is impossible because there would be no motion without such an agent, or “first mover.” This first mover, moreover, must be a mover that is itself “unmoved,” for if it too were moved by another then it would not be a first mover and we would be back to the infinite regress. So, since evidently things do move, and since they must be moved by something, and since to avoid an impossible infinite regress there must be something behind the motion—some ultimate agent of motion that is itself not moved by another yet contains within itself the complete actuality of motion—therefore there must be a first mover, and this first mover is precisely what we mean by the term “God.”
It must be noted that the “unmoved mover” is not itself in motion in the way a material object is in motion, for clearly it is not itself a material body: it is, rather, the pure actuality of motion, or motion itself; it is mover and not moving. Then how does it move a material body? Evidently, the unmoved mover must bear within its very being the actuality of motion itself. Recall that a physical body at rest, by definition, is not actually in motion, because the actuality of motion is not intrinsic to physical objects as such; however, the potentiality of motion does intrinsically belong to any physical body, which is evident when an external force is applied to a resting body as that body will then actually move. To go from rest to motion is in essence to go from potential motion to actual motion; thus there could be no actual motion without the prior existence of a material object with the potential to move. So the unmoved mover, God, being the actuality of motion, is the source of the actuality of the motion of all that moves—the agent that causes the potentiality for motion in the object at rest to become actual—just as the human will causes the body to move even though the will is not itself a moving body but rather the unmoved agent of the body’s movement. (For more on Aristotle’s unmoved mover, see the chapter on Aristotle.)
The Second Way: The Argument from Efficient Cause
The second way is closely analogous to the first. It rests on the common observation that for every effect there must be a cause, just as we can easily see that for every motion there is a mover. As we have seen, Aristotle uses the term “efficient cause” to distinguish it from the other three kinds of causes that he identifies with the being of things―the material cause, the formal cause and the final cause. The efficient cause is simply the cause that “brings about” the effect, so to speak, as a carpenter brings about, or effects, a desk by imposing the form or design of the object (formal cause) on a chosen material (material cause) in accordance with the thing’s purpose or end (final cause). The efficient cause evidently precedes the effect, so a thing cannot be the efficient cause of itself, as Aquinas says, for then it “would be prior to itself,” which is obviously impossible. Finally, just as the chain of motions cannot go back infinitely into the past, as that would result in an impossible “infinite regress” of movements, so here the chain of efficient causes cannot go back infinitely for the same reason, since that would effectively mean that there is no actual agent, no actual efficient cause, and “to take away the cause is to take away the effect.” But we see the constant activity of cause and effect all around us, as we see objects in motion, thus there must be some first efficient cause just as there must be some first, unmoved mover: “Therefore it is necessary to admit a first efficient cause, to which everyone gives the name of God.”
Aristotle argues that, without the unmoved mover, there could be neither a beginning of motion nor could motion be continuous. In Aquinas’s proofs from motion and from efficient cause we see both these elements at work: the proof from motion argues that there could be no motion without God as cause, and the proof from efficient cause argues that there could be no “bringing about” (my phrase)—i.e. continuity—of motion. In other words, movement in nature is like a chain from cause to effect, each effect serving as the cause of a subsequent effect. Thus the argument from motion asserts that God must exist as the cause, or actuality, of the individual movements in the individual objects―in other words, God creates the individual links of the chain; meanwhile, the argument from efficient cause asserts that the links of the chain would not be bound together as a chain without the agency of God. Thus, reading the two proofs together, we see that God is the origin of all movement and links them together into the continuity of cause and effect; in other words, God is both beginning and end (that is, final cause or purpose), God both creates and sustains, God both begins everything and assures its continuity.
