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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Serie: First Books in Philosophy
- Sprache: Englisch
Philosophy of Religion is an engaging introduction to the main tenets of this fascinating subject, written clearly and with detailed enough explanation to be accessible to those new to the field, whilst providing original and challenging ideas to more experienced students. * The ideal introduction to this fascinating subject, providing a clear and engaging entry point to the field * The book lucidly introduces the main issues in philosophy of religion and develops a rigorous yet accessible approach to evaluating positions on these issues * No previous exposure to philosophy is assumed, and more technical topics are introduced and explained before they are employed * Original ideas and new approaches to concepts within the book ensure that it is also relevant to those already familiar with the subject
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Seitenzahl: 345
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Preface
1 Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion
What is Philosophy of Religion?
Arguments and Proving God’s Existence
Suggested Reading
2 The Cosmological Argument for God’s Existence
Insights from the Past
Arguments for God’s Existence
A Cosmological Argument: Aquinas’ Third Way
Possibility and Necessity: A Look at ‘Modal’ Concepts
Back to the Third Way
A Question Remains
A More Substantial Objection
Some Compelling Objections
Suggested Reading
3 The Ontological Argument
Anselm’s Statement of the Argument
Preliminaries
A Statement of the Argument
Gaunilo’s Objection
Anselm’s Reply
The Objection Revised
How to Talk about God without Presupposing that He Exists
How to Be Greater than a Nonexistent Object
An Improved Version of the Argument
A New Problem Rears Its Head
Suggested Reading
4 The Argument from Design
Watches and Watchmakers
An Argument from Design
Some Initial Objections to the Argument
A Compelling Objection
A New Design Argument: Fine-Tuning
Suggested Reading
5 The Problem of Evil
Atheistic Arguments
The Problem of Evil
The Logical Problem of Evil
Examining Mackie’s Charge
The Free Will Defense
A Modal Interlude: Possible Worlds
Back to the Free Will Defense
Some Loose Ends: Earthquakes, Tsunamis, and Animal Suffering
The Evidential Problem of Evil and Skeptical Theism
An Objection and a Reply to Skeptical Theism
Suggested Reading
6 Omnipotence
Divine Attributes
Attributing Omnipotence
Defining Omnipotence and an Objection
Doing the Impossible
Constructing a Definition
Back to the Stone
Suggested Reading
7 Omniscience, Foreknowledge, and Free Will
Attributing Omniscience
Defining Omniscience
Foreknowledge and Free Will
One Response to the Argument
A Better Response to the Argument
A Harder Objection
Replies to the Argument
Suggested Reading
8 Divine Freedom and Moral Perfection
The Compossibility of the Divine Attributes?
Is There a Best Possible World?
Perfect Goodness and Divine Freedom
Some Initial Objections to the Argument
A Somewhat More Complicated (But Compelling) Objection to the Argument
Suggested Reading
9 Miracles
A Question of Definition
An Immediate Objection
A Brief Refinement
Hume’s Objection
Conclusion
Suggested Reading
10 The Evidentialist Objection
Clifford and “The Ethics of Belief”
James and “The Will to Believe”
An Assessment
Suggested Reading
11 The Evidentialist Objection and Foundationalism
Evidentialism and Foundationalism
The Evidentialist Objection Restated
Self-Referential Incoherence and Reformed Epistemology
Warrant and Proper Function
Warrant and Defeat
Warrant, What’s It Good For?
An Evidentialist Alternative
Suggested Reading
References
Index
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
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First Books in Philosophy
Series Editor: Keith Yandell, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Blackwell’s First Books in Philosophy series presents short, self-contained volumes which together provide a comprehensive introduction to the field. Each volume covers the major issues relevant to the subject at hand (e.g. philosophy of religion, ethics, philosophy of literature), and gives an account of the most plausible attempts to deal with the problems at hand.
