Author Question: Explain Aquinas' argument from gradations of perfection to the existence of God. Please need help ... (Read 65 times)

xroflmao · **on:** Jul 14, 2018

Explain Aquinas' argument from gradations of perfection to the existence of God.

Please need help with this one Thank you.

Question 2

Summarize Aquinas' argument from a first cause for the existence of God.

Anyone good with Aquinas' philosophy?

dpost18 · **Reply #1 on:** Jul 14, 2018

Answer to Question 1

- To say that something is more perfect than something else is to say that it closer approximates the perfect. One cannot determine that something falls short of a perfect standard unless that perfect standard is known. Therefore, the perfect must exist.
- There must exist a most perfect Being who is the cause of all the perfections that exist in beings containing lesser degrees of perfection
- Aquinas's fourth way to prove God's existence is his argument from the different degrees of perfection found in finite things.

Answer to Question 2

- Aquinas's second way of showing the existence of God was the nature of efficient cause.
- Aquinas believed that our understanding demands that there be a beginning point, whether it's an unchanging source of change or a first cause of all causal events.
- Since one thing must be caused by another, and these causes cannot go on infinitely, then it follows that there must be a first cause of all things.
- There is no case known (neither is it, indeed, possible) in which a thing is found to be the efficient cause of itself; for so it would be prior to itself, which is impossible.