The Third Way: The Argument from Possibility and Necessity
If an object or event is possible, that means that it might be and it might not be: if it is not now it might yet come to be, and if it is now it will at some time pass away, since, as merely possible, it can also not be and so won’t be forever. As Aquinas says, “it is impossible for these things always to exist, for that which can not-be at some time is not.” By contrast, if something is necessary, it must be now and always: it can not at any time not be. The eternal truths with which Plato concerns himself are of this nature, but nothing in the physical world is. We are well acquainted with possible beings: everything we see in the physical world, no matter how stable or enduring it might appear, is coming-to-be and passing-away and none of it is necessary. Of course, we also seem to perceive beings that are necessary such as mathematical truths, which not only simply are what they are and thus changeless, but also seem themselves to be necessary since, for example, 2+3 cannot not be 5. We still might ask, however, whether it is necessary that there be a necessary being in the same way that it would seem to be necessary that there be an “unmoved mover” to account for the evident existence of motion; but if there is such a being that cannot not be, such a being can only be what we mean by “God.”
So we consider: if it is possible that all things in the world be merely possible, and nothing necessary, that would establish that God does not exist (since God must be a necessary being—or any being that is truly necessary can only be what we mean by “God”; and so if there is no necessary being then there is no God). But if all things are merely possible, then that would mean that all things could possibly not be, and in that event, as time passes everything we observe was not at some time previously but now is; moreover, many things are not now but will be later. In short, at any given time, it seems, many possible things are and many possible things are not, and it seems obvious to us that this must always be the case. But must it?
If I had 100 pennies and threw them on the floor, it’s a good bet that about half of them, give or take, would be heads and half tails. For each individual penny, of course, it is possible to be either heads or tails, so it is possible, but not likely, that, on a given throw, all 100 pennies could be heads at the same time. With that many pennies, though, would it ever happen that they would all come up heads? The answer is yes, of course: with enough throws it is bound to happen sometime, as unlikely as it is on any one throw. Now let’s assume that everything in the world is merely possible, like the pennies being heads or tails, and thus that there is no necessary being and thus no God. If everything in the world is merely possible, then if I look back into time, I will see that, at any given time, typically many possible things are and many are not, just as many pennies would typically be heads and many tails. But if it happened that someone had been throwing those pennies an illimitable number of throws, I can be sure that at some time or other all pennies must all have come up heads at the same time. Similarly, if everything in the world is merely possible and thus at some time possibly not, and I go back far enough into time, I will surely arrive at some time when the unlikely event occurs that all possible things are not at the same time, like all pennies not being tails at the same time. Again, with enough past time to go through, eventually all 100 pennies will not be tails at the same time, just as all possible things will not be at the same time.
However, it must be impossible that this could have happened, ever, because if it had―if ever there had been a time, anytime in the past, when it happened that all possible things were not existing at the same time, then there would never have been any possible thing that could have occurred since, which is obviously false; this is so because at the time that all possible beings were not, there would have been nothing and, from that nothing, nothing could have come. As Aquinas says,
if everything can not-be, then at one time there was nothing in existence. Now if this were true, even now there would be nothing in existence, because that which does not exist begins to exist only through something already existing…. Therefore, not all beings are merely possible, but there must exist something the existence of which is necessary.
So it is impossible that everything in the world is merely possible, because then there must have been a time in the past when the unlikely event of all possible things not being happened at the same time, and if there were no necessary being to make something be, nothing ever would have been and nothing could be now, since nothing can come of nothing. So there could never have been nothing, there must always have been something, and the being that must always be and cannot not be is a necessary being, which means that there is some necessary being, which we know as “God.”
Aquinas goes on to argue that there must be a first necessary being, just as in the first two ways of proving God’s existence there must be a first mover and a first efficient cause. Personally, I’m not sure the proof needs that part of the argument, since the proof of any necessary being would seem already to entail the existence of God; in any event, clearly the first necessary being, a being independent of any other necessary being, could only be God.
The Fourth Way: The Argument from Gradation
For each kind or type of thing―for which Aquinas uses the word “genus,” which means “general category”―such as good, true, noble or hot, there is some maximum from which all good or hot things get their goodness or heat. Thus there must also be some ultimate being from which all things that are get their being:
the maximum in any genus is the cause of all in that genus, as fire, which is the cause of all heat, is the cause of all hot things…. Therefore, there must also be something which is to all beings the cause of their being, goodness, and every other perfection; and this we call God.