Epistemology, Richard Fumerton
The Philosophy of Religion, Edward R. Wierenga
The Philosophy of Religion
Edward R. Wierenga
This edition first published 2016© 2016 Edward R. Wierenga
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Cover image: Chen Heng Kong / Shutterstock
For Christina, Steve, and Kate
Preface
This book is an introduction to many of the leading topics in the philosophy of religion, including arguments for and against God’s existence, the nature of several divine attributes, and the question of whether faith is rational in the absence of proof. It is intended for anyone who is interested in learning about issues and debates in the philosophy of religion. No previous exposure to philosophy is assumed, and more technical topics, such as how to evaluate arguments and how to think about metaphysical necessity and possibility, are introduced and explained before they are employed. Later chapters build on the methods introduced in earlier chapters, so readers with no prior study of philosophy are advised to start at the beginning. Although the book is intended to be introductory, I hope that there are enough original ideas or new ways of putting things to interest those already familiar with the field.
I believe that this book would also be useful in a course in philosophy of religion, either as the sole text or as a companion to one of the standard collections of historical and contemporary readings; for example, Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology, 7th edition (Rea and Pojman, 2015) or Philosophy of Religion: Selected Readings, 5th edition (Peterson, Hasker, Reichenbach, and Basinger, 2014).
I have benefited from several generations of students in my courses, whose questions and challenges have encouraged me to find clearer and more convincing ways of explaining things. I am grateful to Earl Conee and Richard Feldman for conversations on several of the topics of the book, especially, of course, on evidentialism in epistemology; and I am especially indebted to John G. Bennett and Todd Long, who generously provided insightful comments on a draft of the entire manuscript. The pervasive influence that the work of Alvin Plantinga has had on my philosophical thinking is displayed throughout the book, and I am happy to acknowledge his inspiration. Finally, I am grateful for a sabbatical leave for 2014–2015 from the University of Rochester, my academic home for the past 38 years, during which most of this book was written.
1Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion
What is Philosophy of Religion?
Philosophy of religion is just thinking philosophically about topics that come up when the subject is religion. Thinking philosophically involves reflecting critically about a set of issues, with the aim of figuring out what to believe about those issues. Sometimes such reflection is simply about what we already believe. But open-minded inquiry requires reflecting, as well, on what others have thought, and it can involve examining proposals that no one else has articulated. One aspect of this kind of critical reflection may be illustrated by an anecdote about the comic actor, W. C. Fields (1880–1946), famous for playing somewhat mean-spirited and dissolute characters in what was apparently not casting against type. Near the end of his life, Fields was observed by a friend to be reading the Bible. Surprised, since Fields was not known to be at all religious, the friend asked, “What are you doing?” Field’s reply, delivered in his characteristic snarl was, “Lookin’ for loopholes, lookin’ for loopholes.”
Philosophers look for loopholes. They take details seriously, they subject claims to close scrutiny, and they try to find what’s wrong with a given view. If the loophole they find is a (possibly made-up) case in which some general claim fails to hold, they have discovered a counterexample. Finding fault isn’t the only thing philosophers do, however. For one thing, it’s often not worth the trouble to look for loopholes to a claim that’s too vague or too carelessly stated to tell exactly what it says. So another project in which philosophers engage is that of producing a careful and clear statement of the claim or thesis under consideration. This has the benefit of providing a clear target for scrutiny. But the very process of trying come up with a precise statement of a position often results in the discovery of complications or of needed distinctions that weren’t apparent prior to attempting to state the position carefully. What emerges in this case is a deeper understanding of the complexity of the issues involved.
Another way in which philosophers try to introduce clarity before looking for loopholes is by carefully separating someone’s reasons for holding a position from the position or thesis itself. Often the best way to do this is by constructing an argument for the thesis in question, with the reasons then being seen as the premisses of this argument.1 We’ll look more closely at arguments later in this chapter. For now let’s simply observe that disentangling a thesis from reasons for it, or a conclusion from the premisses that are supposed to support it, gives us not only a clearer target to aim at but also opens up more possibilities for loopholes. As we’ll see more precisely below, reasons can fail to be good reasons either by not being true or by failing to provide the right kind of support for the claim for which they are advanced. If we’re serious about identifying a loophole in this kind of reasoning, we’ll want to be able to say accurately what it is.
Finally, philosophers don’t only set up targets for demolition. When a loophole is found, a constructive project is to attempt to fill it or to figure out a way to avoid the problem it has exposed. Perhaps a modest revision will escape the objection, or perhaps it would be better to look in a different direction altogether. Of course, any new proposal should be subjected to the same scrutiny that uncovered a flaw in the original proposal, and perhaps the new proposal will be found to have defects of its own. The process of looking for loopholes can have the felicitous outcome of leading to an improved formulation of a theory or claim, but even if it doesn’t, it will lead to a greater understanding of what the issues are.
