Theories Of Thomas Aquinas Essay, Research Paper

Thomas Aquinas a Dominican Monk is considered by many to be the greatest theologican in Western religion. Hewrites of two poopsite theories woth reasons for th enon existence of god and then for the existence of god. He starts off with his views for the non-exisence ofgod relating this through two objections .In the first of the two he defines God as infinitegoodnes and oes on to say that if god truly existed, that there would be no evil.Since evil does exise in the world, there must therefore be no god.

Aquinas also shows this non existence through objectiv etwo where he writes how it is expecting too much for somehings thatcan be accounted for to be a few pincipals has been produced by many. There are other principals tht account fo every tthing we seein our worldspposing Goddid not exist. All things can b reduced to one principal,that of nature and therefore is no need o suppose gods existence.

Aquinas in the next section of his writing takes the opposite side and gives five aguments to the existence of God. Thefirst agurment Aquinas attempts tpo prove throug thories of motion ,the existnce of God. e writes that since motion exist in the world, and motion is caused by something else, then in order for there to be any motion (life) then there must be an orginal thing ,God to cause this motion.

The second wa is the aqurment from causation. he writes since we know hat something causes another thng and it is impossible for something to cause itself, then in order for anything to proceed inifinity(man,nature0 is must be causd be other causes. if there is no first cause (god) there would be no effect. So if we do exist and proced to infinity there must exist a first power, this men call God.

The third way is the aqurment from contingency. He focuses on th efacor of contengency. he writes that some things in the universe ae capable of existing and not xisting but t is upsurd to asum that there must have been a time when nothing existed and then there would be nothing in existence because you cannot bring about our own existing.

the fourth way is he agurmnt from hamony In this final aurmnt he bases it on th epossesion of knowledge nd wries that thing that lack knowledge work toad a goal. there must b somehind possesing infinite knowledge guiding natural things thus God.