The Aristotelian influence on this proof is clear in the now-familiar idea of causation, but there is a strong echo of Plato’s doctrine of Forms in this proof as well. Plato, however, would argue that the ultimate, ideal reality of Being is completely independent of nature, whereas for Aquinas, following Aristotle, the distinction between God’s ultimate being and the rest of being is a matter of “gradation,” suggesting that God is involved directly in the being of the world, as creator and sustainer (God as “chain-maker”). On the other hand, whereas for Plato the human soul is capable in principle of direct, intellectual apprehension of The Idea of the Good, clearly for Aquinas, as for any follower of a monotheistic tradition involving a transcendent God, this ultimate goodness reaches us only by God’s grace. We can be prepared for this grace, but we cannot achieve it by our unaided intellectual efforts alone.
In any event, the proof itself suggests that, even if I do not personally know perfect goodness or perfect justice or perfect being, still I am fully aware of a range of gradation among things in the world having differing degrees of those ultimate realities. Thus, for example (recalling an argument I made for Plato’s Forms), I may never have seen or be able to see perfect justice, but I am very much aware of different degrees of justice; and how else could I know this were there not some ultimate standard of justice from which I derive this insight? We may not know justice, but we all know injustice when we see it, and none of us would be able to recognize that if there were not some real “idea” of perfect justice that the unjust thing is observed to fall short of.
Consistent with all of Aquinas’s proofs, in other words, nothing could be if it weren’t for God.
The Fifth Way: The Argument from Governance
Aquinas’s first four ways of proving God’s existence are different forms of what we know as cosmological arguments: all of them have to do with our observation of the cosmos—the universe, what is—and they argue that such observation can only be explained by the existence of God. The kind of argument that Anselm uses, and that Aquinas himself disputes, is known as ontological, since it has to do strictly with the being of God, relying not at all on empirical observation.
Aquinas’s fifth way of proving God’s existence is what is known as a teleological argument because it relies on Aristotle’s analysis of the telos or “end” or final cause of things. The final cause is for Aristotle the most important of the four causes: it comes closest to telling us what the being of a thing truly is. Thus when considering an acorn, for example, we observe its material configuration, its form or design and how it comes to be through the forces of biological generation. All these first three kinds of cause―material, formal and efficient―are important in understanding the acorn, but they don’t really make sense until we see the acorn as that particular thing intended to become an oak tree—that is, until we understand that the matter, the design and the growth of the acorn all have the precise being they do because this acorn is, in the mode of potentiality, an oak tree. In other words, the acorn is the way it is only because it is set to become an oak tree: its present potential to become an actual oak tree is precisely what explains its being now.
The acorn provides an excellent example for understanding Aquinas’s proof from governance. Evidently the acorn does not “know,” in the manner of human consciousness, that it is supposed to be an oak tree; yet everything it “does” is consistent with that purpose. Thus it sprouts when it falls into the moist ground, and roots, and if conditions are favorable it will proceed inexorably with the development of bark and trunk and branches and leaves. So Aquinas says, “We see that things which lack knowledge, such as natural bodies, act for an end, and this is evident from their acting always, or nearly always, in the same way, so as to attain the best result.” Thus the acorn has no conscious awareness or knowledge of what it’s supposed to do, but it nonetheless does “act” (i.e. move from its potential being to making it actual) so as to maximize its chances of growing into the “best” oak tree it can be. Because all acorns clearly behave this way, it cannot be happening “fortuitously,”―clearly it’s not just a matter of chance―but must rather be happening “designedly.” Therefore, just as the arrow moves toward its target not by its own design but because the archer so directs it, so the acorn must be “governed” by “some intelligent being” that has designed it to become what it becomes.
