����ӰԺ

 Receive TAC lectures and talks via podcast!

 

 

“Ten Things I Wish I Knew about ‘The Five Ways’ When I Was Twenty”

 

by Dr. Michael Augros
Tutor Talk
Thomas Aquinas College, New England
March 25, 2025

 

In his introductory talk included in the “The Feynman Lectures on Physics,” (Vol.1, Ch.1, 1–2) physicist Richard P. Feynman raised an interesting question:

If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generations of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words?

Feynman was asking what single sentence would give the new post-cataclysmic scientists the most to go on in their having to begin science all over again from scratch.

I would like to motivate my talk tonight with a similar question. Suppose a student of St. Thomas had spent 40 years of his life striving to understand the famous five ways in which St. Thomas proves the existence of God in his Summa theologiae. In that time, this student ran across dozens of competing interpretations of those arguments, and after long consideration of the text of the arguments themselves and by comparison with related passages drawn from elsewhere in the Thomistic corpus, he eventually identified the interpretations that were correct. He also encountered dozens of philosophical objections and after much effort found resolutions for them. He asked many questions about how the arguments held up to modern scientific scrutiny, and discovered some helpful answers. In short, he worked very hard to grasp and assess these important arguments, spent much time in solitary study in order to do so, made lots of frustrating mistakes along the way, but eventually arrived at a fairly respectable understanding of the five ways—and in the end he found his efforts had been worthwhile. The arguments were worth all that they had cost him.

Here is the question I would like to ask: if this same student of St. Thomas now had the space of 40 minutes to say to a room full of undergraduates whatever he thought would most facilitate their understanding of the five ways, whatever would save them as much time and trouble as possible so that they could arrive at an understanding such as he had acquired (but with considerably less time and effort), what sorts of things should he say to them?

So that is what I propose to do in this talk tonight, to hand on ten things I wish I knew when I was about your age so that I could have arrived at my present understanding of the five ways much more easily and sooner in life.

Now I know that I am not special. Any one of my colleagues could give a talk similar to the one I am about to give, and serious students of St. Thomas at other institutions could do the same. And I have no doubt that many of them could do it better than I can. Possibly some or all of what I will say tonight already came out in your classes on the five ways, in which case my talk will provide the benefit of reinforcing what you have already learned, and perhaps not much more than that. And my own understanding of the five ways remains imperfect—I still have some questions about them. But if I am closer to having mastered them than most undergraduates are, I should at least be able to say some things about them that will facilitate their future study of them. That is my hope, anyway.

Before getting started, I have one further thing to say in order to manage your expectations. I can introduce it by telling you what Feynman chose as his single sentence, the only bit of our science to be passed on to the next generation after the great cataclysm: “All things are made of atoms.” That’s the sentence he thought would contain the most information. By itself, the statement is fairly cryptic. It raises more questions than it answers. How many kinds of atoms are there? How small are they? Are they completely indivisible, or can they be broken down into more elementary things? And so on. But Feynman’s point stands: the fact that this statement leads to many questions does not undermine his thesis that it is the best one to hand on, but actually supports it. A single statement that leads to many questions and testable hypotheses is to that extent very powerful, even if it does not answer all those questions just by itself. So he observes: “In that one sentence, you will see, there is an enormous amount of information about the world, if just a little imagination and thinking are applied.”

The same is true for my little talk. Many things I will say, maybe all of them, will raise more questions than they answer, and some of them you might not even be able to see are true, at least not just from what I will say. Feynman does not offer any proof to the future scientists that atoms exist, that his statement is correct. He leaves the finding of proof to them. But if they are diligent and clever, his statement will put them on the right track and save them a lot of trouble. That is the sort of service I hope to render tonight. So do not be surprised if you hear me making many assertions without offering evidence—I assume you will decide for yourself, over time, whether they are true, and my hope is that the clues I provide will make that decision-process relatively short and easy (relatively).

The title of this talk should also warn you not to look for a single thesis in it. Feynman allowed only one sentence to be passed on to the next generation; but I am given about forty minutes to talk, so I can manage to get in more than one thing that may prove useful in your future endeavor to understand the five ways better. I plan to work in ten, in fact.

In order to save time and jump right to those ten things, I must presume basic familiarity with the arguments. I will not recite or summarize them. This should present no problem for Juniors and Seniors, who have read them. Surely some underclassmen here at the college have read them—I myself began reading them when I was 16 or 17 years old. If any of you have not read them, you may still find what I say useful if you just file it away for future thought when you do get around to reading them.

So let’s begin. The first four things I want to say about the five ways are general, bearing on some or all of the arguments, not just one of them. Each of the last six things I want to say about them is specific to just one of the five ways.

[1  SUMMARIES]

The first general thing I wish I knew when I first began studying the five ways is this: The five ways are summaries. In this way, they are very different from Euclid’s demonstrations. When you read the Elements, each proof you bump into requires nothing more of you, in order to be fully understood, than that you have understood all the pertinent parts of the Elements preceding that proof. The propositions of Euclid are not summaries of other arguments given elsewhere more completely, nor do they presuppose that you know some fairly sophisticated mathematics that is nowhere presented in the Elements.

By contrast, each of the five ways, like many other philosophical arguments drafted into the service of theology in the Summa, is a summary of a much longer philosophical argument, or series of arguments, made elsewhere far more completely. At least, they all presuppose an understanding of terms or principles explained elsewhere far more thoroughly than in the five ways themselves or in any part of the Summa preceding them.

This is especially true of the first way. That argument is a summary version of a very lengthy argument whose complete presentation begins in Aristotle’s Physics and ends in his Metaphysics. A lengthy summary of that argument can be found in St. Thomas’s Summa contra Gentiles, Book 1, Chapter 13. Instead of being only a paragraph or so, like the first way, that lengthy summary is several pages long, and many of the finer points in it are simply omitted in the version of the argument found in the Summa theologiae. In that sense, the first way can rightly be called not only a summary, but a summary of a summary. And if indeed Aristotle’s own lengthy argument does not fully work things out, but leaves a number of important avenues of thought unexplored (as I would argue it does), then really the first way is a summary of a summary of a summary.

That the five ways are summaries, not fully-spelled-out arguments, should not really be that surprising. They are very short. And yet they purport to demonstrate with certainty the existence of God. How can so much depth of thought be contained in so few words? Only by those words being summary in nature. It also fits with the purpose and mode of the Summa theologiae for it to present philosophical arguments in abbreviated form, both because that work, being a work of theology, presupposes a whole philosophical education, and because its use of such arguments is only as a pedagogical support to theological teaching, not as its own proper demonstrations. Moreover, the Summa itself, as its title suggests, is a summary of the whole of theology. That means it does not ask all the questions a theologian can ask, and does not give complete answers to every question it does consider, but instead it is meant to hit the highlights, to raise the principal questions, and to say the most basic things that can be said in reply to them, often in brief and outline form.