We’ve discussed in very general terms what it is to think philosophically, but we haven’t looked at the second part of our subject: what is it to think philosophically about religion? One answer, in fact a pretty good answer, is that it is to employ the critical approach we have been discussing in the investigation of any topic that comes up when the subject is religion. As a matter of fact, philosophers of religion have found many such topics worth discussing. Some matters that we won’t examine in this book include prayer, ritual, the nature of a saint, and defining religion, to mention just a few.
Instead, we’ll take a cue from the fact that the major religions in the west – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – are all theistic religions, or varieties of theism. Richard Swinburne, the former Nolloth Professor of the Christian Religion at Oxford University, has described theism as the claim that there is someone “without a body (i.e. a spirit) who is eternal, free, able to do anything, knows everything, is perfectly good, is the proper object of human worship and obedience, the creator and sustainer of the universe” (Swinburne, 1993, p. 1). In other words, theism is the claim that there is a God, that God exists. Focusing our inquiry on this claim, so central to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, will allow us to organize our critical thinking on issues suggested by it. For example, does God exist? Can it be proven that there is a God? Or, can it be proven that there is no God? What does it mean to say that someone is “able to do anything”? Is it possible for there to be an omnipotent being? What is involved in someone who “knows everything”? If God is omniscient, does his knowledge extend to the future? And, if it does, is that compatible with human beings acting freely? If God is “the creator and sustainer of the universe,” is he able to interfere with it? Are miracles possible, and might it be rational to think that miracles have occurred? Finally, if no proof can be found of God’s existence, could it nevertheless be reasonable to believe in his existence? Is it always wrong to believe something without good evidence in its favor? How are faith and reason related?2
Arguments and Proving God’s Existence
Since our first topic is the attempt to prove that God exists, the remainder of this chapter will discuss some key concepts that will prove helpful in pursuing this topic. Although our discussion will be framed in terms of proving the existence of God, the concepts and ideas we’ll introduce here will also apply to the attempt to prove God’s nonexistence, as well as the attempt to establish anything on any of the topics we will take up in the course of this book.
A proof of God’s existence might be thought to give a really good reason to believe that God exists. I suggested above that we could distinguish a thesis from reasons for believing that thesis by construing the reasons as the premisses of an argument that has that thesis as a conclusion. Accordingly, we could start with the idea that a proof of God’s existence is an argument that has the proposition that God exists as its conclusion, where an argument is simply a list of sentences or propositions, one of which is designated as the conclusion.
Of course, not just any argument that has God exists as its conclusion would be a good argument. For starters, we should want the conclusion to follow from the premisses. It’s not easy to say exactly what “follows from” amounts to. Fortunately, there is a relatively clear concept that we can employ instead, namely, that of an argument being valid, where that term is defined as follows:
(D1) An argument is valid = df it is not possible for the premisses of the argument to be true and the conclusion false.3
We can also introduce a term to describe an argument that is not valid, namely,
(D2) An argument is invalid = df it is not valid.
An argument will be invalid just in case it fails to satisfy the definition of being valid, that is, just in case it is possible for its premisses to be true and conclusion false. We can use the more precise term “valid” to give an account of the informal concept of a conclusion “following from” some premisses as follows: a conclusion follows from a set of premisses if and only if the argument with those premisses and that conclusion is valid.
We can gain a better understanding of validity by considering some examples of arguments.
Example 1:
(1) Every human being is mortal.
(2) Socrates is a human being.
∴ (3) Socrates is mortal. (1) (2)
The symbol “∴” in front of line (3) abbreviates the word “therefore.” Thus, (3) is a conclusion, and the numbers in parentheses at the end of it indicate that it is a conclusion from the premisses, lines (1) and (2). This argument is valid. It satisfies the definition of validity given in (D1) because it is not possible for its premisses to be true and conclusion false. Here is another example:
Example 2:
(1) If you study hard, you will pass your philosophy course.
(2) You study hard.