The existence of the design is obvious, and it is just as obvious that the designer is not the acorn itself; therefore, since there can be no design without a designer, there must be some ultimate, invisible designer, and that designer of course is what we know as “God.” In the words of Aquinas, “Therefore some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God.”
Conclusion: The Four Causes in the Five Ways
We must of course stop short of concluding whether any of Aquinas’s five ways can be counted as conclusive proof that God exists, and it is notable that Aquinas himself does not directly conclude his proofs with as decisive a claim as that; rather, each proof ends with conclusions concerning matters readily comprehensible and observable to all of us, namely that there must be a first mover not moved by another, a first efficient cause, a necessary being that is its own necessity, a “maximum” of being and an ultimate “designer” of nature. Aquinas then goes on to assert effectively that it is only reasonable to think of such entities as “God,” thus his conclusions are—this “everyone understands to be God,” to this “everyone gives the name of God,” “This all men speak of as God,” “this we call God,” “this being we call God.” In other words, Aquinas seems intent not to go too far in presuming to assert our comprehension of God, remaining content, consistent with his method to base his proofs only on the effects of God that we can observe and comprehend, to identify a quality of being that could not reasonably belong to anything but God. In fact, Anselm may be seen to employ a similar, and perhaps decidedly greater, sense of reserve, since rather than his proof’s overtly claiming that “God necessarily exists,” he effectively concludes that “that than which a greater cannot be thought” cannot exist merely in the understanding but must exist in reality as well, thus, like Aquinas, leaving “God” as the only possible candidate for the kind of reality his proof purports to establish.
Though each of Aquinas’s five ways stands on its own as an independent proof, it may be well to consider them as a coherent whole or as mutually supporting one another. In this spirit, I suggest that in the five ways can be seen a clear manifestation of Aristotle’s four causes. The proof from motion might be seen to manifest the material cause: motion is the stuff, so to speak, of nature’s very coming to be and passing away. The argument from efficient cause evidently mirrors Aristotle’s efficient cause: it is what puts motion in objects so as to connect a cause to its effect, and that effect to a subsequent effect, in the chain of causation we see as the process of nature’s coming-to-be and passing-away and the evolution of life. The proof from gradation manifests the formal cause, as the goodness of a thing is caused by the universal form of goodness common to all good things. Finally, the proof from governance manifests the final cause, as all things move toward some end not of their own design, and yet a design nonetheless as evidenced by the order and harmony of the laws of nature and the motions of the heavenly bodies and the intricate design of natural forms, both living and not (for more on what is often referred to as the argument for the existence of God “from design,” see my chapter on evolution theory, “The Theory of Evolution: Do Science and Religion Have Anything to Fight Over?”).
In the center of the four ways mentioned above is the third way, the argument from possibility and necessity. This argument seems to exist apart from the others, in some sense, as the agent of them all and of their unity. This may all seem somewhat contrived, as if I’m trying too hard here to shoehorn these five ways into a neat package; however, I can’t help but see the very concept of necessity as central to the whole enterprise of considering God’s existence, as it is a concept so alien to all of our ordinary experience, according to which precisely nothing would seem to be genuinely necessary, while anything may well be possible.
Epilogue: “All that I have written seems to me like straw…”
As I have indicated, Thomas of Aquinas—canonized to become “St. Thomas” in 1323—is yet today, along with St. Augustine of Hippo, not only the foremost philosopher and theologian of Christianity, but also he remains today a major figure in nearly all areas of philosophy generally. Though he died around age 50, his body of work is vast—estimated to comprise 8 million words; and the style of the work is extraordinarily complex, logically, and makes exhaustive reference both to scripture and to philosophers and theologians of time past.
However, it is said that on 6 December 1273 “he underwent an experience during mass and thereafter wrote nothing.” The only comment he would make to explain this sudden and total cessation of the intense intellectual activity that had theretofore been the centerpiece of his existence was, “All that I have written seems to me like straw compared to what has now been revealed to me.” He died four months later. (The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, 1995, 43).
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