If I am right about this, then it would be a huge mistake to try to read the five ways as though they were like Euclidean propositions—complete arguments in their own right presupposing nothing except the contents of the articles prior to Question 2, Article 3 of the prima pars. That is in fact how most people at first try to read them, and even how some ill-informed scholars try to read them, especially if they are critics of St. Thomas. Trying to read them in that way will lead to countless misunderstandings of them, and usually will result in the reader’s developing a certain contempt for the arguments and for St. Thomas himself.

[2 CUMULATIVE]

The second general thing I wish I knew when I first began studying the five ways is this: The five ways are cumulative. One thing that prevented me from realizing this earlier than I might have otherwise is that the first person I encountered who said that the five ways are cumulative meant it in the wrong way. He said that each argument is fairly weak when considered by itself, but when each one is considered together with the ones that precede it, the cumulative force of them becomes very strong, and by the time one considers all five arguments together, the existence of God is practically proved, thanks to all that accumulation of probability.

That is not how St. Thomas himself understands these arguments of his. He does not think that many probable arguments amount to a proof or demonstration, not even what is called quia demonstration. Also, he presents them as five distinct ways in which the existence of God can be proved, not as a five-part proof of God’s existence no one of which five parts is a proof. Each of the five arguments concludes with God’s existence. And each of them lays down principles that are clearly meant to be certain, not merely probable or generally accepted. So the five ways are not cumulative in this sense; they are not five probable arguments that somehow each contribute a little more probability to the conclusion that God exists until eventually it becomes so probable that it has pretty much been proved.

No. But that does not mean they are not cumulative in any sense. In one sense, the five ways are somewhat cumulative in the teaching and learning of them, in that some of the later ways presuppose something from the way or ways preceding it. This is clearest in the third way, which lays down a premise so similar to a premise of the second way that it simply references the argument of the second way: “Now it is not possible,” says St. Thomas, “to go to infinity in necessary things that have a cause of their necessity, just as [that is not possible] in the case of efficient causes, as was proved.”

But they are cumulative also in a stronger sense than that. Each way after the first adds a new properly divine attribute to the one preceding it, and shows that the being thus far demonstrated to exist, and who possesses the attributes so far demonstrated, is the possessor of this new and further attribute as well. In other words, the five ways are proving the existence not of five things that deserve to be called “God” and that might turn out to be five different kinds of beings, so far as they have shown. No. They are proving the existence of a single being who is subject to all five of those divine predicates or descriptions: first and immobile mover, first and unmade maker, self-necessary cause of all necessary and contingent beings, supreme being who is the cause of all other beings, and the mind who endowed all natural things with their ordination to their various ends.

This does not mean that each new way begins by assuming the existence of God as described in the previous way and then, from that previous description, argues to the next one. It means that each new way arrives at a properly divine predicate which it proves to belong not only to a real being, but to a being that must also answer to the preceding divine descriptions. For example, in the fourth way we see that there is something truest, best, noblest, and most of all a being, which is the cause of being for all other beings. Clearly this thing is a first efficient cause and depends on no efficient cause, and therefore it answers to the description of God used in the second way. Clearly, too, it is a necessary being, something that must be and cannot not be, and its necessity is caused by nothing else and it causes the necessity of being in all other necessary beings—otherwise, it would not be the best of beings or the cause of being in all other beings—and therefore it answers to the description of God used in the third way.

Each of the ways uses a special definition of God, proves that something answering to that definition exists, and then concludes God exists. And although there are five such definitions, we are meant to see, as we go along, that a single nature answers not only to the present definition, but to all the preceding ones as well. Accordingly, the grand conclusion of the five ways is that there is a real nature in existence that answers to all five descriptions.

[3 MODERN SCIENCE]

The third general thing I wish I knew when I first began studying the five ways is this: A perfect understanding of the five ways does, and also does not, depend on an understanding of modern science.

Let’s consider first how they do not depend on modern science. Each of the five ways lays down premises that are sure either because their self-evidence manifests itself in sense experience somehow—for instance, “it is sure, and sense confirms, that some things in this world are moving”—or because their self-evidence manifests itself in the very concepts involved in the premise—for instance, “It is not possible for the same thing to be at the same time in act and in potency in the same respect”—or because their self-evidence shows itself both in sense experience and in our concepts—for instance, “it is not found, nor is it possible, that something be the efficient cause of itself.” Each argument then proceeds to draw the logical consequences of these necessary truths, eventually concluding that something answering to a properly divine description exists. None of that depends on modern science in order to be understood.

But there is also a sense in which the five ways do depend on modern science to be perfectly understood. That is because their own premises do not represent a perfect understanding of things. Yes, their premises are perfectly true and perfectly sure, being self-evident truths, but they are also very general, hence in some measure vague and indeterminate. They do not spell out for us which of the many possible ways they might be concretized turn out to be present in reality. In fact, their indeterminacy on that point is part of why we are able to be so confident about them. And if we wish to know in concrete detail just how the general principles underlying the five ways are reflected or embodied in reality, we will have no choice but to turn to modern science for help.

This point deserves some illustration. First, let’s consider an example apart from the five ways in order to see better that a self-evident truth, while being perfectly sure, might nonetheless not constitute a perfectly distinct understanding of something. Here is an example: “If light moves, then it must move with some speed and along some path.” Fairly self-evident, is it not? And perfectly certain. Nonetheless, it hardly expresses a perfectly distinct understanding of light, or even of the motion of light. It does not tell us, for example, with what speed light moves, nor does it describe for us the path along which it moves. So a self-evident truth may be perfectly sure and certain, but nonetheless fall far short of a perfectly distinct understanding of the subject. This is either a part, or an immediate consequence, of the doctrine contained in the opening chapter of Aristotle’s Physics.

Now let’s consider another example of the same point, this time drawing upon the five ways. In the course of its reasoning, the third way proves that there must be necessary beings, and further proves that, if some of these have a cause of their existence, nonetheless there must also be at least one kind of necessary being that has no cause of its existence. Very well. But which way is it, really? Are there any necessary beings that have a cause of their necessary existence? Or is there just one type of necessary being, namely the type that has no cause of its existence? The third way does not say which of these is the case. Now in a certain part of the philosophy of nature it is possible to prove that the human soul is a necessary being, and in metaphysics it is possible to prove that the human soul also has a cause of its existence. So that would answer the question without the help of modern science.

