Omnipotence and St. Thomas Aquinas
Omnipotence literally means the ability to do all things, or to have absolute power. This quality seems to be generally accepted as an intrinsic characteristic of the Judaeo-Christian god, as it says in Luke I. 37, "...there is nothing that God cannot do.". Certain objections can be raised to attributing this characteristic to god however, in-so-far as this characteristic seems to conflict with other accepted attributes of god. In The Summa Theologica St.
Thomas Aquinas addresses some of these objections, the most telling of which can be restated as:
(I) To sin is an action, however god is unable to sin. Therefore god cannot be omnipotent.
(ii) The greatest act possible of god is his practice of "sparing and having mercy". There are actions judged to be much greater however, such as creating a world. Therefore god is not omnipotent.
(iii) If god is omnipotent, then everything is possible and nothing is impossible. If this is true however, things which are necessary (things which cannot possibly not exist) are no longer so. This is impossible - therefore god cannot be omnipotent.
Aquinas begins his rebuttals by defining what is encompassed by the characteristic of divine omnipotence. He explains that god is able to all things which are "possible absolutely", which he defines as all things which can be logically expressed without the predicate being in conflict with the subject -
i.e. god is capable of all things which do not involve a contradiction in terms.
This does not imply any defect in the power of god, Aquinas goes on to say, because impossible things by definition have "no aspect of possibility", moreover, it is absurd to expect divine omnipotence to encompass the logically impossible. (I) Aquinas answers the first objection as follows. He explains that
"...to sin is to fall short of perfect action; hence to be able to sin is to be able to fall short in action..." which he attests is contrary to the meaning of divine omnipotence.
(ii) In answering the second objection Aquinas points out, "It is not
Aquinas’ second proof for the existence of God is a sound argument. Aquinas’ argument about the efficient/agent cause is philosophically persuasive because it is easy to apply to things. The second proof is based on the notion of the efficient cause. The efficient cause is based on a chain of cause and effects. Aquinas does a suitable job in proving God’s existence through the order of caused causes through the world of sense.
A contemporary reader would argue that Aquinas neglects that the laws of physics and nature can exist beyond a creator. Even though the world is complex, a creator does not necessarily have to exist. For example, in Aquinas’ example in the text, the archer applied force in order move the arrow. This would follow Newton’s laws of motion and these principles are things that people can not violate because they are always true. Therefore, the intelligent being himself moved the arrow, but that the law of physics was also involved to get the arrow to its end. Another problem is in Aquinas statement that things “reach their goal by purpose, not by chance” (Aquinas 26). However, how do we know that the world does not have randomness or chance? Actually, there are some examples in science that debunks Aquinas’ statement. For example, Richard Dawkins believed that random mutations in species allows for variation and a bigger genetic pool in support of Darwin’s theory of evolution. Lastly, Aquinas claims that the designer has to be God because He is an uncaused cause. Even if people accepted this, Aquinas does not substantiate why it must be the case that the Catholic conception of the one and only true God is the only intelligent designer of all natural things. Aquinas leaves room for polytheism to exist, and hence more than one intelligent designer can move material things. If this is the
Thomas Aquinas’ many-sided theory of goodness is that it can be found in all things in some way, and Christopher Hughes deeply explores this in his reading Aquinas on Being, Goodness, and God.
This course dove into medieval history and touched on all of the most critical elements of the period giving a well-rounded look into the lives and cultures of the middle ages. As the class moved forward it became evident that religion is central to understanding the people, advances, and set backs of this period. We learned how inseparable the middle ages and religion are due to how completely it consumed the people, affected the art, and furthered academics. Since, there is a tendency to teach about history and literature separately from religion and since religion possessed a dominant position in every aspect of a medieval person’s life, while many of us had already looked into the period we missed some crucial cultural context allowing
Aquinas' Arguments for the Existence of God In Summa Theologica, Question 2, Article 3, Aquinas attempts to prove the existence of God. He begins with two objections, which will not be addressed here, and continues on to state five arguments for the existence of God. I intend to show that Aquinas' first three arguments are unsound from a scientific standpoint, through support of the Big Bang theory of the creation of the universe. In the first and second arguments Aquinas begins by stating that some things change and that the changes to these things are caused by things other than themselves. He says that a thing can change only if it has a potentiality for being that into what it changes.
...ip with God we are still built with infirmities that are temptations for sin, and with that we are no longer perfect.
existence to those who could not accept or believe God on faith alone. Aquinas’ first way
1. In the Summa Theologica, St. Thomas Aquinas concluded that our knowledge originates in sense perception, and that the purpose of knowledge is to be the entire universe through natural being, or esse intentionale. Aquinas said that knowledge must be universal, unchanging, and necessary. Being is knowing, and this includes being the entire material universe by knowing the entire material universe. The purpose of knowledge also includes being God, or knowing God. Knowing God consists of philosophy as a cause, theology as revealed, and beatific vision as God, which can only occur after death – all of which is achievable only through the actions of God. Aquinas concludes that a person cannot achieve the purpose of knowledge alone, we
...tion, and therefore the Divine Command Theory has proved inadequate in this instance. In addition, accepting this alternative necessitates blind obedience, a condition which cannot be accepted by a critically thinking mind.
The purpose of this paper is to argue for the idea that even without a God, there can be a basis for morality. The structure of my argument will proceed as follows. I will begin my paper with the background information of the idea that without a God, specifically the Christian God, there is no moral basis. After detailing this false belief, I will go on to explain why it is indeed untrue due to various reasons. I will bring forth the conflicting views of St. Thomas Aquinas and the natural law theory before countering the arguments brought up by them.
Thomas Aquinas uses five proofs to argue for God’s existence. A few follow the same basic logic: without a cause, there can be no effect. He calls the cause God and believes the effect is the world’s existence. The last two discuss what necessarily exists in the world, which we do not already know. These things he also calls God.
Thomas Aquinas was born in the year 1225 into an incredibly Catholic family in a small town in Italy. As Thomas Aquinas grew up, he was very smart and was very interested in the catholic faith and philosophy and ultimately became a teacher of all these things. Thomas Aquinas proved that he was an important historical figure over his life time by being a leader in the Catholic Church , writing The Summa and spreading his beliefs.
In this paper I will be exploring two arguments on the topic of the existence of God. In particular, I will focus on Saint Thomas Aquinas’s efficient causation argument for God’s existence and an objection to it from Bertrand Russell. After an analysis of Aquinas’s argument and a presentation of Russell’s objection, I will show how Russell’s objection fails.
Thomas Aquinas tries to prove the existence of God using motion. In his famous work Summa Contra Gentiles, he examines the physical universe in terms of its motion. Thus they are implied to be a cosmological argument. Aquinas’ version of the cosmological argument entails,
Aquinas’s first argument states: “murder is a sin, not only because it is contrary to justice, but also