QUESTIONS
1.
Explain Aquinas’ distinction between
faith and reason.
a. What
is a contemporary example of this.
2.
Explain Aquinas’ argument for God’s
existence from causation.
1.
Aquinas
makes a famous distinction between faith and reason. (Kenny, 153)
Note: In philosophy, in the
medieval period, all the major philosophers are either Jews (e.g. Maimonides),
Christians, or Muslims (e.g. Averroes, Avicenna).
“It is essentially
to Aquinas that we owe the distinction, familiar to philosophers of modern
times, between natural and revealed theology.” (153)
Or:
between faith and reason.
Suppose a philosopher makes an argument for a theological
conclusion.
We can ask: are any of the
premises taken from sacred scripture? Or have they been revealed in a private
vision?
Or: are any of the premises
facts of observation, or straightforward truths of reason?
If they are from sacred
scripture or private visions, we are dealing with revealed theology.
If they are facts of
observation or truths of reason, we are dealing with natural theology.
“Natural theology is a part
of philosophy while revealed theology is not, even though theologians may use
philosophical skills in seeking to deepen their understanding of sacred texts.”
(153)
Analogy:
a three-story house.
On the bottom floor reason
and natural experience do their work without the need of any supernatural aid.
On the second floor we find
things that are both revealed to us by God and demonstrated to us by reason.
E.g. – the existence of God; the immortality of the soul.
On the third floor are
truths that are beyond the capacity of natural intellect to discover. E.g., the
internal nature of God as a 3-Personed being (Trinity) – Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit; the historical fact of God’s becoming incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth.
“Aquinas believed that there are some theological truths
which can be reached by the unaided use of reason: for instance, the existence
of God.” (153)
But some truths can only be
known by revelation/faith; e.g., that our universe had a beginning.
Contemporary example – Gould’s NOMA. You can’t derive
‘ought’ from ‘is’.
Religion and science.
*****
2.
THE
COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT – AQUINAS
Key ideas
- Cosmological
- From “cosmos,”
which is Greek for “world.”
- The
cosmological argument moves from certain facts about the world, or the
fact that there is a world, and reasons that God is the best explanation
for these facts.
An Analogy:
You’re in your car, stopped
at a red light, and are hit from behind. You want to know what caused this. You
see that the car behind you was stopped but was itself hit from behind. So the
car behind you cannot be the cause of your being hit. You look behind that car
and notice that it also was hit from behind. And so on. Finally, you see the
“first” cause – the car that caused all the other cars to have an accident.
Suppose, however, that it
were an infinitely long pileup. Then no
one would have started the chain reaction of accidents. But if no one
started it, it would not have happened. Since it did happen, we can conclude that someone did start it. He is the
first efficient uncaused cause.
This is Aristotelian thinking.
Aristotle’s “Unmoved Mover”(89)
1. At least one thing, call it X, is in motion.
2. If X is in motion, then its motion must be
caused.
3. If X's motion is caused, then the cause of
that motion must be either a) a series of movers which are themselves moving or
b) a series of movers that contains at least one unmoved mover.
4. A series of moved movers, even if it is an
infinite series, cannot explain the motion of X.
5. Therefore, the motion of X must be explained
in terms of the existence of an unmoved mover.
Since no thing (or series of things) can move (change)
itself, there must be a first, Unmoved Mover, source of all motion.
Aquinas
takes this reasoning and applies it to cause and effect.
Causation
is a fact about the world.
- Everything that
happens has a cause.
- That cause
itself is the effect of some prior cause.
- And that cause
itself is also the effect of some prior cause.
- And so on… until we ultimately reach an uncaused
cause, which is God.
Quoting
Aquinas:
“In the
observable world causes are found ordered in series: we never observe, nor ever
could, something causing itself, for this would mean it preceded itself, and
this is not possible. But a series of causes can’t go on forever, for in any
such series an earlier member causes an intermediate and the intermediate a
last (whether the intermediate be one or many). Now eliminating a cause eliminates
its effects, and unless there’s a first cause there won’t be a last or an
intermediate. But if a series of causes goes on fore ever it will have no
first cause, and so no intermediate causes and no last effect, which is clearly
false. So we are forced to postulate some first agent cause, to which everyone
gives the name God.” (ST, 1a.3)
Efficient
cause – a trigger that sets a process going. E.g., the spark that produces the
explosion. E.g., the tap of a key that produces a letter on the computer screen.
This is
causality in esse.
Aquinas
is not thinking about causality in time.
- This would make
the cosmological argument say that what happens at the present moment is
dependent on what happened in the moment prior to it.
- Rather, Aquinas
is saying that at any point in time there is a series of relationships of
dependence that lead to God as the source of all change and all
causation.
- In other words,
at this present moment God is the source of all change in an ultimate
sense and the cause of there being something rather than nothing.
Kenny – “the series of efficient causes in the world must
lead to an uncaused cause.” (152)
*****
For
more explanation:
These
efficient causes are ordered in a series.
We never find that
something is the efficient cause of itself. The spark may cause the explosion;
but the spark cannot be the cause of the spark.
To be its own cause
it would have to preexist itself, and that is absurd. It cannot exist before it
exists!
The spark itself
requires another efficient cause, perhaps a hammer striking a rock.
If you
take away the cause, you take away the effect. No
hammer, no spark; no spark, no explosion; no explosion, no….
What we
find in our world is that one cause depends on another for its existence.
This
order does not have to be a temporal order, or an order in time.
E.g.,
my cheek depresses simultaneously with my finger pushing on it.
The cause of my cheek
depressing is my finger pushing it. But here the cause is not prior in time.
- This is called
causality in esse. It is not a
temporal causality.
Now note: Something
causes my finger to push my cheek in. Simultaneously. And something
simultaneously causes that.
Could this series of
causes (causal dependency) go on forever (be infinite)? Aquinas says no.
Because if the causal series was infinite, there would be no cause that is
“first.” A first cause is needed, because if there was not a first cause the
sequence of effects would never happen.
A “first” cause would
be one on which the whole causal order depended, while it depended on nothing
outside itself.
If there was no first
cause, then there would be no intermediate causes, and no ultimate effects.
But there are causes
and effects. Therefore there must be a first cause. And that is what everyone
calls God.”