But then we might still wonder: are there any necessary beings among those that we can see in the universe around us? Aristotle and St. Thomas both thought the answer to this question is “yes.” They believed that the celestial bodies were necessary beings, incapable of being generated or destroyed. To know that this is untrue, we need more than the sort of philosophy that we can engage in from our armchairs. We need to roll up our sleeves and build some decent telescopes.

Here is another example of the same sort of thing, this time drawn from the first way. Toward the end of that argument, St. Thomas observes that

secondary movers do not cause motion except through the fact that they themselves are moved by a primary mover, as a staff does not move anything except through the fact that it is moved by the hand. Therefore, it is necessary to arrive at a first mover which is not moved by anything else, and this all understand to be God.

That makes sense. In the world we have movers, and some of them are movers only in virtue of being moved by other things. But it is impossible for all movers to be that way, since if they were all that way, there would be no movers, since every single potential mover would be waiting around for something to move it and thus cause it to become a mover—there would be no independent movers to get things going. So there must be at least one type of mover that is a primary mover, one that can initiate motion without being put in motion by anything else.

Now in some ways, our soul seems to answer to that description; when I go for a walk, I am moving myself. Certainly I am not being moved by any earthly creature; the motion comes from within me, from my soul. And although my soul goes along for the ride in some sense, it is not in motion with any motion of its own; it is said to be in motion when I walk only because it is tied to me, the thing that really does have a motion of its own. So my soul seems to be a thing that causes motion in other things, such as my body, my walking stick, and the stone in my path, but without itself being in turn moved by other things, since it is incapable of having any locomotion of its own. Why, then, doesn’t St. Thomas’s argument prove, not that God exists, but that the human soul exists?

There are two reasons for that. One is that although my soul is not strictly speaking moved by any earthly creature when it moves my body to walk, nonetheless it is somehow “moved” in a broader sense of that word, since it goes from being potentially willing to walk to being actually willing to walk, or from potentially deliberating about walking to actually deliberating about walking. And although my will can also move itself, and my reason can move itself, these powers of my soul do not move themselves to their first and natural acts, the acts by which they naturally will or understand certain things. Even these acts, however, are ones to which my will and intellect are at first in potency. So I am moved to them somehow—yet by no earthly or corporeal creature, since my intellect and will are incorporeal powers. The mover of my natural acts of will and intellect is in fact God. And St. Thomas says as much in reply to the second objection in Question 2, Article 3, where the five ways are found, and is quite explicit about it in other passages.

But St. Thomas does not seem to be thinking primarily of our souls as the secondary movers under consideration in the course of his first way. He does not mention them. And, as noted, they are not really subject to “motion” in the strict sense of that word. Instead, he mentions the sun. And this takes us to the other reason why his first way cannot be said to prove the existence of our souls, but rather the existence of God, namely because there are motions in the universe that are not caused by our souls, and those, too, must trace back to a first mover. St. Thomas is thinking mainly on a cosmic scale, and not of local phenomena such as my walking. What, then, are the secondary movers in the universe as a whole, the ones that move other things only as moved by another? St. Thomas would have said “the sun” is an example, and would have said it is moved by, say, an angel, which angel is in turn moved by God to conceive of and will such a motion in the same way in which our souls are moved by God. He did not think the motion of the sun was simply a natural motion on the side of the mover. Aristotle would have said that the sun (or the whole sphere in which it was embedded, like a jewel in a ring) was alive and intelligent, and its soul is what moved it, and God moved that soul.

And here is where modern science must be allowed to play its proper role. It alone can help us through these details, and to determine in which one of the many possible scenarios permitted by the general principles of the first way we actually find ourselves. Is the sun alive? No. Is its sphere moved by an angel? No, since there is no such sphere. Is its motion caused by an angel? Perhaps it is best to say no, since the sun is better regarded as being more or less at rest, and the Earth is what is spinning instead. Is the Earth’s spinning caused by an angel? Not necessarily, if it can be regarded as a natural motion, in which case the author and mover of natures must be responsible.

I don’t intend to work out all of that detail, here. That is beyond the scope of this little talk. But I hope I have shown what it means to say that, while the general principles and the reasonings of the five ways have their certainty and reach their conclusions independently of modern science, they nonetheless paint a very vague picture for us, a picture whose details cannot be filled in except with the help of physics and the like.

[4 INFINITE REGRESSION]

The fourth general thing I wish I knew when I first began studying the five ways is this: Infinite regression of causes is both possible and impossible. This is important to understanding the five ways, since at least the first three of them, and in some way all five of them, depend on the idea that a causal series cannot regress forever, that there must be a first cause. On the other hand, St. Thomas himself says that there is no way to prove philosophically that the universe began in time, or that there had to be a first chicken or a first egg. How can he say that, if it is possible to prove the existence of God, who is the first efficient cause of all things? To sort that out, we have to see that regression of causes is both possible and impossible.

Clearly that cannot be true without some sort of distinction. In this case, we have to distinguish between two types of series of causes. In one type of causal series, infinite regression is sometimes possible, or at least the general principles of philosophy, gleaned from common experience, do not forbid it; in another type of causal series, infinite regression is simply and always impossible. And it is the latter type of series that St. Thomas has in mind in the first three of his ways.

Let’s begin by distinguishing the two pertinent types of series of causes. For the purposes of this discussion, we will consider only series of efficient causes or movers.

One type of series of efficient causes is a series in which the causes are ordered per accidens. To get a sense of it, let’s first consider some examples of that type of series, then look at some properties of it, then formulate a definition of this type of series, and then see why it is said to be ordered per accidens.

First, a few examples:

1. Man A generates man B, who generates man C, who generates man D.
2. Candle A lights candle B, which lights candle C, which lights candle D.
3. Teacher A instructs student B, who instructs student C, who instructs student D.

These are all examples of series of causes ordered per accidens. Consider now some of the properties belonging to such a series.

First, in such a series, the more prior the cause, the less responsible it is for the effect, the less it is a cause of it. For instance, I generated my son, who generated his daughter—and I am less responsible for the coming into existence of his daughter than he is.

Second, in such a series, the effect is more conformed to the proximate cause than to the prior one. For example, my granddaughter is more like my son than she is like me—in age, in genetics, and in various other ways. By a generation-jumping trick of genetics she might happen to look more like me than like him and have a temperament more like mine than like his, but even then she got all that from him, I did not give it to her, and a geneticist can tell that she is more closely related to him than to me—she has about 50% of her DNA from my son and only about 25% from me.

