The First Proof For The Existence of God: The Argument From Motion

I’m certainly at risk of missing something or drawing out incorrect conclusions in this article, so I’ll delay any commentary until I’ve meditated over this a bit more.  This is Thomas’ first proof for the existence of God, the argument from motion.

“The first and more manifest way is the argument from motion.  It is certain, and evident to our senses, that in the world some things are in motion.  Now whatever is in motion is put in motion by another, for nothing can be in motion except it is in potentiality to that towards which it is in motion; whereas a thing moves inasmuch as it is in act.  For motion is nothing else than the reduction of something from potentiality to actuality.  But nothing can be reduced from potentiality to actuality, except by something in a state of actuality.  Thus that which is actually hot, as fire, makes wood, which is potentially hot, to be actually hot, and thereby moves and changes it.  Now it is not possible that the same thing should be at once in actuality and potentiality in the same respect, but only in different respects.  For what is actually hot cannot simultaneously be potentially hot; but it is simultaneously potentially cold.  It is therefore impossible that in the same respect and in the same way a thing should be both mover and moved, i.e., that it should move itself.  Therefore, whatever is in motion must be put in motion by another.  If that by which it is put in motion be itself put in motion, then this also must needs be put in motion by another, and that by another again.  But this cannot go on to infinity, because then there would be no first mover, and, consequently, no other mover; seeing that subsequent movers move only inasmuch as they are put in motion by the first mover; as the staff moves only because it is put in motion by the hand.  Therefore it is necessary to arrive at a first mover, put in motion by no other; and this everyone believes to be God.”

-Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, [I, 2, 3]

God Is “Pure Act”…

Therefore it is necessary to arrive at a first mover, which is set in motion by no other; and this everyone understands to be God as He is nominally defined. The first mover is immobile, not with the immobility of inertia or of passive potency, which implies imperfection and is inferior to motion, but with the immobility of actuality, who does not need to be premoved so as to act. In other words, we must come to a first mover, who acts by himself, who is his own action,and consequently his own being, for operation follows being, and the mode of operation the mode of being. The prime and most universal mover of bodies and of spirits must, therefore, be pure Act, without any admixture of potentiality, both with regard to action and with regard to being; and hence, as will be clearly seen farther on, He must be the self-subsisting Being.

And so it is evident that this prime mover absolutely transcends the changeable world. We shall see farther on that the first Cause is free, and that when it wills, a new effect is the result of its eternal action, and that this has been eternally decreed by it.

-Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, A Commentary On The First Part Of St. Thomas’ Summa

Whether The Existence of God is Self Evident?

In order to answer this question, Thomas examines the properties which constitute self evidence and proceeds to conclude that God is not self evident.  What does it mean for something to be self-evident?  Thomas explains that a thing can be self evident in two ways: first, something can be inherently self-evident, though not to us, or it can be both self-evident in itself and self-evident to us.  The latter kind of self-evidence depends upon our personal apprehension of a propositions predication in relation to the subject of the proposition itself.  The example Thomas uses is “Man is an animal.”  If  the essence of”animal” (predicate) is understood and the essence of the subject “Man” is understood, then we can move from understanding the essence of the predicate to understanding the subject which it qualifies.  This kind of self-evidence is both self-evident in itself and self-evident to all.

If, however, the essence of the subject and predicate of a given proposition are unknown, the proposition will be self-evident in itself, but not self-evident to all.  This is where the question of God’s existence and self-evidence comes into play.  ”God exists” is unquestionably self-evident in itself, for the predicate “exists” is the same as the subject “God”, something Thomas will explain later in greater length.  God is his own existence, therefore “God exists” is a self-evident proposition.  If we do not know the essence of God, this particular proposition is not self-evident to us, for we have no epistemic basis for understanding the subject in relation to the predicate.  Thomas explains that because of the aforementioned reality, God’s existence must be demonstrated by things “that are known to us”, things that are the subject of empirical observation and rational deduction.  Essentially God’s existence, not being self-evident in the sense which Thomas explained, must be demonstrated by effects.  Herein lies the fundamental differences between Thomas’s Aristotelian realism and the Neo-Platonic archetypal theology of Augustine.  Here is an example of one of Thomas’s great achievements, bringing God back to nature, reconciling reason with the reality of revelation, defending deductive reasoning from the realities (not shadows) of nature and reason as opposed to the inductive spiritualism skeptical of all things earthly.