∴ (3) You will pass your philosophy course. (1) (2)
This argument has a different form, but it, too, is valid. There is no way the premisses could be true but the conclusion false. If you think that you can imagine a scenario in which the conclusion is false but the premisses are true, for example, a scenario in which you study hard but sleep through the tests and so you don’t pass the course, that will invariably be a scenario in which at least one of the premisses is false. In the example I just gave, the first premiss would be false if you studied hard but didn’t pass. There simply is no way things could go according to which the premisses of this argument would be true and the conclusion would be false, but that is what would be required for this argument to fail to be valid.
Here is a related example:
Example 3:
(1) If you study hard, you will pass your philosophy course.
(2) You don’t study hard.
∴ (3) You won’t pass your philosophy course. (1) (2)
This argument is invalid. There are many ways things could go according to which the premisses are true but the conclusion is false. Perhaps you don’t study hard but pass the course on native ability. That’s compatible with the truth of premiss (1), which only gives a sufficient condition for passing this course, leaving it open that there are other ways to pass. A sufficiently large bribe to the instructor might be one of those other ways.
If it wasn’t obvious that Example 3 is invalid, there’s a useful strategy, one we’ll use repeatedly, for showing that an argument is invalid.
(Strategy) To show that an argument is invalid, find another argument of the same form with true premisses and a false conclusion.
To apply this strategy we should notice that Example 3 has the following form:
If
p
then
q
.
Not-
p
.
∴ Not-
q
.
So we should look for another argument that has this form. If it actually has true premisses and a false conclusion, we know that it is possible for it to have true premisses and a false conclusion. In that case, it is invalid. But since the validity of an argument depends upon its form, any other argument of the same form is also invalid. Here is one:
Example 4:
(1) If it is warmer than 100 °F today, then it is warmer than −20 °F today.
(2) It’s not warmer than 100 °F today.
∴ (3) It’s not warmer than −20 °F today.
4
If we want a proof of God’s existence, it would be useful to find a valid argument for the conclusion that God exists. But that’s not all we would need, for a valid argument could nevertheless have a false conclusion. Consider:
Example 5:
(1) If donkeys can fly, then donkeys have wings.
(2) Donkeys can fly.
∴ (3) Donkeys have wings. (1) (2)
This argument is of the same form as Example 2, which we have seen to be valid; so this argument is valid, as well. But there is something egregiously wrong with it, because its conclusion is manifestly false. This does not show that there is a flaw in our concept of validity; after all, falsehoods have consequences, too, and we often draw conclusions from propositions without regard to whether they are true. But it shows that for an argument to be good, validity isn’t the whole story. It’s easy enough to see where the flaw lies, however: not only is the conclusion false, but the second premiss of the argument is false. So we should also recognize that a good argument has true premisses. The term for a valid argument with true premisses is “sound.”
(D3) An argument is sound = df it is valid and all its premisses are true.
As in the case of validity, we can also define the opposite of sound:
(D4) An argument is unsound = df it is not sound.
A little bit of thought will show that it follows from (D1) and (D3) that a sound argument has a true conclusion. So if we want to prove that God exists, or if we want to prove anything else, it’s tempting to think that what we need is a sound argument for that conclusion. Unfortunately, things aren’t that simple. Consider:
Example 6:
(1) Either nothing exists or God exists.
(2) Something exists.
∴ (3) God exists.
This argument is sound, but it fails as a proof.5 People to whom I have presented this argument usually agree that Example 6 is a bad proof, but they sometimes balk at agreeing that it’s a sound argument. It clearly is valid: the first premiss says that at least one of two propositions is true; the second premiss adds that it isn’t the first of them; so that leaves the second as the only option. Something exists, so (2) is true. Now I think that (1) is true, too, so I think that Example 6 is a sound argument that is a terrible proof.
Of course, I only think that (1) is true because I also think that God exists. Perhaps you don’t share that view. Then consider this argument:
Example 7:
(1) Either nothing exists or God doesn’t exist.
(2) Something exists.
∴ (3) God doesn’t exist.
Both Example 6 and Example 7 are valid (they’re of the form logicians call disjunctive syllogism). They are also both terrible proofs. Now either God exists, or he does not. If God does exist, then Example 6 is a sound argument. If God doesn’t exist, then Example 7 is a sound argument. Either way, there is a sound argument that is a terrible proof, and that is the point I was trying to make.
