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CHAPTER 8: THE SCHOLAR: THOMAS AQUINAS

I. The God Centered Universe

A. Whereas the classical mind was predominantly secular, the medieval mind was chiefly theological.

1. The classical philosophers didn’t believe that faith in God was the key to knowledge because was based on belief.

B. The medieval world saw philosophers turn from the study of man and nature to the “otherworldly” inquiries and the study of God.

1. Medieval philosophers thought that faith was more important than belief because faith led to eternal salvation whereas reason was only good for our relatively short life in this world.

C. The Seeds of Change

A. Christians were uninterested in philosophy and science because they believed that the world would in with the second coming of Christ their chief concern was salvation through faith.

B. Christians devoted themselves to converting non-Christians and preparing their own souls for the judgment that would occur with the second coming of Christ.

C. As time passed and the world did not end, Christians found it increasingly difficult to avoid dealing with the problems of the here and now.

D. Some interpretation of Christian teachings was called for since the Second coming might be generations away.

1. Criteria had to be developed for distinguishing revelation from delusion.

II. Augustine: Between Two Worlds (354-430)

A. Aurelius Augustine founded the Augustinian Order, the oldest Christian monastic order in the West.

B. Augustine enthusiastically partook in worldly pleasures until he was converted to Christianity in 387.

C. In 396 Augustine succeeded Valerius as the Bishop of Hippo.

D. His important philosophical works were the City of God, in which he argued that the fall of Rome was part of Gods plan, and Confessions, which was biographical and dealt with his earlier struggles with the struggles between the longings of the heart and the demands of the mind.

E. Pride and Philosophy

1. Augustine argued that reason without faith was unreliable, even dangerous.

2. By itself, reason does not guide the will but is guided by it.

F. He set into motion the shift from the human-centric classical worldview to the God-centric medieval world view.

III. The Life of Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274).

A. Thomas’ father wanted him to be a Benedictine monk because he believed it would lead to a prestigious position in the Catholic Church. Thomas family kidnapped him after he decided to switch from the

Benedictine Order to the Dominican Order, which was a poorer order, in order to get him to change his mind.

B. When after 3 months it was clear that he wasn’t switching back to the Benedictine Order, they released him.

IV. Albertus Magnus: The Universal Teacher (1200-1280)

A. Was one of the first scholars to realize the need to ground the Christian faith in philosophy and science.

B. Rather than ignore the huge quantity of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim learning made available by the Crusades, Albert chose to master it.

C. His efforts at synthesis laid the foundation for Thomas Aquinas.

V. The Task of the Scholar

A. As Aristotle’s influence spread throughout the University of Paris question arose regarding both the relationship of Aristotle’s classical naturalism to orthodox Christianity and the accuracy of newly arrived Arabian commentaries on Aristotle.

B. The faculty realized that Aristotle would have to be integrated into Christian theology.

C. This task became the accomplishment of Thomas Aquinas.

VI. The Wisdotm of the Scholar

A. Scholasticism refers to mainstream Christian philosophy in medieval Europe from about 1100 to 1300.

B. Scholastic philosophy rested on a strong interest in logical and linguistic analysis of texts and on arguments producing a systematic statement and defense of Christian beliefs.

C. A central effort of Scholastic philosophers was the attempt to reconstruct Greek philosophy that not only was consistent with but also supported and strengthened Christian doctrine.

D. Revelation and faith were higher in the hierarchy of knowledge than was philosophy.

E. Not only did the Scholastics teach and expound on religious texts, they defended them in public debates.

F. Intellectual standards were developed for documenting an argument with citations from approved sources.

VII. Why Do People Argue About Spiritual Matters?

A. Most people fall back on their personal beliefs when they argue about spiritual beliefs.

B. Religious questions should be about what is real, what exists and what is true rather about what people think is true.

C. Laws of reason and standards of evidence should be applied when arguing about religious beliefs.

D. In Thomas’ time there were two conflicting claims about what constituted the proper standard of evidence for evaluating matters of theology.

1. The first said that revelation from God was the only source of knowledge.

2. The second said that truth could only be discovered through concrete experience and deductive reasoning.

E. God and Natural Reason

1. Thomas approached this problem of evidence through an Aristotelian, naturalistic position based on natural reason.

2. Natural reason is reason unaided by divine revelation.

3. Natural theology is theology based on appeals to natural reason.

4. Thomas’ efforts to prove God’s existence began with appeals to concrete experience and empirical evidence rather that revelation. This was an approach favored by Aristotle.

VIII. Proving the Existence of God – Five proofs from Thomas Aquinas

A. The First Way: Motion

1. It starts with the observation that all things are moving.

2. Motion must be given to an object by some other object that is already moving. (Example-string of dominoes striking each other.)

3. Things are actually in motion, therefore, some first already moving thing must have moved other not yet moving things.

4. Some first moving thing must have existed outside of the series of becoming.

5. That unmoved mover was God.

B. The Second Way: Cause

1. The second argument concerns the initiating cause of the existence of the universe. It is called the cosmological argument.

2. The cosmological argument is that it is impossible for any natural thing to be the source of its own existence. e.g. we have parents, grandparents, etc.