What is the purpose of this post?  Is it really necessary?  Personally, I think Thomas’s epistemic observations are very important.  Their importance lies in the fact that this particular explanation of God’s self-existence serves as a foundation upon which his proofs for the existence of God will rest.  This realism will substantially legitimize Thomas’s entire project to prove the existence of God from earthly realities, realities “familiar to us.” Thomas will proceed, on this basis, to propose his famous proofs for the existence of God, proofs which I believe have helped the Christian apologetic endeavor throughout the centuries perhaps more than anything else proposed by other theologians or philosophers.

 

Chesterton, Thomas, and Neo-Platonism, The Return To Nature and Reason

I’m really enjoying Chesterton’s little biography of St. Thomas, and I’d encourage anyone to pick it up.  It can be read in a few hours, although the content is so rich that I’d advise you take a little more time.  Here’s a wonderful section in which Chesterton puts in Thomas’s mouth a reply to the purely spiritual and mystic kind of Christianity brought on by the influx of neo-platonism into the church.  Enjoy!

“As we shall have to consider more closely later on, the purely spiritual or mystical side of Catholicism had very much got the upper hand in the first Catholic centuries; through the genius of Augustine, who had been a Platonist, and perhaps never ceased to be a Platonist; through the transcendentalism of the supposed work of the Areopagite; through the Oriental trend of the later Empire and something Asiatic about the almost pontifical kinghood of Byzantium; all these things weighed down what we should now roughly call the Western element; though it has as good a right to be called the Christian element: since its common sense is but the holy familiarity of the word made flesh. Anyhow, it must suffice for the moment to say that theologians had somewhat stiffened into a sort of Platonic pride in the possession of intangible and untranslatable truths within; as if no part of their wisdom had any root anywhere in the real world. Now the first thing that Aquinas did, though by no means the last, was to say to these pure transcendentalists something substantially like this.

‘Far be it from a poor friar to deny that you have these dazzling diamonds in your head, all designed in the most perfect mathematical shapes and shining with a purely celestial light; all there, almost before you begin to think, let alone to see or hear or feel. But I am not ashamed to say that I find my reason fed by my senses; that I owe a great deal of what I think to what I see and smell and taste and handle; and that so far as my reason is concerned, I feel obliged to treat all this reality as real. To be brief, in all humility, I do not believe that God meant Man to exercise only that peculiar, uplifted and abstracted sort of intellect which you are so fortunate as to possess: but I believe that there is a middle field of facts which are given by the senses to be the subject matter of the reason; and that in that field the reason has a right to rule, as the representative of God in Man. It is true that all this is lower than the angels; but it is higher than the animals, and all the actual material objects Man finds around him. True, man also can be an object; and even a deplorable object. But what man has done man may do; and if an antiquated old heathen called Aristotle can help me to do it I will thank him in all humility.’”

-G.K. Chesterton, St. Thomas Aquinas, p. 9

The Existence of God, In Praise of Medieval Spirituality, Why The Modern Church Needs the Middle Ages…

If only the church we’re asking Thomas’s questions instead of busying themselves with the newest and most culturally relevant homiletic trends, or the “coolest” kind of music to incorporate into the liturgy, or the best way to deconstruct the words of Scripture for a younger and more illiterate audience.  It’s safe to say that the medievals receive a lot of bad rhetoric from our modern culture, when our modern culture is exploring new vistas of depravity so opposed to the theology of Thomas or Francis, that it really is quite profound when you note the contrast.  And sure the church was worldly then, moralistic in many ways, and plagued by the reign of the popes.  But can we really say that todays evangelical church is any better?  The church today is quite possibly twice as worldly, rabidly moralistic, and plagued by self-styled therapeutic popes lording their godless theology over the church in a way which makes the Popes seem orthodox, godly, and theologically stolid.  All this to say that we can’t just write off St. Thomas or St. Francis because we’ve heard from a professor or pastor that they lived in the big bad dark ages and didn’t produce anything that we Protestant Christians should dare look at.  Read the lives of the medieval saints!  Buy Thomas’s Summa Theologica!  Read Chesterton’s masterful biographies of St. Francis and St. Thomas!  Emulate their radically God-centered thinking in our degenerating church culture of Christianity-lite.  These are men who gave their entire lives to studying within the confines of a cloister day and night and refused a living in exchange for extreme poverty, ridicule, affliction, and illness. Read the following questions and concerns written in this introduction to Question 2 of the Summa, and ask yourself – Are these the kinds of questions the church is wrestling with today?