So if we want to find a proof of God’s existence, we should look for a valid argument with true premisses. But what else should we insist on? Can we specify anything further about what the premisses should be like? It would be too strong to require that the premisses be accepted by everyone. As we’ll see in the next chapter, Thomas Aquinas gives an argument for God’s existence that takes as a premiss Whatever begins to exist is caused to begin to exist by something already existing. This premiss shouldn’t be disallowed on the grounds that some people do not believe it. Some people have never even considered it and thus do not believe it; others who have considered it, but not carefully or with inadequate preparation, do not believe it. In any event, enough people believe so many obviously false propositions that it would set an impossibly high standard if arguments had to satisfy everyone.6 Perhaps the best we can do is to say that for an argument to be useful as a proof, its premisses ought to seem to be true to nearly any reasonable, educated person who considers them carefully. Alternatively, a sound argument is good proof if it gives someone who understands it a reason to believe the conclusion that he or she would not have without understanding the argument. This remains less clear than is desirable, but perhaps we will be able to tell in particular cases whether an argument meets this standard. In any event, we should agree that whatever standards we set for arguments in favor of God’s existence must also apply to arguments against God’s existence and to the other arguments we will take up in later chapters.
One final point before we begin to look at some specific arguments for God’s existence. You might think that there simply are no good proofs in philosophy, so we can tell in advance that there is no good argument for God’s existence. But why should we think that there are no good proofs in philosophy? Surely there is no proof of that claim, because any such proof would be a good proof in philosophy; the existence of such a proof would refute its conclusion. So there seems to be no shortcut that avoids looking at the details of some attempted arguments for God’s existence, which is what we will begin to do in the next chapter.
Suggested Reading
Stephen T. Davis,
God, Reason, and Theistic Proofs
, chapter 1, “What Is a Theistic Proof?” (Grand Rapids, MI.: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1997).
Helen De Cruz, “The Enduring Appeal of Natural Theological Arguments,”
Philosophy Compass
9/2 (2014): 145–153.
George Mavrodes,
Belief in God
(New York: Random House, 1970).
Richard Swinburne,
Is There a God?
, chapter 1, “God” (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).
Notes
1
I follow Alonzo Church (1956), p. 2, in using the spelling “premiss” (rather than “premise”) for a proposition included in a logical argument in support of its conclusion. This makes it easy to distinguish the plural from the legal term, “premises,” which refers to a house or other building and its surrounding land.
2
I’ve just used some masculine pronouns to refer to God. I should emphasize that this is not because I think that God is male. Since God is, in Swinburne’s phrase, “without a body.” it follows that God has neither chromosomes nor physical sexual characteristics. So God is not male. For similar reasons, God is not female. It would make as much sense to use feminine pronouns as masculine, but that usage is not traditional. It would be a bad idea, however, to try to avoid the issue by using instead the ungendered pronoun “it”; for “it” is an impersonal pronoun, and God, as someone who knows and acts, is a person.
3
“=
df
” is to be read
means by definition
. A more careful way to define validity proceeds in two steps. First, an
argument
is valid just in case it has a valid form. Second, an argument
form
is valid just in case it is not possible for an argument of that form to have true premisses and a false conclusion. This more elaborate definition allows that an argument can have more than one form, it doesn’t automatically count an argument with a conclusion that can’t possibly be false as valid, and it makes explicit why we go on below to discuss argument forms. With apologies to purists, I’ll continue using the simpler formulation in the text.
4
The conclusion (3) is false where I’m writing in balmy Rochester, New York.
5
This example is from Mavrodes (1970), p. 22.
6
According to an article in the
New York Times
, “Scientific Savvy? In U.S., Not Much” (August 30, 2005), 20 percent of Americans believe that the sun revolves around the earth. Many people are similarly misinformed about the age of the earth or the birthplace of President Barack Obama.
2The Cosmological Argument for God’s Existence
Insights from the Past
We said in the last chapter that we would organize our investigation of the philosophy of religion by focusing on a claim central to the major western theistic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, namely, that there is a God who is all-powerful, all-knowing, perfectly good, and who is the creator and sustainer of the universe. We will begin by asking whether this claim can be shown to be true. Later we’ll ask whether it can be shown to be false. Finally, we’ll take a closer look at the properties attributed to God by theism.