A third property is that, in such a series, the prior cause can be the same in species as the effect and also the same in species as the cause that is more proximate to the effect. For example, I and my son and my granddaughter are all human beings.

Fourth, causes that are ordered per accidens, at least in the way we are now considering, tend to operate at different times. For example, I generated my son about twenty three years before he generated his daughter.

With those examples and properties in mind, we can now formulate a definition of series of efficient causes ordered per accidens:

A series of causes A, B, C, D, etc., is said to be ordered per accidens if A is a cause of B in some way, but is not a cause of B’s being a cause, and likewise B is a cause of C in some way, but is not a cause of C’s being a cause, and so on.

For example, I was a cause of my son’s coming into existence, but I was not a cause of his being the cause of someone else coming into existence, except in the sense that I am a sine qua non of that—he could not generate someone else if I had not generated him first, but my act of generating him did not cause him to generate anyone else. I did not move or cause him to perform his act of generating.

In light of this definition, we can see why such a series is said to be ordered “per accidens.” Although I cause something that happens also to be a cause—insofar as I cause my son, who in turn is a cause of his daughter—I do not cause my effect to also be a cause. I do not cause it as a cause. I do not cause its causation, or cause it to exercise its causal power. Instead, I cause it in some other respect; I cause it, say, to come into existence.

So much for the first type of causal series. The other type I want to explain and to distinguish from the first type is known as a series of causes that is ordered per se. Let’s consider some examples of that type of series, then some of its properties, then formulate a definition of this type of series, and then see why it is said to be ordered per se.

First, a few examples:

1. The mind, A, moves the will, B, which moves the arm, C, which thrusts the sword, D, which kills the enemy, E. (We could also use a bow and arrow for that example)
2. Man A moves a hammer, B, which moves a chisel, C, which carves the marble, D.
3. Man A strikes a match, B, which lights tinder, C.
4. The general, A, orders the colonel, B, who orders the major, C, who orders the captain, D, who orders the first lieutenant, E, who orders the second lieutenant, F.

These are all examples of series of causes ordered per se. Consider now some of the properties belonging to such a series.

First, in such a series, the prior cause is more responsible for, is more a cause of, the effect than a less prior cause is, or one that is more proximate to the effect (i.e., one with fewer instruments between). For example, the mind and will of a man are more responsible for the voluntary act of his arm than his arm is, and are more responsible for the killing of the enemy than the sword is (hence the sword is not honored as much as the man who wields it). Again, the sculptor is more responsible for the sculpture than the chisel is; the arsonist is more responsible for the fire than the kindling is; the general is more responsible for the victory than the private is. So that’s the first property.

Second, in such a series, the effect is more conformed to the prior cause than to the cause that is closer to itself in the order of the series. For example, the sculpture is more like the sculptor (like what he has in his mind) than it is like the chisel, even though it is the chisel, not the mind of the sculptor, that is immediately in contact with the sculpture. And the painting is more like the artist than like the brush; the victory is more like the plan in the mind of the general than like whatever the private has in his mind; even the lit fuel or the burning house is in some ways more like what the arsonist has in mind than it is like the lit kindling.

Third, the different causes in such an order must differ from one another in the nature of their causal power. For example, a man differs from a hammer or a chisel, and a general differs in rank and power from a colonel.

Fourth, causes that are ordered per se can operate at different times, but can also in some cases operate together, and it is more or less accidental to such a series if the members of it operate at different times—if they do operate at different times, that will not be because the series is ordered per se, but because of the specific kinds of members of the series and the kinds of actions they perform. For instance, the sculptor, hammer, and the chisel all carve the sculpture together, not in different generations. But a general issues orders earlier in time than they are carried out.

Bearing in mind these examples and properties of a per se ordered causal series, we can now formulate a definition of it:

A series of causes A, B, C, D, etc., is said to be ordered per se if A is a cause of B precisely insofar as B is a cause, and likewise B is a cause of C being a cause, and so on.

For example, the sculptor is a cause of the hammer being a cause of the movement of the chisel; the hammer is a cause of the chisel’s being a cause of the sculpting of the statue. And the general is a cause of the colonel’s being a cause of the movements of the subordinate officers.

In light of this definition, we can see why such a series is said to be ordered “per se.” When a sculptor causes the movement of the hammer which causes the movement of the chisel which causes the sculpting of the statue, he not only causes something that is a cause, but causes it to be a cause. Each cause is the cause after it as such, as a cause.

Now, having seen this distinction between these two very different types of causal series, we can return to our point: some causal series are such that there is nothing impossible, on general principle, about their including no first cause, while others are such that they must begin with a first cause and cannot simply regress to infinity. If you did not already know, you probably guessed that it is the series ordered per accidens that, on general principle, admits the possibility of not having a first cause, while a series ordered per se can never regress forever but must always have a first cause with which the series begins.

Consider first the series ordered per accidens. There is no general reason, evident just in light of self-evident principles about causation that are gleaned from ordinary experience, why such a series must have a temporal beginning or a first member. That is already implied just by the fact that the members of the series are, or can be, all of the very same kind. If man X can be generated by man Y, then why can’t man Y also be generated? He has the same nature as man X, after all, so there can’t be some general reason, based just on the nature of Y, that prevents him from having been generated. Insofar as a human being can come from another human being, there is nothing to prevent this from being true of every human being. If the act of generation is the very same kind of causal action repeated every time, then why should this have to begin, and have happened only some finite number of times? No reason can be given by looking just to the nature of the causes involved in such a series.

But a series ordered per se is another story. In their case, examples bring out the impossibility of infinite regression even before we try to consider the matter universally. Can we regress infinitely in per se causes of the statue being sculpted? There is the chisel, then the hammer striking it, the arm moving it, the will moving the arm, the mind moving the will, etc. ad infinitum? Evidently, there is something impossible about that. And because there seems to be something impossible about it, no one in the entire history of philosophy or science ever seriously thought it was possible. The only kind of causal series that people (including Aristotle) seriously thought could be without a first cause is type that is ordered per accidens.

Now, why is it impossible for a series of causes ordered per se to regress infinitely? There is more than one way to think of about that, but in the interests of time, I will consider just one. The causes in a series ordered per se have no causal power apart from the action of all the prior members of the series. That is quite unlike a series of causes ordered per accidens. Even if a man had no father (like Adam), he could, if he is really a man, still generate and produce a son, since he has his reproductive power just by being a man, not by being generated by a prior man. But a cause that essentially depends for its causation on a prior cause cannot operate without that prior cause moving it or acting on it—a chisel cannot sculpt except as held by a hand and struck by a hammer, and a hammer cannot thus strike a chisel without being swung by a sculptor. So the members of a series of causes ordered per se are in fact not causes at all when considered just as they are in themselves, apart from the prior members of the series (again, this is unlike a man, who, considered just in himself and apart from prior generations of men, has a power to generate).

