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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
Aquinas’ five ways are often criticized because, unless further argumentation is supplied, their conclusion is not obviously identical to the God of classical theism. Such criticism overlooks the semantic and hermeneutic functions of natural theology. By fixing the referent for the word ‘God’, the five ways allow the philosopher to provide an intelligible account of divinity. This knowledge of the cause through its effects follows the systematic structure of the triplex via (causation, negation, and eminence), a program that guides Aquinas’ account of divine attributes all the way through Summa Theologiae I qq.2-26 and Summa Contra Gentiles I. By following this rational itinerary the demonstrative power of the ways can be better assessed, looking at them not as an apologetic exercise, but as a first step in the seek for a deeper understanding of the divine source of Creation.
The research for this paper was carried out in the context of my Master's studies, which were funded by the Government of Chile through ANID's scholarships programs and through the Fondecyt initiation project no. 11180640. Funding was also provided by the John Templeton Foundation project 61559-2, ‘Supporting Constructive Research on the Existence of God in Spanish-Speaking Latin America’. I am especially grateful to Professors Juan Eduardo Carreño, Rafael Simián, Daniel Contreras, María Isabel Lemaitre and Alfred Freddoso for their attentive critical reading and suggestions on earlier drafts of this work. I am also grateful for the incisive and timely suggestions of two anonymous reviewers, which helped to improve the text considerably.
2 Twetten, David B., ‘To Which ‘God’ Must a Proof of God's Existence Conclude for Aquinas?’, in Houser, R. E., ed., Laudemos Viros Gloriosos. Essays in Honor of Armand Maurer, CSB (South Bend, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), pp. 146–47Google Scholar. Twetten ideas are further developed in Twetten, David B., ‘Aquinas Aristotelian and Dionisian Definition of God’, The Thomist 69, no. 2 (2005), pp. 203–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; David B. Twetten, ‘¿Un Dios para no-teístas? La definición pluralista del nombre ‘Dios’ en Tomás de Aquino’, in La Sabiduría En Tomás de Aquino: Inspiración y Reflexión, ed. Erizar, Liliana Beatriz (Bogotá: Universidad Sergio Arboleda; Sociedad Tomista Argentina, 2017), pp. 55-85Google Scholar; David, B. Twetten et al., ‘Definition: Theism’, in Theism and Atheism. Opposing Arguments in Philosophy., ed. Koterski, Joseph W. and Oppy, Graham (Macmillan Reference USA, 2019), pp. 1–17Google Scholar. I mostly agree with this author, and my research can be read as a further development of the approach he calls ‘minimal definition theism’, though in footnote 39 I will point out an important difference between our positions.
3 Cf. Twetten et al., ‘Definition: Theism’, pp. 5–6.
4 Wolterstorff, Nicholas, ‘The Migration of Theistic Arguments: From Natural Theology to Evidentialist Apologetics’, in Audi, Robert and Wainwright, William J., eds., Rationality, Religious Belief and Moral Commitment. New Essays in the Philosophy of Religion (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986), pp. 38–81Google Scholar.
5 All the quotes from Aquinas have been translated by me from the text of the Leonine Edition available at http://www.corpusthomisticum.org. I quote using the following abbreviations: ST = Summa Thelogiae; SCG = Summa contra Gentiles; SSPL = Scriptum Super Libros Sententiarum Magistri Petri Lombardi; SBT = Super Boethium de Trinitate; d.= distinction; q. = quaestio; a. = articulus; ad = answer to the objection; ch. = chapter; l. = lectio.
6 It might be an exaggeration to say that there were no atheists in the Middle Ages, but there is certainly not such a thing as an ‘standard medieval atheist’, that shares with the theist what they both consider the best science available but is sceptic regarding some philosophical arguments for God's existence that could be eventually isolated from that shared corpus of scientific beliefs.
7 Such an exposition should of course bear in mind that the five ways are merely a summary account of the arguments, and that even in Aquinas’ days a rigorous restatement was required if they were to exhibit its full demonstrative power.
8 Twetten, ‘To Which ‘God’ Must a Proof of God's Existence Conclude for Aquinas?’, pp. 150–51.However, Twetten final position seems to be at least minimally prescriptive, since he lays down explicit requisites for an adequate nominal definition. Also cf. Twetten, ‘¿Un Dios Para No-Teístas?’, pp. 79–80; Twetten, ‘Aquinas Aristotelian and Dionisian Definition of God’, pp. 248–49. I will return to this aspect of Twetten's position in footnote 39.
