Summa Theologica Thomas Aquinas Analysis

In Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica, he includes three articles concerning the existence of God. The first article questions whether the existence of God is self-evident. Article two questions whether it can be demonstrated that God exists. The third article is the most interesting, well known article and needs to be focused upon. This famous third article questions whether God exists. To this, he offers five answers in an attempt to prove that God exists. His first attempt is the argument of motion. Aquinas explains that everything in the world is in motion and was put into motion by another object which is in motion. This motion doesn’t have an infinite history; it needs to have a finite source that started this chain reaction of

“Therefore it is necessary to admit a first efficient cause, to which everyone gives the name of God” (Aquinas 22). The third argument deals with possibility and necessity. He argues that it is possible for everything to be and not to be. These things cannot always exist though, and they cannot never exist because then nothing would exist. Aquinas argues that every necessary thing has its necessity cause by another and at the end of this chain of necessity, you find God. “Therefore we cannot but admit the existence of some being having of itself its own necessity, and not receiving it from another, but rather causing in others their necessity. This all men speak of as God” (Aquinas 23). The fourth argument is about the gradation, or varying degrees of certain characteristics found in all beings. He reveals the idea that the maximum in anything is the cause of that thing and uses fire being the maximum of heat, therefore being the cause of everything hot as an example. “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” (Aquinas 23). The fifth argument has to do with the

His writing is very persuasive and has great logical reasoning behind it. While the ideas that Aquinas uses in his arguments are great as affirmation to someone who is already a believer such as myself, I personally believe that people who aren’t comfortable with the idea of an existing God would discard Aquinas’ arguments and instead say that everything is due to human instinct and nature. Such as the argument of acting towards the best possible purpose simply being survival instincts, which all beings possess. Also I think someone could argue that Aquinas’ statement of gradation of characteristics in is simply the varying abilities of their egos, as Freud would say, to balance their instinctual needs with their morality, whereas Aquinas claims this to be our attempt to reach a maximum, which is God. I am not bringing up these arguments because I believe them to be valid or true, I just think that there are certain places in Aquinas’ arguments where a nonbeliever could try to justify their side using a more scientific, specifically psychological argument. That being said, I thought that Aquinas’ arguments were very logical as I stated before and I thought he had the perfect amount of effective persuasion. I agree with all of his arguments, but found the third one, which had to do with