3. This goes back to Adam and Eve, but even Adam and Eve didn’t cause their own existence.

4. Adam and Eve’s existence was caused by God.

5. This is based on Aristotle’s efficient cause, the force that initiates change or brings about some activity.

6. There has to be an originating cause, an uncaused cause, which is God.

C. The Third Way: Necessity

1. There are two types of causes:

a. Contingent causes – there existence is dependent on something else that do not have to exist and eventually cease to exist.

b. Necessary causes

2. There was never nothing because if there was there would be no space for something to come into being.

3. If nothing ever existed nothing would always exist.

4. But all around us things exist. Therefore, there was never no-thing.

5. The logic of Thomas’ third way relies on the principle of sufficient reason, nothing happens without a reason.

6. The principle of plentitude – given the infinity of the universe anything that could happen has happened once.

7. There must be something whose existence is necessary and not just possible and that thing is God.

8. God is the reason the universe came into being.

D. The Fourth Way: Degree

1. The first three arguments for the existence of God fail to establish the existence of a good and loving being, they only deny the possibility of an infinite series of causes and effects.

2. In fourth argument describes God as a qualitatively different kind of being.

3. In Thomas’ argument from gradation, which is based on the metaphysical concept of hierarchy of souls, he says that being progresses from inanimate objects to increasingly complex animated creatures.

4. The chain of being continues up from the angels to God.

5. The first three causation arguments the cause could theoretically constitute something other than God. However, the Fourth Way establishes that only something as perfect as God could be the cause.

E. Fifth Way: Design

1. This is also caused Thomas’s teleological argument.

2. Telos means understanding things in terms of their end. e.g. infancy is understood in terms of adulthood.

3. The complex interrelatedness of the earth unfolds in and orderly manner or design. e.g. the rainforests of the Amazon basin scrubs the world’s atmosphere.

4. Design by its nature implies conscious intent.

5. According to Thomas order implies a plan and God put together that plan or design.

IX. Commentary on the Five Ways

A. Thomas’ arguments begin with empirical observations then attempt to show that the only adequate explanation for them requires the existence of God.

B. However, some say that is not true.

C. Thomas says that an infinite series of events is impossible.

D. However, mathematically it actually is because you can always add 1.

E. However, Thomas is not denying the impossibility of the existence of an infinite series, he is denying the impossibility of the existence of an infinite series of the same thing.

F. It also could be argued that there is much disorder in the world.

G. However, Thomas was talking about the system as a whole. Scientific explanations are about within systems.

H. Scientific experiments the first by Stanley Miller, have created inorganic matter out of organic matter to show how the universe was created.

I. However, Thomas would have argued that just as it took the scientist to design the experiment it took God to design the universe.

J. Also, where did the inorganic matter come from?

K. The matter an energy that the scientists use in their experiments must come from somewhere.

L. The experiments might explain the origins of life within the universe but they do not explain the creation of the universe as a whole.

X. Complications for Natural Theology

A. If God causes everything to happen, every event must happen just as he says.

B. If everything happens just as God says then human beings do not have free will.

C. However free will is a necessary condition for moral responsibility.

D. Therefore, if human beings do not have free will, then God should not punish them for doing wrong.

E. The Problem of Evil

1. If God can prevent the destructive suffering of the innocent and chooses not to, then God is not good.

2. If God chooses to prevent suffering but cannot, then he is not omnipotent.

3. If God cannot recognize the suffering of the innocent, he is not wise.

4. It is contradictory to say that God is the cause of everything then to say he is not responsible for the existence of evil.

5. Thomas believed that God willed the universe to communicate His of His own essence in order to “multiply Himself.”

6. Since the essence of God is love, God created the Universe as a reflection of his love.

7. Since if we were forced to love it would not be love, the evil in the world is possible because of this ability not to love.

8. If we were forced to love it wouldn’t be love.

9. A universe with free moral choices is better than a restricted universe without love and responsibility.

10. God gave us free will, therefore, we are free to do good or evil.

11. Thomas believed that evil was a lack of goodness, and as a result, is not creatable. (God didn’t create it)

12. People do not willingly do evil. e.g. an adulterer has not chosen evil, but has chosen sensual pleasure, which he considers good for himself.

13. Augustine said there was a difference between us being preordained (forced) to live out an unchangeable future and God having foreknowledge of that future.

14. Among the things that God foresees is that we will exercise free will.

15. God chose to create the universe as a natural order in which suffering could occur, but he did not will suffering.

16. Since God made us free to choose, suffering is inevitable.

17. Evil must always be possible when love and goodness are free choices.

18. God could not create humans that do not suffer since we have a physical body.

XI. Commentary

A. People ask the questions, why didn’t God make his existence indisputable, why didn’t he create us so that we do not suffer or do wrong?

B. Thomas refused to speculate on God’s motives, therefore, in the end, Thomas accepted the limitations of the human mind when it came to the infinite.

C. Thomas’ philosophy is alive today as a vital component of Roman Catholicism.

D. Thomas fulfilled the promise of Aristotle when he produced a cohesive system that included all of the known sciences of his time.

E. The specialization of knowledge today makes such and achievement virtually impossible.

F. Thomas faced the tension between reason and faith and without abandoning either came down on the side of faith. The next philosopher we study recognized the same tension but gave himself to reason.