Very well. What do you get when you put together 2 things that are not causes at all unless something other than the 2 of them is brought into the picture? You get no cause, and no effect. And what do you get when you put together 3 things like that, things that, considered in themselves, and without something else being introduced beyond those 3, are not causes at all? Again, no cause, and no effect. So too with 4, 5, 6, etc. And just as an infinity of zeroes still amounts to zero, so too an infinity of things that, considered just in themselves and apart from anything further being introduced, are not causes at all, amounts to zero causation and no effect. Therefore, the members of a series of causes ordered per se can have no causal power and can produce no effect apart from something that does have causal power considered just by itself. And such a thing would be a first cause, needing no cause before it for its causal power.

Where there is no first cause, therefore, there can be no series of causes ordered per se. Put otherwise, every series of causes ordered per se must begin with a first cause, and cannot infinitely regress.

In light of this distinction and these observations, it becomes clear that St. Thomas could consistently hold both that it is possible to prove the existence of a first cause and also that it is impossible to prove that the world had a beginning in time.

[5 “OMNE QUOD MOVETUR”]

The fifth thing I wish I knew when I first began studying the five ways, the first of those things that are peculiar to just one of the ways, is this: “Omne quod movetur, ab alio movetur” should be translated “Everything that is in motion is moved by something else,” and not “Everything that is in motion is being moved by something else.”

The ambiguity in the Latin had me confused for a very long time. Movetur can mean either “is being moved,” with a strong emphasis on the progressive aspect of that verb, or it can mean more simply “is moved,” with no special sense of being ongoing. So, is St. Thomas, in his first way, insisting that everything in motion is presently being moved by something? Or is he only saying that everything in motion is moved by something, whether that thing is presently acting or only got the motion going?

There are reasons to suppose that he meant “is being moved.” First of all, it seems to be true: if God is the one in whom we live, move, and have our being, it stands to reason that, just as we always have our being and life from him, so too do we always have our movement and action from him. So anything that is in motion seems to be receiving its motion, somehow, at least from God if not from any other cause, for as long as it is moving. Something like that must be true. Moreover, if St. Thomas were saying only that “Everything in motion is moved by something else,” and not “is being moved,” then he would seem to be discussing a series of movers that might not be operating simultaneously. For example, an arrow flying through the air is moved by the bowstring that projected it, which in turn was moved by the archer. If this same arrow, some time later, strikes a target and moves or changes it, can we conclude, from the present movement of the target, that the archer, the first mover, presently exists? It seems not, since someone might well have killed the poor archer before his arrow landed. So if St. Thomas were reasoning in this way, it might seem that his argument proves only that a first mover used to exist, not that one exists right now.

On the other hand, the word movetur permits the translation “is moved.” Moreover, St. Thomas does not seem to have presented any adequate reason in the first way for drawing the stronger conclusion that everything in motion is being moved by something else for the whole time its motion endures, even if that conclusion happens to be a true statement. He argues that what is in motion is still in potency to the term of the motion, whereas the mover has to be somehow actual in regard to it, and nothing can be in act and in potency at once and in the same way, and therefore nothing can move itself, strictly speaking. But for all that shows, the arrow flying through the air is not “moving itself,” but is moving with the motion imparted to it by the archer, so it is still clearly true to say it is “moved by something else,” but not so clear that it is “being moved by something else,” since the archer and the bowstring are no longer acting on it.

So which is it? Does movetur mean the stronger “is being moved,” or the more noncommittal “is moved”? It means the more noncommittal “is moved.” This is made plain by observing that St. Thomas has drawn the “omne quod movetur” premise, and indeed the whole of the first way, from Aristotle. But when Aristotle argues inductively for this principle, he considers the hardest case to be that of natural motion, such as the motion of a stone falling, or of a fire rising upward. In such cases, we do not see a mover at work in the course of the natural motion as we do in the case of many forced motions. So how does Aristotle convince us that bodies moving with their own natural motions are subject to his principle?

He points out that they begin to move, whenever they do, not by themselves, but because something else has generated them in some definite time and place, or else removed an impediment to their natural motion. The cold air causes water vapor to condense into a raindrop, for instance, and it begins to fall; and if raindrops are caught in a bucket, their natural downward motion ceases, but the water in the bucket begins to fall again if someone comes along and turns the bucket upside down.

So, as far as Aristotle is concerned, the generator of a natural body counts as the “something else” by which the natural body has its natural motion, and so does the remover of any impediment to its natural motion. But these sorts of movers quite obviously are not operating throughout the entire motion of the natural body in question. Whatever formed a raindrop or a snowflake does not continuously act on the raindrop or snowflake, and thus cause it to descend. Whatever removes an impediment to the descent of a raindrop likewise does not act on the raindrop continuously for as long as it is descending. And if these sorts of movers, namely generators and impediment-removers, are good enough for Aristotle to conclude that “Everything that is in motion is moved by something else,” then he clearly meant “is moved” and not “is being moved for as long as they are in motion.” St. Thomas, who drew this principle and his reasoning from Aristotle, must have meant the same thing.

As for the reasons given for taking the principle to say “is being moved,” none of them is really cogent. Yes, God is the one in whom we live, move, and have our being, and he continuously upholds things in existence, but while that is true, it does not follow that it has been proved, or that it needs to have been proved, in the course of the first way.

And although the first way does rely on the idea that there must be a cosmic-scale series of causes ordered per se, that idea is not introduced into the first way by the principle “omne quod movetur, ab alio movetur” all by itself, but by considering the question whether motion and time had an absolute beginning in the world. To go into that argument lies beyond my scope tonight, but Aristotle takes it up in Book 8 of his Physics, which we study fairly carefully in the first semester of senior philosophy. Here we must remember that the first way is a summary of Aristotle’s very long argument. Hence it only hits the highlights: it rightly presumes that, one way or another, behind the cosmic order there must be a series of movers ordered per se. But the first way itself does not show us how we can become convinced of that; it leaves that to a longer, fuller, properly philosophical consideration of the argument, which is not possible to cram into a paragraph of one article in the Summa.

