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St. Thomas Aquinas Argument For The Existence Of God

661 Words3 Pages

St. Thomas Aquinas is the author of a piece called the The Five Ways which discusses five ways to prove the existence of God. Aquinas’ second way to prove the existence of God is through the concept of efficient causation, the belief of an object that brings a thing into being or initiates a change. In this paper, I will argue that Aquinas’ argument for efficient causation is consistent; however, his belief that there is one first cause, God, is not entirely supported.
Aquinas begins his argument by proposing that everything that is known to exist has been caused to exist. By the same token, nothing that exists can be the cause of its own existence. Therefore, any natural object in existence has been caused to exist by something other than itself. This suggests that every efficient cause would need its own efficient cause, hence, an infinite chain of efficient causes would have to exist. However, the existence of objects that cannot cause themselves implies that there must be a first cause. This first cause must then be supernatural since natural objects cannot cause themselves. This supernatural first cause is believed to be God. …show more content…

Still, Aquinas does a great job of staying consistent in his argument for efficient causation and not straying into fighting for his belief in God. Aquinas simply holds the position that everything has a cause, while also claiming that there is something that has no cause which people believe to be God. It is my personal belief that objects that come into existence need a cause and because of my faith and religion I choose to believe that God is that first cause. For this reason, I choose to support and argue for Aquinas’ argument of efficient

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