“Because the chief aim of sacred doctrine is to teach the knowledge of God, not only as He is in Himself, but also as He is the beginning of things and their last end, and especially of rational creatures, as is clear from what has been already said, therefore in our endeavor to expound this science, we shall treat: (I) Whatever Concerns The Divine Essence; (II) Of the Rational Creature’s advance Towards God; (III) Of Christ, Who as man, is our way to God.

In treating of God there will be a threefold division:

For we shall consider- (1) Whatever concerns the Divine Essence; (2) Whatever concerns the distinction of Persons; (3) Whatever concerns the procession of creatures from Him.

Concerning the Divine Essence, we must consider:

(1) Whether God exists? (2) The manner of His existence, or, rather, what is not the manner of His existence; (3) Whatever concerns His operations- namely his knowledge, will, power.

Concerning the first, there are three points of inquiry:

(1) Whether the proposition ‘God exists’ is self evident? (2) Whether it is demonstrable? (3) Whether God exists?

-St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, [I, 2, 1]

Is The Law/Gospel Distinction Exclusively Lutheran? Who The Real Revisionists Are…

My thanks to Dr. Clark for providing these excellent excerpts in his combox on a recent post of his.  This is specifically relevant, especially in light of John Frame’s recent less-than-Reformed review of Michael Horton’s excellent book Christless Christianity. That a so called Reformed Christian could even begin to criticize the most basic of Reformed concepts presented in Horton’s book boggles my mind, but I’ll save my beef with Frame for a later time.  Many good responses to Frame’s review have been published online.  One of Frame’s main criticism, a criticism I’ve unfortunately leveled at certain theologians in the past but have since come to recognize as false in every way, is the very myopic rhetorical bombshell that “the law/gospel distinction is Lutheran not Reformed.  Any Reformed Christian who holds to the law/gospel distinction is essentially a warmed over Lutheran in Calvinistic clothing.”  The following are a selection of very lucid quotations exhibiting a few of the Reformed witnesses to the nature of the law/gospel distinction. Please don’t think that this very brief sample of quotations settles the issue.  But it does reveal a very important truth that seems clear enough.

John Calvin. But they observe not that in the antithesis between Legal and Gospel righteousness, which Paul elsewhere introduces, all kinds of works, with whatever name adorned, are excluded, (Galatians 3:11, 12. For he says that the righteousness of the Law consists in obtaining salvation by doing what the Law requires, but that the righteousness of faith consists in believing that Christ died and rose again, (Romans 10:5-9.) Moreover, we shall afterwards see, at the proper place, that the blessings of sanctification and justification, which we derive from Christ, are different. Hence it follows, that not even spiritual works are taken into account when the power of justifying is ascribed to faith (Institutes, 3.11.14).

John Calvin. The Law, he says, is different from faith. Why? Because to obtain justification by it, works are required; and hence it follows, that to obtain justification by the Gospel they are not required. From this statement, it appears that those who are justified by faith are justified independent of, nay, in the absence of the merit of works, because faith receives that righteousness which the Gospel bestows. But the Gospel differs from the Law in this, that it does not confine justification to works, but places it entirely in the mercy of God (Institutes, 3.11.18).

John Calvin. For Paul often means by the term “law” the rule of righteous living by which God requires of us what is his own, giving us no hope of life unless we completely obey him, and adding on the other hand a curse if we deviate even in the slightest degree. This Paul does when he contends that we are pleasing to God through grace and are accounted righteous through his pardon, because nowhere is found that observance of the law for which the reward has been promised. Paul therefore justly makes contraries of the righteousness of the law and of that of the gospel [Romans 3:21 ff.; Galatians 3:10 ff.; etc.] (Institutes, 2.9.4).

