So far Thomas has shown that there is a First Mover, that this First Mover is an Unmoved Mover, utterly unchanging, and that this First Mover is eternal, outside time.\u00a0 Thomas continues,<\/p>\n
The same line of reasoning clearly shows that God necessarily exists.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Necessary<\/em> and contingent<\/em> are philosophical terms of art.\u00a0 An existent being is necessary<\/em> if it must exist, and contingent<\/em> if it might not have existed, or might cease to exist.<\/p>\nFor everything that has the possibility of being and of not being, is mutable.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Coming to be and passing away are both kinds of change.\u00a0 A thing that can come to be is a thing that can change.\u00a0 A thing that can pass away is a thing that can change.<\/p>\n
But God is absolutely immutable, as has been demonstrated. Therefore it is impossible for God to be and not to be.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Since God is utterly unchanging, He can\u2019t change from existing to not-existing, or vice versa.<\/p>\n
But anything that exists in such a way that it is impossible for it not to exist, is necessarily Being itself, ipsum esse<\/em>.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\nThere are two kinds of beings that exist necessarily: those that owe their existence to another necessary being, and those that don\u2019t.\u00a0 Consider the truths of mathematics; they are necessary, and in a sense eternal, but they owe their being the First Mover (because everything does).\u00a0 If there were no First Mover, there wouldn\u2019t be anything at all, including mathematics.\u00a0 But the First Mover doesn\u2019t owe its existence to anything else, and is necessarily Being itself, the ground of all other being.<\/p>\n
Necessary existence, and impossibility of nonexistence, mean one and the same thing. Therefore God must necessarily exist.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Note when Thomas says, \u201cTherefore God must necessarily exist,\u201d he isn\u2019t saying that he\u2019s proven God\u2019s existence yet again; he\u2019s characterizing God\u2019s existence (already proven) as necessary<\/em>, something that cannot be otherwise.<\/p>\nThomas then, as usual, goes on to give another argument:<\/p>\n
Moreover, everything that has a possibility of being and of not being, needs something else to make it be, for, as far as it itself is concerned, it is indifferent with regard to either alternative.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
A contingent<\/em> thing, a thing might exist or might not exist at any given time, needs a cause to bring it into exist.\u00a0 If it doesn\u2019t exist, it certainly can\u2019t bring itself<\/em> into existence.<\/p>\nBut that which causes another thing to be, is prior to that thing. Hence something exists prior to that which has the possibility of being and of not being.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
So we have a causal chain of contingent beings; we can follow it backwards.\u00a0 But we\u2019ve already established that there\u2019s a First Mover in all such causal chains.<\/p>\n
However, nothing is prior to God. Therefore it is impossible for Him to be and not to be; of necessity, He must be.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
In short, we eventually bump into God, the First Mover, and we know there\u2019s nothing prior to Him<\/em>.<\/p>\nAnd since there are some necessary things that have a cause of their necessity, a cause that must be prior to them, God, who is the first of all, has no cause of His own necessity. Therefore it is necessary for God to be through Himself.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Because there is God there are other necessary things, like the truths of mathematics.\u00a0 They have a cause of their necessity, i.e., God, which is to say they get their being from Him.\u00a0 But God does not have a cause of His necessity; He must get His being from Himself.\u00a0 This is why we say that God is the ground of all being.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We\u2019re blogging through St. Thomas Aquinas\u2019\u00a0Compendium Theologiae, sometimes called his\u00a0Shorter Summa. Find the previous posts\u00a0here. So far Thomas has shown that there is a First Mover, that this First Mover is an Unmoved Mover, utterly unchanging, and that this First Mover is eternal, outside time.\u00a0 Thomas continues, The same line of reasoning clearly shows that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1131,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[360],"tags":[361,841],"class_list":["post-2410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-believing-thomas","tag-compendium-theologiae","tag-thomas-aquinas"],"yoast_head":"\n
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