[6 INERTIA]

The sixth thing I wish I knew when I first began studying the five ways, and the second of those that are peculiar to just one of the ways, also concerns the first way. It is this: “The problem of projectile motion, or of inertia, is surprisingly unimportant to the argument.”

If, when the first way concludes omne quod movetur, ab alio movetur, it were concluding that everything in motion is “being moved” for so long as it is in motion, and if the argument depended on saying that, then the question of inertia would be crucial. Inertially moving bodies would appear to be counter-examples to the conclusion, since they are in motion but do not appear to be moved by anything continually acting on them while they are moving. And even if God or an angel is somehow moving an inertially moving body, that would not help the argument much—in that case, we are arguing for God’s existence from the fact that everything in motion is always being moved by something, and when we are asked how we can know this, since inertial bodies seem to be an exception, we say “No, they are not, since God is moving them!” We are clearly arguing in a circle at that point.

As things are, however, the first way is saying “is moved,” not “is being moved,” and it is simply noncommittal on the question of whether a given mobile is continuously being upheld in its motion by some cause. It insists only that some mover other than the mobile itself is responsible for that motion, whether by beginning that motion only, or sustaining it, or in both ways.

Inertia also introduces the same problem I mentioned earlier, the problem that if inertially moving bodies are permitted as movers in the world, it may seem that we no longer have any reason to believe that the “first” mover still exists, and perhaps no reason to believe in a “first” mover at all. If dominoes are falling, does it follow that the person who set them up and who knocked over the first one is still alive and well? No; he might have been shot before the second domino struck the third. And if inertial bodies collide in space and thus move one another, and they had their inertial motions from prior collisions with other inertially moving bodies, is there any reason to suppose there was a first inertially moving body? It hardly seems so. This sort of series of movers seems to be ordered per accidens.

But this is a problem only for those who take the first way to be a complete, stand-alone argument beginning from scratch, like Euclid’s first proposition. We must bear in mind that it is in fact a summary of a very lengthy argument stretching in some ways from Book 3 of Aristotle’s Physics all the way to Book 12 of his Metaphysics, an argument that involves deducing a per se order of movers responsible for motion in the cosmos as a whole. Like Aristotle’s argument, the first way of St. Thomas is not supposing that every single series of movers and mobiles we can imagine must be ordered per se, or even that every series that is ordered per se must have begun with a first mover that presently exists. Instead, the argument supposes we have established that a certain order is found in the cosmos as a whole, one that explains the fact that motion exists in it at all, which order of causes must be per se and, moreover, must include at least one eternal and indestructible mover, which therefore cannot have gone out of existence in the past. The first way in the Summa does not show us all of that explicitly, but assumes we are familiar with it from having read our Aristotle.

[7 “MOVER” vs “MAKER”]

The seventh thing I wish I knew when I first began studying the five ways, the third of those that are peculiar to just one of the ways, concerns the second way and how it differs from the first. It is this: “The main difference between the first and second ways is the difference between a mover and a maker.”

That is a difference of definition, and not necessarily a difference between one thing and another. A carpenter, for example, is called both a maker and a mover, not because he is two different things, but because he answers to the definitions of those terms. He is a “maker” of a house, because through his action the house is caused to come into existence. And he is also a “mover” of the house materials and of his tools, because he moves the studs and plywood into place, and he swings his hammer. But notice he is not called a “mover” in relation to the house: he does not move the house, but builds it. And he is not called “maker” or efficient cause in relation to the house materials and tools: he does not make the plywood, but moves it, and he does not make his hammer, but swings it. So the carpenter is called both mover and maker, but for different reasons, and in relation to different things.

Now God is both the first mover and the primary maker in relation to all things. But there remains a difference of definition between those two names for him. He is the first mover in that all change that takes place in things proceeds from him as from its first active cause. And he is the primary maker in that all being proceeds from him as from its first active cause. And while his being a mover is defined through motion as its proper effect, his being a maker is not defined through motion, but through the existence that he continually confers upon things. That is because God is not a maker (as we are) solely through causing motion, but more principally through causing the very existence of substances. These things are not brought out explicitly in the second way, but the difference in definition between a mover and a maker is operative there.

The closeness of the second way to the first helps us to see that each new way is not adding proof of another sort of god, but is instead adding a new attribute to the God already shown to exist in the previous way. In creatures, not every mover is a maker; when I walk, I am a mover of myself, but I do not make myself or make anything else simply by walking. But in creatures, every maker is a mover; the carpenter cannot make the house except by causing motion in his tools and materials. And although God does not make things solely by causing motions, it is clear that he cannot be the first maker of all things without also being the cause of all motion, since he is the producer of all natural substances, both nonliving and living, and so all their motions come from him at least in the sense that he gives them their being and their natures (this becomes even clearer in the fifth way). Hence the second way is additive in relation to the first, and so the second way gives us to understand that the five ways are meant to accumulate divine attributes in a single divine nature.

[8 “AT SOME TIME IS NOT”]

The eighth thing I wish I knew when I first began studying the five ways, the fourth of those that are peculiar to just one of the ways, concerns the third way. It is this: “When St. Thomas says ‘if all things are able not to exist, then at some time nothing existed in reality,’ he does not suppose that this follows just logically.”

If every single one of the shapes that can be found in a piece of clay are also able to be removed from it, it does not follow that all of them can be removed from it at once, so that the clay has no shape at all. That is impossible. If every person in my household is out of the house at some point in the day, it does not follow that at some point in the day no one was home at all. So too, if every single substance that ever existed had to begin to exist and thus at some point in the past did not exist, it does not follow that there was some point in the past when nothing at all existed.

And yet St. Thomas seems to think it does follow when he says, in the course of the third way, that “if all things are able not to exist, then at some time nothing existed in reality.” Has he made a logical mistake?

He has not. He is instead tacitly leaning on the full-fledged version of the first way. His abbreviated version of it would certainly remind all the teachers and students using his Summa that the original version of the argument is far longer, and depends on considering the possibility that the world of motion has always existed. That longer and original version of the argument in Aristotle’s Physics makes the case that the world has always been, that motion and time never began, and from that conclusion deduces the existence of at least a single mover that has always existed and could not fail to exist or fail to cause motion. So, here in the third way, if we are to take seriously the hypothesis that every single substance that ever existed was something that did not need to exist, then what do we have to say? Then we have to say that every being is not only a material being, but is one whose material can have other forms besides the form it presently has, and thus the being must have acquired its present form in preference to others through some process, and therefore the being came into existence at some point in the past. A world in which only non-necessary beings exist, therefore, is a world in which every being began to be.