Zacharias Ursinus (1534-83). Q.36 What distinguishes law and gospel? A: The law contains a covenant of nature begun by God with men in creation, that is, it is a natural sign to men, and it requires of us perfect obedience toward God. It promises eternal life to those keeping it, and threatens eternal punishment to those not keeping it. In fact, the gospel contains a covenant of grace, that is, one known not at all under nature. This covenant declares to us fulfillment of its righteousness in Christ, which the law requires, and our restoration through Christ’s Spirit. To those who believe in him, it freely promises eternal life for Christ’s sake (Larger Catechism, Q. 36).

Caspar Olevian (1536-87). For this reason the distinction between law and Gospel is retained. The law does not promise freely, but under the condition that you keep it completely. And if someone should transgress it once, the law or legal covenant does not have the promise of the remission of sins. On the other hand, the Gospel promises freely the remission of sins and life, not if we keep the law, but for the sake of the Son of God, through faith (Ad Romanos Notae, 148; Geneva, 1579).

Theodore Beza (1534-1605). We divide this Word into two principal parts or kinds: the one is called the ‘Law,’ the other the ‘Gospel.’ For all the rest can be gathered under the one or other of these two headings…Ignorance of this distinction between Law and Gospel is one of the principal sources of the abuses which corrupted and still corrupt Christianity (The Christian Faith, 1558)

William Perkins 1558-1602). The basic principle in application is to know whether the passage is a statement of the law or of the gospel. For when the Word is preached, the law and the gospel operate differently. The law exposes the disease of sin, and as a side-effect, stimulates and stirs it up. But it provides no remedy for it. However the gospel not only teaches us what is to be done, it also has the power of the Holy Spirit joined to it….A statement of the law indicates the need for a perfect inherent righteousness, of eternal life given through the works of the law, of the sins which are contrary to the law and of the curse that is due them…. By contrast, a statement of the gospel speaks of Christ and his benefits, and of faith being fruitful in good works (The Art of Prophesying, 1592, repr. Banner of Truth Trust,1996, 54-55).

Whether In Holy Scripture A Word May Have Several Senses?

On the surface, it seems like a word cannot have several senses.  At least that’s what fundamentalism has been telling us for years.  If a word has many senses in one text, will this not produce confusion and deception and destroy all force of argument?  This is Thomas’s anticipated objection against interpreting words in more than one sense, and he’s hit the nail on the head in understanding the kind of literalist argumentation that has burdened the church for centuries. Dispensationalists use this kind of argument, do they not?  Isn’t this why they appeal to the “plain” or “normal” principle of interpretation over and against the “allegorical” or “spiritual” interpretation?

Thomas here strikes to the very root of that argument and graciously reveals its folly.  In doing so, he appeals to the very nature of God, language, and nature, producing a very lucid and sacramentally informed metaphysic that enables us to interpret words in more than one sense.

His first proposed argument is very simple.  The author of Scripture is God and God possesses both the power and prerogative to signify his meaning, not by words only, but also by things themselves.

In every other science, things are merely signified by words.  In this particular science (sacred doctrine), things signified by the words have themselves also a signification.  Therefore a word may have one foundational signification (the literal or historical) and a second signification (the spiritual or allegorical).  For instance, the the word “manna” in the Old Testament possesses an obvious historical and literal referent, namely the heavenly food provided by God to the nation of Israel.  But if you take this concept of manna and trace it throughout the biblical narrative right into the gospels and epistles, you’ll see that this idea of manna also signified something else, something greater, namely the person and work of Jesus Christ as the ant-typical fulfillment of the manna concept as the bread of life.  So we have the first signification of the word “manna” and the second typological or if you’re a Thomist “allegorical” sense of the word.  Other examples abound.

