The Five Ways and the Oneness of God

The Thomist 62 (1998): 245-68 THE FIVE WAYS AND THE ONENESS OF GOD jOHNR. WILCOX Spalding University Louisville, Kentucky WHAT ARE St. Thomas Aquinas's philosophical reasons for thinking that his five separate ways for demonstrating the existence of God in the Summa Theologiae are all demonstrations for the existence of the same being? To answer this question, it is necessary to search the texts beyond the brief demonstrations themselves. Specifically, I will piece together an answer through a careful reading of questions 3, 4, and 11 of the Prima Pars. Pursuing this guiding question through these texts will lead to an understanding of what kind of being St. Thomas thought God to be, and to an understanding of how St. Thomas thought human beings are best able to use their limited rational abilities to think and to speak about God. The point of this inquiry is not to approach the demonstrations as strict logical proofs which can stand completely on their own. Rather, my aim is to see these demonstrations as part of a broader effort to think about God philosophically. Moreover , I will argue that the coherence Thomas achieves in his thinking about God gives greater strength to his demonstrations than can be appreciated if they are examined in terms only of themselves. The five ways play into a way of understanding God that has a many-sided explanatory power but is at the same time profoundly simple. Insofar as the five ways aim to demonstrate the existence of God, their philosophical and theological importance can hardly be overestimated. Nonetheless, within Thomas's larger thought, their role is easy to overestimate insofar as they are drawn from 245 246 JOHN R. WILCOX philosophy and not from faith. This point is very important for gauging at the outset the kind of understanding the demonstrations are aimed to produce. For Thomas, it cannot be a goal of philosophy to achieve a full and dear vision of the highest truths, for a better vision of these truths can be gained through faith. However, philosophy can show how the parameters within which faith operates are philosophically respectable. Therefore, whether or not the demonstrations are philosophically persuasive is neither the sole nor the final issue. It is not the sole issue, for even short of being philosophically persuasive, the demonstrations can still fulfill a philosophically proper purpose if they demonstrate a way of thinking about God that is coherent with other major parts of Thomas's philosophy and theology. The demonstrations can help us to connect our understanding of the God of faith with philosophy. But philosophy also can serve a wider goal extrinsic to itself, for the philosophical understanding can be stretched beyond itself to serve faith. A secure and properly philosophical understanding of God is not the highest goal for the human intellect; that goal is an enriched understanding of God through faith. Therefore, to approach the five ways simply with the purpose of evaluating their strength as logical arguments in one way greatly overestimates their importance , for philosophy does not yield the highest knowledge; yet at the same time it greatly underestimates their importance, for Thomas has other philosophical and theological purposes for these demonstrations. My question of how the five ways are all arguments for the same being is raised in light of Thomas's claims that the arguments neither begin nor end in an understanding of God's essence. Right away there is a problem. How could we know that different arguments prove the existence ofthe same thing ifwe do not know what that thing is? As I hope to show, Thomas's answer is to be found in terms of his position that, although we are incapable of knowing God's essence in a positive way, there are many things we can know about what God is not. My claim will be that the various things we can know about what God is not will also inform us of the way in which Thomas's demonstrations THE FIVE WAYS AND THE ONENESS OF GOD 247 for the existence of God were all meant to point our minds to the same being. As far as I know...