Now the long version of the first way includes Book 8 of Aristotle’s Physics, which argues that if mobiles always existed then so did motion, and if motion always existed then there has to be at least one eternal mover responsible for that fact. But an eternal mover would not be something that began to be. And we just showed that anything non-necessary would be something that began to be. Hence an eternal mover would have to be a necessary being. Therefore, on the present hypothesis that all beings are non-necessary beings, it follows that there are no eternal movers—hence neither did motion always exist, hence neither did mobiles always exist. So, if all beings are non-necessary beings, then there had to be a time when there were not even mobile beings, and so there would have been neither contingent material beings nor any necessary beings in existence. But if that were ever the case, then neither would there be anything in existence now, just as St. Thomas says in the third way.

[9 “MORE AND LESS”]

The ninth thing I wish I knew when I first began studying the five ways, the fifth of those that are peculiar to just one of the ways, concerns the fourth way. It is this: “When St. Thomas says ‘More and less are said of various things insofar as they approach, in different degrees, something that is most,’ this premise is truest, and most certainly true, in the case of transcendental attributes, which is exactly where the argument needs the premise to be true.”

It is often true also of other properties that admit of an intensive more and less. For example, if some parts of the room in which we are sitting are warmer than others, this is because the warmer parts are closer to the warmest part of the room, where there is a radiator or a woodstove. Of if some parts are brighter than others, this is because the brighter parts are closer to the brightest part of the room, where there is a window or a lamp.

On the other hand, there can be more than one radiator, and more than one window, in a room. And it is not obvious that there is a maximum degree of heat possible, or a maximum degree of brightness possible, and that there has to be something in the universe that possesses each of these maxima. Could there not be a world in which things had varying degrees of heat or brightness, and yet nothing had the greatest degree of heat or brightness possible? Could it even be that there is no greatest degree of heat or brightness possible?

Those things may be possible, and yet that would not affect the fourth way. The fourth way is not about heat, or brightness, or about any other particular quality. It is about such perfections as being and goodness, which belong to all things whatsoever in varying degrees. Now by the time we come to the fourth way, the first, second, and third ways have already shown that there must be a first mover and maker which is unchangeable, which is incapable of not existing, and that has both existence and necessity just of itself and not from another. That sort of being clearly is more perfectly and more truly a being than anything changeable and destructible that began to exist at some point in the past.

We are meant to see that it is not possible to have being more perfectly, self-sufficiently, and truly than the way in which it belongs to an unchangeable first mover which has a necessary mode of being and is the cause of being in other necessary things. Looking at the order of being and perfection we see in all the kinds of beings that the first three ways have contemplated, we see that it is better to have fully actual and unchangeable being than to be changeable and full of potential, and better to have being in a way that does not depend on other beings, and that cannot be taken away, than to be a contingent being or one whose necessary existence is caused. So we have here a maximum in being and goodness.

Even had we not gone through the first three ways already, it would still be clear, in the case of the transcendentals, that there has to be something maximal. There must be something that is supremely good and supremely a being because whatever is the maximum in goodness and being right now must be the maximum possible. It is possible for what has no brightness to cause something bright, as rubbing sticks together can cause fire. Consequently, it might be possible for causes that exist right now to produce something brighter than anything that exists right now. What makes that possible, however, is the particularity of the effect: brightness does not belong to all things, and not every cause of brightness causes it by being bright, so it may be that things that are not bright can cause brightness by some other sort of power or perfection that is superior to brightness. The like cannot happen in the case of being and goodness, however. They are too universal for us to get around them in that way. It is not possible for something that is not a being to cause a new being nobler than the noblest one presently existing. Every cause must have being and goodness, and must cause being and goodness in virtue of its own being and goodness. Consequently, whatever has being in the best way right now is not only the best being at the moment, but is also the best being possible. It is an absolute maximum, not a maximum merely in relation to whatever else exists at the moment.

As I mentioned earlier, we are not meant to forget the previous ways as we go forward to each new way, but St. Thomas expects us to retain what we have learned after each one. Hence the fact that there must be a maximum in being and in goodness is clearest if we remember the results of the first three ways. In other places in which he presents the argument found in the fourth way, St. Thomas makes explicit use of the previously shown truth that there must be a first and eternal mover of all things in order to conclude that there is something noblest and best—the main work of the argument at that point is to show that this noblest thing is the cause of the very existence of all other beings.

[10 THE POINT OF THE FIFTH WAY]

The tenth thing I wish I knew when I first began studying the five ways, the sixth of those that are peculiar to just one of the ways, concerns the fifth way. It is this: “The role of the fifth way in the Summa differs from that of the other four.”

The first four ways are building a notion of God that St. Thomas intends to use as a middle term in the considerations of the divine essence after Question 2. He relies on some of those four more than others, but all of them are put to use in the subsequent articles.

The divine attribute of being the first mover (primum movens) is used in the very next article, that is, in Question 3, Article 1, in the first argument proving that God is not a body. So that is the beginning of the use of the first way.

Being the first agent (primum agens) is the divine description under which God is shown to exist in the second way. And that description of him is used in the third argument of Question 3, Article 2, to prove that God is not composed of matter and form. So that is the beginning of the use of the second way.

The third way proved that prior to every ens possibile, that is, prior to every being that is able not to exist, there must be at least one necessarium, that is, a necessary being, a being that cannot not exist. It also showed that prior to any necessary beings that have a cause of the necessity of their existence, there must be at least one per se necessarium, non habens causam necessitatis aliunde, sed quod est causa necessitatis aliis—a being that is of itself necessary, not having any cause of its necessity from elsewhere, but which is the cause of any necessity found in other things. Since that sort of being is necessarily primary, being prior to all caused necessary beings and to all non-necessary beings, such a being is the first sort of being, or the primum ens. And that description of God is used in the second argument of Question 3, Article 1, to prove that God is not a body.

The fourth way also establishes that God is the primum ens, but the emphasis in that argument is more on superiority than on priority. Being the noblest of beings (quod est nobilissimum in entibus) is the divine description under which God is shown to exist in the fourth way. And that description of him is used in the third argument of Question 3, Article 1 in order to prove that God is not a body.

But where does St. Thomas first use the fifth way? That way, recall, adds to the previously mentioned attributes of God the further attribute that he is something intelligent, ordering all natural things to their ends. So where does he use that attribute to reason to further attributes of God?

He does not use it. To my knowledge, the divine description of being the mind behind nature never plays the role of a middle term in the treatise on the divine essence (Questions 3 through 13). Perhaps the closest St. Thomas comes to using it is in the third argument of Question 11, Article 3, where he argues to the oneness of God from the unity of the world. Cosmic unity is certainly a work of the divine mind and government. But St. Thomas does not there refer to the fifth way, or to any previous argument or consideration. Nor does he mention intelligence, but only the fact that unity is the best and per se cause of the unity of order.