One respect in which philosophy differs from many other disciplines is the interest it takes in its figures of the past. While many of Newton’s physical theories have been superseded by the theories of relativity and quantum mechanics, and no physician today would consult, say, the work of Dr Benjamin Rush (one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence) for advice about bloodletting, philosophers look to the work of earlier figures for insight and inspiration. Not only have many of the topics that historical philosophers discussed remained of real interest, but the problems they identified and the solutions they advanced often provide a good starting place for working through the issues ourselves. This phenomenon is perhaps nowhere more pervasive than in philosophy of religion, where the great philosophers and theologians of late antiquity and the Middle Ages explicitly aimed at providing a philosophical account of topics that we recognize as central to philosophy of religion. Thus, such classical theists as Augustine of Hippo (354–430 CE), Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109), and Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) in the Christian tradition; Moses Maimonides (1135–1204) in the Jewish tradition; and Ibn Sīnā, or Avicenna, to use his Latinized name, (c. 980–1037) in the Islamic tradition, wrote with sophistication on the nature of God and on arguments for his existence. Subsequent philosophers of the period known as Modern Philosophy, whether they intended to support or refute theism, took a real interest in philosophical analysis of topics in religion and did much to advance the discussion. I’ll mention just three, whom we’ll have occasion to cite later: the French rationalist René Descartes (1596–1650), the Scottish empiricist David Hume (1711–1776), and the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). Hume’s posthumously published Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (Hume, 1947 [1779]), in particular, set the agenda for much of philosophy of religion for the following two centuries. Our approach to issues in the philosophy of religion will be to begin by looking at what earlier philosophers said. Then we’ll use that as a springboard for our own attempt to think through the issues.
Arguments for God’s Existence
There are many ways people have attempted to argue for God’s existence. Some arguments appeal to religious experience, perhaps an intense mystical experience or an overwhelming response to a scene of beauty or an act of kindness. Some philosophers have given a “moral argument,” claiming that there could be no moral laws without a supreme law-giver. But we will focus on examples of the big three arguments, the cosmological, the ontological, and the teleological, to use the terms that Kant invented. Cosmological arguments take the general form of appealing to the existence of the cosmos, or the world, or things existing in the world, and arguing that these things would exist only if there was a creator or a first cause. The ontological argument holds that from the very idea or concept of God as a perfect being or as that than which nothing greater can be conceived, in Anselm’s famous phrase, it simply follows directly that God exists. Teleological arguments, or arguments from design, hold that the evident patterns of design in the universe provide convincing evidence of God’s existence.
A Cosmological Argument: Aquinas’ Third Way
In his Summa Theologiae (Ia, 2, 3) Thomas Aquinas (1948 [1485]) said that there are five ways of proving God’s existence. If a cosmological argument for God’s existence is one that reasons from a premiss that there is something existing now to the conclusion that there is a God, then several of Aquinas’ “Five Ways” are cosmological arguments. One way begins from the premiss that there are things that are changing or in motion to deduce that there is an unmoved First Mover. Another begins with the premiss that there are events which are caused by other events to argue for the conclusion that there is a First Cause. We’ll take a closer look at Aquinas’ Third Way, which attempts to establish that there is a being of a very special sort, one that is necessary or that exists necessarily. Let’s start by looking at what Aquinas says:
The third way is taken from possibility and necessity, and runs thus. We find in nature things that are possible to be and not to be, since they are found to be generated, and to be corrupted, and consequently, it is possible for them to be and not to be. But it impossible for these always to exist, for that which can not-be at some time is not. Therefore, if everything can not-be, then at one time there was nothing in existence. Now if this were true, even now there would be nothing in existence, because that which does not exist begins to exist only through something already existing. Therefore, if at one time nothing was in existence, it would have been impossible for anything to have begun to exist; and thus even now nothing would be in existence – which is absurd. Therefore, not all beings are merely possible, but there must exist something the existence of which is necessary. But every necessary being either has its necessity caused by another, or not. Now it is impossible to go to infinity in necessary things which have their necessity caused by another, as has been already proved in regard to efficient causes. Therefore we cannot but admit the existence of some being having of itself its own necessity, and not receiving it from another, but rather causing in others their necessity. This all men speak of as God.