Now Thomas’s emphasis on allegory makes this particular Protestant a bit uneasy in light of the Reformation’s objection to the different levels of interpretation method employed by the medievals.  That being said, Thomas’s basic point, that in Scripture a word may have more than one signification, is in my opinion, something very compatible if not essential to orthodox Protestant hermeneutics.

Thomas goes on to explain the threefold nature of the spiritual sense, a paradigm unfamiliar to most moderns but very familiar to the medieval mind.  I’m not with Thomas 100% on this one, but I’ll explain his defense and set aside my quibbles for a later time.  This threefold sense exists like this: The “Old Law” or Old Testament is the allegorical anticipation of the New Law or “New Testament.”  As an aside, I think Protestants might be a bit more comfortable with this explanation had Thomas employed typological categories instead of allegorical ones.  Moving on, the “New Law” or New Testament, to which the Old anticipated as a divine allegory, is an analogical or eschatological anticipation of future glory.  An example of this would be Christ’s healing the blind is an eschatalogical anticipation of the spiritual healing we’ll receive in glory.  Finally, there is the moral sense, namely that the deeds of Christ are moral figures or examples of which were are to follow.

That’s really the meat of Thomas’s entire article.  He responds to the first objection by saying that confusion is avoided because the different significations of a word are all founded on the literal sense and that the spiritual sense will always be explained literally in another part of Scripture.  This is important because it prevents us from interpreting Thomas so as to see his argument as an appeal for several meanings in a given word.  Thomas isn’t arguing for different meanings, but for different literary significations, all of which are founded on the literal meaning of the word.  I’ll close by providing the substance of Thomas’s argument here.

“I answer that the author of Holy Writ is God, in whose power it is to signify His meaning, not by words only (as man also can do), but by things themselves.  So, whereas in every other science things are signified by words, this science has the property, that the things signified by the words have themselves a signification.  Therefore, that first signification, whereby words signify things belongs to the first sense, the historical or literal.  That signification whereby things signified by words have themselves also a signification is called the spiritual sense, which is based on the literal and presupposes it. Now this spiritual sense has a threefold division.  For as the Apostle says (Heb 10:1) that the Old Law is a figure of the New Law, and Dionysius says (Coel. Hier. i) the New Law itself is a figure of future glory.  Again, in the New Law, whatever our Head has done is a type of what we ought to do.  Therefore, so far as the things of the Old Law signify the things of the New Law, there is the allegorical sense; so far as the things done in Christ, or so far as the things which signify Christ, are types of what we ought to do, there is the moral sense.  But so far as they signify what relates to eternal glory, there is the analogical sense.  Since the literal sense is that which the author intends, and since the author of Holy Writ is God, Who by one act comprehends all things by His intellect, it is not unfitting, as Augustine says (Confess. xii), if, even according to the literal sense, one word in Holy Writ should have several senses.”

-Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, [I, i, 10], emphasis mine

Reason and Revelation, Nature and Grace…

I’d be very interested to know how other Protestants view Thomas’s understanding of nature and grace as it is articulated in this article.  He’s defending the rightful use of reason in theological discourse, after establishing that an argument from divine authority is the highest form of argument.  Thomas’s words here strike at the center of the Christian apologetic endeavor. Personally, I find his view of nature and grace very attractive.  It prevents us from committing the twin evils of either pitting nature and grace against each or uniting them in such a way as to undermine the very uniqueness of Christian epistemology.  Nevertheless, Thomas’s argument that the natural bent of the will ministers to charity is, unforuntately, unavoidably semi-Pelagian.  Even Peter Kreeft in his footnote comments that by this statement, Thomas is saying that the natural goodness of the human will ministers to charity.

Also note the very insistent emphasis upon an argument from divine authority being the strongest form of argument.  Modern science has turned this emphasis on its head, almost fanatically insisting that empirical argument grounded in unaided human reason is the strongest form of argument, while any kind of argument from divine authority is weak at best and entirely invalid at worst.  But notice how Thomas substantiates this claim earlier in the Summa.  In answering the question of whether sacred doctrine is nobler than other sciences, Thomas appeals to the eternal stability of divine knowledge which cannot err.  If this is true, then arguments exclusively based on the authority of modern science are the weakest form of arguments since they refuse to appeal to the infallibility of divine knowledge.  Let me know what you think, particularly of the italicized statement concerning the perfection of nature, etc.

