Entreatments of God: Reflections on Aquinas' Five Ways1

ENTREATMENTS OF GOD: REFLECTIONS ON AQUINAS' FIVE WAYS1 St. Thomas Aquinas' proofs of God's existence in Summa Tkeologiae , Part I, question 2, article 3, are usually read as a posteriori cosmological arguments: proofs which begin with our experience of the world as effect and conclude to God as the first cause of its existence and actual constitution. This reading is recommended by Thomas' statement that his proofs are demonstrations quia, not demonstrations propter quid, and by his extensive deployment of the notion of causality. I believe, however, that this interpretation of the arguments is a misunderstanding and that the conclusion, "God [under five descriptions] exists," is a simple extrapolation from a few principles of order known a priori. I shall suggest that the order of effect to cause is a species of the order of sign to signified, so that for all the Aristotelian vocabulary the proofs are essentially Augustinian . They are not cosmological but ontological. By which I mean that they conclude to God as the condition of the possibility, not just the actuality, of world-as-effect. Articles 1 and 2 of the question frame the proof. They show (a. 1) the necessity and (a. 2) the possibility of demonstrating God's existence . The existence of God must be demonstrated because it is not self-evident. It may be demonstrated because God is signified by his effects. We do not enjoy vision, the luminous presence of God, but neither are we enfolded in the total darkness of his absence. God is not simply absent or simply present, but present in the mode of 1 This paper was written during a year's leave of absence granted me by the department of philosophy of the University of Texas at Austin. I was supported during this year by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the University Research Institute of the University of Texas. This paper is therefore indebted to these organizations. I am grateful to the following friends and colleagues whose careful and incisive criticisms have improved this paper in many ways: Douglas Gordon, A. P. Martinich, David Blumenfeld, and John Whelan. The faults that remain are those I insisted on. I04LOUIS MACKEY absence and absent in the mode of presence. He is not given in the world but signified by the world. Thomas says (a. 2, corpus) that cum effectus aliquis nobis est manifestior quam sua causa, per effectum procedimus ad cognitionem causae. The effect leads to a knowledge of its cause insofar as it is a sign of (nobis... manifestior quam) its cause. That effects are signs of their causes is asserted by Augustine in De Doctrina Christiana, Book II, chapter 1. Smoke, for example, is a sign of fire, footprints signify the passage of an animal, and involuntary facial expressions are signs of emotion. Thus the form of our knowledge of God is the order of signs (effects) to signified (cause). In article 1 Thomas denies that "God exists" is self-evident quoad nos. Anselm's proof argues that God's existence in re follows immediately from the meaning of his name, which Thomas initially gives (obj. 2) as id quo maius significari non potest. But Thomas answers: Dato etiam quod quilibet intelligat hoc nomine Deus significari hoc quod dicitur, scilicet illud quo maius cogitari non potest; non tamen propter hoc sequitur quod intelligat id quod significatur per nomen, esse in rerum natura; sed in apprehensione intellectus tantum. Nec potest argui quod sit in re, nisi daretur quod sit in re aliquid quo maius cogitari non potest... (ad 2). This reply, which sounds like an obstinate refusal to grant the conclusion of a cogent argument — an unwillingness or perhaps an incapacity to see the obvious —, is really an insistence that the signified is never given in and with the sign. Not even in the case of God. The apprehension of the signified is always distinct from the apprehension of the sign. God's reality cannot be read off from his name. His name, however, is a means by which we may arrive at the knowledge of his reality. This point is made in article 2, which is the obverse of article 1. It...