9 This will not be mere exegesis but also creative reappropriation. It must be so, since the so-called treatise on Deo Uno was never intended to be natural theology strictu sensu, but a text on revealed theology or sacra doctrina. SCG I is much closer to be natural theology properly speaking, but it is still a natural theology in constant interaction with revelation (because Aquinas aims precisely to show the conformity between faith and reason).
10 Pruss, Alexander R., ‘The Leibnizian Cosmological Argument’, in Craig, William Lane and Moreland, J. P., eds. The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology (West-Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), pp. 90–98Google Scholar.
11 Joseph Owens, St Thomas on the Existence of God. The Collected Papers of Joseph Owens, ed. Catan, John R. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1980), pp. 132–41Google Scholar.
12 Twetten, ‘To Which ‘God’ Must a Proof of God's Existence Conclude for Aquinas?’, pp. 148–49; Twetten et al., ‘Definition: Theism’, pp. 5–6; Twetten, ‘¿Un Dios para no-teístas?’, pp. 56–57.
13 Kretzmann, Norman, The Metaphysics of Theism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 86–87Google Scholar.
14 Twetten, ‘To Which ‘God’ Must a Proof of God's Existence Conclude for Aquinas?’, p. 149. Edward Sillem is also cited as a sample of this approach in Twetten, ‘¿Un Dios para no-teístas?’, p. 61.
15 Wippel, John, The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas. From Finite Being to Uncreated Being (Washington, D. C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2000), pp. 485–500Google Scholar.
16 Pruss, op. cit., pp. 90–91. While most authors seem to assume that accepting the result of the ways to be properly called ‘God’ requires the establishment of entitative divine attributes, leaving aside the operative ones, Pruss remarks that the latter are fundamental for God's description as a personal being exercising agency over nature (which is a distinctive note of classical theism). Accordingly, Pruss will consider agency and personhood to be one of the main problems that must be addressed by natural theology.
17 Wippel, op. cit., p. 495. One argument Wippel uses to defend his position is the fact that additional chapters are dedicated to the discussion of God's uniqueness in ST and SCG, while such discussion is lacking in the case of the argument in De Ente et Essentia. It is natural to consider this as not due to differences between both arguments—it is simply that Aquinas did not pretend to carry out a full discussion of divine attributes in the latter text, as he did in the former. Aquinas did believe that additional arguments were required to demonstrate God's uniqueness, but he did not consider these further arguments strictly necessary for the success of the demonstrations of God's existence.
18 Kretzmann, op. cit., pp. 21–22.
19 Ibid., p. 47.
20 Ibid., pp. 41–42.
21 Ibid., pp. 86–87.
22 Was the triplex via already present in Pseudo-Dionysius? Gregory Rocca points out that, although in Aquinas’ time the standard interpretation of the text recognized in it a threefold path, it seems more accurate to read it as a twofold path: On the one hand, there was the conceptual path of affirmative theology, based on the causal action of God over Creation, and on the other was the mystical path of negative theology, based on the eminent transcendence of God towards created reality. Cf. Rocca, Gregory, Speaking the Incomprehensible God. Thomas Aquinas on the Interplay of Positive and Negative Theology (Washington, D. C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2004), pp. 15–26Google Scholar. Nevertheless, the causation-negation-eminence structure already appears in other authors of the second and third century of our era, like Albinus and Plotinus (as noted also by Rocca, pp. 7–14). Besides, as Fran O'Rourke remarks, already in Pseudo-Dionysius the via causalitatis is always in the background, supporting both approaches, which are not entirely independent of each other. Cf. O'Rourke, Fran, Pseudo-Dionysius and the Metaphysics of Aquinas (Leiden. New York. Köln: E. J. Brill, 1992), pp. 7–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
23 Rocca, Op. cit., pp. 49–55.
24 It is worth noticing that Aquinas has deliberately changed pseudo-Dyonisus’ order when quoting him by the end of this text.
25 Ewbank, Michael B., ‘Diverses Orders of Dionysius ‘Triplex Via’ by St. Thomas Aquinas’, Medieval Studies 52 (1990), pp. 82–109Google Scholar.
