Aquinas Explanation of the cosmological Argument

Aquinas Explanation of the cosmological Argument


Aquinas explanation of the cosmological argument
St Thomas Aquinas was the greatest medical philosopher, who also continues to have an enormous influence upon catholic thoughts. He was called various different names due to his ideas, but he turned out to be “an oax that roared”. Aquinas integrated Aristotle’s philosophy into Christianity. He proposed five ways that proved the existence of God, of which the first three are cosmological arguments. Aquinas’s cosmological argument is posteriori, which is knowledge we can only know by experiencing the world. It is also synthetic proof as the conclusion of the proof isn’t contained in the premise. Lastly his argument is inductive as both premises can be true, but will lead to a probably true conclusion.
The first way revolves around motion. Aquinas believed that something moves all things, and that mover is moved by something else. You can’t have an infinite chain, so there must be an unmoved mover who is God. In more depth motion talks about how it has to go from potentiality to actuality, as the item has to have actuality within itself to be changed. Potentiality is the possibility of doing something or becoming something, and actuality is when potential is achieved. An example of this would be fire, which is actually hot , changes wood, which is potentially hot, to a state of being actually hot. Motion, therefore is a change of state and not just movement in time and space from one place to another.
The second way in Aquinas’s approach to the cosmological argument is causes. Aquinas had four causes. Which started of with material, material refers to a change or movement material cause is the aspect of the change/movement, which is determined by the material which the moving or changing things are made of. For a table that might be made of wood, for a statue might be bronze or marble. The second cause was the efficient cause, is a change or movement efficient or moving causes refers to things apart from the...

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