(Aquinas, 1948 [1485], Summa Theologiae, Ia, 2, 3)
Aquinas begins his argument by holding that “we find in nature things that are possible to be and not to be, since they are found to be generated, and to be corrupted, and consequently, it is possible for them to be and not to be.” Let’s call these things that are “possible to be and not to be” contingent beings. We’ll need to look more closely below at the concepts of possibility and necessity. For now let’s simply note that the second phrase in Aquinas’ sentence begins with the word “since.” That’s often a clue that what comes next is a reason for what was just asserted. In this case, Aquinas’ reason for holding that there are some contingent beings is that there are things that are generated and corrupted. He means, I believe, that we are aware of things that come into existence and of things that go out of existence. Anything that comes into existence really does exist and so it is such that it is possible that it exists, and, of course, before such a thing begins to exist it does not exist, and so it is possible that it not exist. Similarly, things that go out of existence really do exist before they go out of existence, and they fail to exist later; they also possibly exist and possibly do not exist.
What sort of things are these? Well, you and I came into existence, so we possibly exist and possibly do not exist. There is no doubt about whether we do exist, but the fact that we came into existence shows that there are ways things could go according to which we exist and ways they could go according to which we do not exist. The earth and everything on it came into existence, so all these things are contingent, too. And some things that used to exist no longer do – they were “corrupted” – like the last dodo in the late 17th century. So that gives us another example of a contingent being. Let’s take the first premiss of Aquinas’s argument, then, as the claim
(1) There are some contingent beings,
understanding it and Aquinas’s reason in support of it along the lines we have just been discussing.
Aquinas next adds that anything that “can not-be at some time is not.” He thus endorses the claim that
(2) For every contingent being, there is a time when it does not exist.
What Aquinas says next is a little puzzling, however. He seems to deduce that “if everything can not-be, then at one time there was nothing in existence.” But how does this follow? Presumably Aquinas makes an inference from (2), deducing that
(3) There is a time at which every contingent being does not exist.
From that he derives his claim that
(4) If all beings are contingent, then at one time nothing existed.
He then adds, “Now if this were true [that at one time nothing existed], even now there would be nothing in existence, because that which does not exist begins to exist only through something already existing. Therefore, if at one time nothing was in existence, it would have been impossible for anything to have begun to exist; and thus even now nothing would be in existence – which is absurd.” In this passage he asserts an additional premiss (following the word “because” – another hint that an author is giving a reason):
(5) Whatever begins to exist is caused to begin to exist by something already existing.
He then deduces
(6) If at one time nothing existed, nothing exists now,
and
(7) If all beings are contingent, nothing exists now.
Aquinas thinks that is absurd to hold that nothing exists now, and in fact the first premiss of his argument asserts that some contingent beings exist (now). So he concludes that
(8) Not all beings are contingent.
And from this he deduces that
(9) There is at least one necessary being.
It is clear how the rest of the argument is supposed to go, even if some of the ideas are not entirely clear:
(10) Every necessary being either has its necessity caused by another, or it has its necessity of itself.
(11) There cannot be an infinite series of necessary beings each having its necessity caused by another.
So,
(12) There is a necessary being having of itself its own necessity (and this is God).
Putting these various claims together, we can formulate Aquinas’ Third Way as follows:
(1) There are some contingent beings. (premiss)
(2) For every contingent being, there is a time when it does not exist. (premiss)
∴ (3) There is a time at which every contingent being does not exist. (2)
∴ (4) If all beings are contingent, then at one time nothing existed. (3)
(5) Whatever begins to exist is caused to begin to exist by something already existing. (premiss)
∴ (6) If at one time nothing existed, nothing exists now. (5)
∴ (7) If all beings are contingent, nothing exists now. (4) (6)
∴ (8) Not all beings are contingent. (1) (7)
∴ (9) There is at least one necessary being. (8)
(10) Every necessary being either has its necessity caused by another, or it has its necessity of itself. (premiss)
(11) There cannot be an infinite series of necessary beings each having its necessity caused by another. (premiss)