26 Ewbank's distinctions between the contexts of the two different orders beginning with causality, and his explanation of the only isolated text that begins with the via eminentiae, are less convincing. Ettiene Gilson also considered the possible meaning of the change Aquinas introduced in the order received from Pseudo-Dionysius, and particularly remarked the priority of causation over negation. Cf Gilson, Ettiene, Le Thomisme (Paris: J. Vrin, 1974), pp. 163–66Google Scholar.
27 See the table at the end of Ewbank's paper (p. 109), which collates the texts where each order appears. Twetten adds a couple of additional texts to this list in ‘Aquinas Aristotelian and Dionisian Definition of God’, 221–22.
28 However, in the earlier text of SSPL I d.3, q.1, prologus, Aquinas organizes the arguments for the existence of God according to three members of triplex via.
29 Velde, Rudi Te, Aquinas on God: The ‘Divine Science’ of the Summa Theologiae (Farnham, England: Ashgate, 2006), pp. 77–85Google Scholar.
30 For example, in an early text Aquinas describes the process of denial as follows: ‘When advancing towards God by the way of remotion, we first deny from Him all bodily things. Secondly, we also deny from Him the intellectual things, as goodness and wisdom, regarding the way these are found in creatures. And then all what remains in our intellect is that He is, and nothing more; and therefore He is as under certain confusion. Finally, we remove from Him also the very being, regarding the way it is in creatures. And then He remains in a certain darkness of ignorance, according to which, regarding the present life state, we are best united to God, as Dionysius says. And this is a sort of thick fog in which God is said to dwell’ (SSPL I d.8 q.1 a.1 ad 4).
31 Te Velde, Op. cit., pp. 72–77.
32 Rocca, Op. cit., pp. 58–62.
33 Avicenna is not explicitly cited here, but he is named in the parallel passage of SSPL I d.2 a.3. Aquinas develops a more exhaustive discussion of this in DP q.7 a.5.
34 The crucial importance of causal resemblance in the theology of Aquinas and his relationship to Dionysus’ texts is further developed by O'Rourke, Op. cit, pp. 41–44. Also cf. Wippel, John, ‘Thomas Aquinas on Our Knowledge of God and the Axiom That Every Agent Produces Something Like Itself’, American Catholic Philosophic Association Proceedings 74 (2001), pp. 81–101CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
35 Velecky, Lubor, Aquinas’ Five Arguments in the Summa Theologiae 1a 2, 3, Studies in Philosophical Theology (Kampen: Kok, 1994), pp. 32–38Google Scholar.
36 Porro, Pasquale, Thomas Aquinas. A Historical and Philosophical Profile, trans. Trabbic, Joseph G. and Nutt, Roger W. (Washington, D. C.: Catolic University of America Press, 2016), p. 228Google Scholar.
37 Ibid., p. 132.
38 I am uncertain regarding whether Twetten acknowledges this point. On the one hand, he insists that minimal definition theism has a non-prescriptive approach to the proofs of God's existence, and that the plurality of arguments results in a plurality of definitions (therefore, the nominal definition of God is provided by the argument itself). On the other hand, he lays down certain requisites, inspired in triplex via, for the nominal definition of God that an argument for God's existence must employ in order to be successful. Both positions seem to coexist in his papers as mutually supportive considerations, but I will rather pick the former and drop the latter. My opinion is that triplex via is fundamental for the further development of our natural knowledge of God, but it is not implicitly incorporated to the existential proofs. The nominal definition suggested in ST I q.13 a.8 is certainly not casual, but it is in no place presented by Aquinas as the nominal definition to be used in the arguments to prove that God exists. The text where triplex via is more explicitly connected to the task of providing a nominal definition for ‘God’ is SBT q.6 a.3, and Twetten himself acknowledges that the somewhat artificial claim that via negationis must be put in the place of the genus and via causalitatis or via eminentia will work as differentiae seems to be later abandoned. Cf. Twetten, ‘Aquinas Aristotelian and Dionisian Definition of God’, pp. 247–48.
39 Twetten, ‘To Which ‘God’ Must a Proof of God's Existence Conclude for Aquinas?’, pp. 159–65; Twetten, ‘Aquinas Aristotelian and Dionisian Definition of God’, pp. 248–49; Twetten, ‘¿Un Dios para no-teístas?’, pp. 79–80.
40 On this interpretation of Aristotle's episteme, see Lucas Angioni, ‘Aristotle's Definition of Scientific Knowledge (A Po 71b 9-12)’, Logical Analysis and History of Philosophy 19 (2016), pp. 140–66.