Why is this? Why does St. Thomas not make use of the fifth way in the ensuing consideration of the divine essence? Stranger still, why does he argue for God’s intelligence all over again at the outset of Question 14? And why does he not even mention the fifth way there?

The reason is that St. Thomas regards the question of God’s intelligence as a question more about what God does than about what he is. That is not because God’s intellect is something other than what he is, but more because our intellect is something other than what we are. When we understand, that is an act distinct from our act of existing. So in us, the act of understanding is an operation, and is not our very substance or essential actuality. Hence St. Thomas turns to the divine intellect in his consideration of the divine operation. There, he does prove that the divine intellect and act of understanding are the same as the divine essence (q.14, a.4), but the heading over the whole discussion is the divine operation, not the divine essence. And it is possible to prove that God has (or is) an intellect from the simplicity of his essence, which in turn follows from his answering to the divine descriptions reached by the first four ways. Those descriptions are not about God’s operation, what he does; being immobile or unchangeable, for instance, is not an operation, but says something about the essence of the thing, that it is not composed of the principles of mobile beings, such as matter and form. Likewise he is a necessary being, and the maximum being; these are very much names of substance, not of operation.

Very well, but then why does St. Thomas bother with the fifth way at all? I think the reason is that the preceding descriptions of the divine essence arrived at in the previous ways are not sufficiently recognizable as divine when taken by themselves. If there is some eternal Platonic form of unity or being or goodness that is the cause of existence and goodness in all other things, that is certainly a remarkable being. But if it does not know anything, has no internal life or awareness, then we still tend to regard it as something inferior to ourselves, and do not feel inclined to worship it, thank it, or recognize in it what we mean when we speak the name of God. In part for that reason, I suspect, St. Thomas added that last way to the preceding ones. It is not the first of the ways by which we can arrive at the existence of a being that possesses a properly divine attribute. But it arrives at God under a description we recognize first and best. Hence elsewhere St. Thomas refers to the sort of argument presented in the fifth way as the most effective way (via efficacissima; Super Evangelium S. Ioannis Lectura, Prologus S. Thomae, n.3 Marietti) of proving the existence of God.

[CONCLUSION]

Having now described some of the things that I would have found useful to know about the five ways at the beginning of my study of them, I would like to close with a final observation about them. I can introduce it with a question: why are the five ways important? Why are they and other arguments like them worth our time and effort? What should our motivation be in studying them? What should we hope to get out of them?

Certainly they are of some value for dispelling doubts we may have about God’s existence. I am told that one TAC tutor many years ago was dying of brain cancer and could not remember the five ways anymore, but could remember that he had understood them once and knew that they made sense—and that brought him consolation as he faced the prospect of his own death.

On the other hand, he was someone who had devoted years of study to those arguments, and not many people are of that description. And without years of study, those five arguments can easily appear to be full of holes, or to raise more questions than they answer. That is because they are difficult, which in turn is because it is not easy for the weakest mind there is, which is the human mind, to see even just the existence of the greatest mind there is, which is the divine one. Thank goodness for the divine mercy that we are not required to master those five arguments before we can believe in God! To acquire and nourish the faith that we need, we can instead turn to the sacraments, to prayer, to kneeling in silence before the Eucharist, to meditating on the Gospel, to living in the company of good and holy friends who lift our spirits and show us concretely what it is to know and love God; thus we can come to know God in many ways that are independent of study, learning to recognize his presence in our own lives as we strive to know, love, serve, and please him.

Now if the five ways and arguments like them are not an exclusive means to growing in faith and dispelling doubts about God’s existence, and they are not even a required means or a very common means to that end, then dispelling our doubts about God’s existence cannot be the main purpose of those arguments. That agrees well with where those arguments occur: in the Summa theologiae, which is written not for unbelievers, but for believers.

Are they important, then, primarily for the sake of enabling believers to convince those who do not yet believe in God but are open to it? They do have that power, to some degree. Probably they cannot convince the ill-disposed, but they can and sometimes do convince the well-disposed. But again, that is a fairly rare result for them to produce, since they are difficult to grasp even in a rough and ready way, and to master them really requires us to master large portions of philosophy. And to see how they stand up to objections requires considerable familiarity with modern science.

So the five ways are not primarily for dispelling the doubts of the faithful, or for enabling them to win debates with atheists. They are too involved, too complicated, too demanding to be the best means to serve those ends.

What, then, are they best suited for? For understanding. For seeing. For seeing the world in a new and divine light, seeing just how it everywhere points back to God as its creator. And they are for seeing God himself as much as possible for us in this life, insofar as he is dimly reflected in the mirror of his creation.

And what passion should drive us toward that understanding, that seeing? If we are philosophers pursuing those arguments in their native habitat, which is philosophy, then our proper motivation is wonder, the strong and natural desire to know things worth knowing just to know them, because the knowledge itself is desirable.

If instead we are theologians—and I don’t mean only formally trained and credentialed theologians, but anyone living the life of faith and endeavoring to understand God better and better, in which sense, I suppose, all of us here tonight are theologians—then our proper motivation is not wonder, but love, divine love, because those whom we love most we also desire to see as much as we can, as much as life permits. So if by divine love we love God above all, even above ourselves, then by that love we will necessarily desire to see him more than we desire to see anyone else, and will catch whatever glimpses of him we can, no matter the cost to ourselves in time, effort, and inconvenience.

In this matter, as in so many others, the model for us is the Blessed Virgin Mary, who accepted Gabriel’s invitation to go visit Elizabeth and witness for herself that there was a new child miraculously growing in her aged and previously barren womb. Why did Mary go to see Elizabeth? Not to overcome any doubt she had about what Gabriel had told her; not to find proof with which to convince others about the divine identity of her own child and win debates about him; and not even out of curiosity; but because she loved the Lord and therefore was not indifferent to what he was up to, but was eager to see everything of his plans that he was willing to show her.

So should it be with you, with us. Faith seeks understanding when it is motivated by love. And I do not doubt that those who are thus motivated to understand God will be rewarded by him with a greater and greater understanding of him even in this life, so long as they persevere in that pilgrimage of the mind.

Well, I’ve gone on long enough. I hope the things I’ve handed on will prove to be of some use to you, and make your own journey toward a more perfect understanding of the five ways shorter, easier, and more free from mistakes than mine has been.

Receive lectures and talks via podcast!