This doctrine [sacred doctrine] is especially based upon arguments from authority, inasmuch as its principles are obtained by revelation: thus we ought to believe on the authority of those to whom the revelation has been made.  Nor does this take away from the dignity of this doctrine, for although the argument from authority based on human reason is the weakest, yet the argument from authority based on divine revelation is the strongest.  But sacred doctrine makes use of human reason, not, indeed to prove faith (for thereby the merit of faith would come to an end), but to make clear other things that are put forward in this doctrine.  Since therefore grace does not destroy nature, but perfects it, natural reason should minister to faith as the natural bent of the will ministers to charity.  Hence the apostle says: Bringing into captivity every understanding unto the obedience of Christ (2 Cor. 10:5).  Hence sacred doctrine makes use also of the authority of philsophers in those questions in which they were able to know the truth by natural reason, as Paul quotes a saying of Aratus: As some also of your own poets said: For we are also His offspring (Acts 17:28).

-Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, [I, 1, 8}

Driving A Wedge Between the Old and New Testaments…

Underlying the Enlightment’s critique of its predecessors’ “dogmatic” and “unscientific” interpretation, however, lay a more insidious denial of the divine authorship that earlier Christian interpreters had assumed as grounds for expecting to discover a single, God-given purpose and message in biblical documents written and received over a time span of well over a millennium.

Subsequently, dispensational theologians, for different reasons and offering different arguments, adopted a hermeneutic that drove another wedge between Old Testament and New.  Reacting to historical criticism’s dismissal of the church’s pre-critical reading of its Scriptures as subjective and imprecise, dispensationalism believed that it could establish the objectivity of its reading of Scripture by treating symbolism with suspicion and preoccupying itself with establishing the text’s “literal” sense.  Thus over the last three centuries, the theological substructure of apostolic hermeneutics has been assaulted both by the “hostile fire” of Enlightenment criticism and by the “friendly fire” of Bible-believing students who sought to develop an objective hermeneutic sufficient to withstand the acidic rigors of Enlightenment doubt.

-Dennis Johnson, Him We Proclaim, p. 5

Whether Sacred Doctrine Is Nobler Than Other Sciences?

This question might just be one of the most relevant questions facing our modern society and its attempt to enthrone “unbiased” science as the queen of all academic disciplines.  What is particularly intriguing is that this 13th century medieval theologian was anticipating philosophical objections to the project of metaphysics which would arise centuries after his death.  Granted, Thomas undoubtedly dealt with some of these issues before they came to the forefront of academic discourse in the 16th and 17th centuries.  Still, Thomas speaks with a profound prophetic wisdom relevant not only to his medieval context, but to ours as well.

Thomas is dealing with the question of whether sacred doctrine is nobler or qualitatively superior to other sciences.  Objection 1 addresses the nature of certitude and its role in determining whether one science is nobler than another.  If the nobility of a science depends on the certitude it establishes, then sacred science, the content of which is accepted by faith and not human reason, is inferior to the empirical certitude provided by other philosophical sciences. This sounds markedly similar to the kind of rhetoric used by the neo-atheists, does it not?

The second objection addresses the question of epistemic dependence, namely that sacred doctrine depends upon philosophical science, and therefore is inferior to it.  Thomas uses Jerome’s Epistle to Magnus to substantiate this anticipated objection.  Jerome writes to Magnus that “the ancient doctors so enriched their books with the ideas and phrases of the philosophers, that thou knowest not what more to admire in them, their profane erudition or their scriptural learning.”

Thomas uses Prov 9:3 as a refutation of these objections.  Thomas writes that “other sciences are called the handmaidens of this one (sacred doctrine).”  Speculative science, according to Thomas, is said to be superior than another either by reason of its greater certitude (obj. 1) or by reason of the higher worth of its subject matter.  He concludes that sacred doctrine is both qualitatively superior than other sciences and profoundly greater in its certitude.  In point of greater certitude, sacred doctrine surpasses other sciences because other sciences derive their certainty from the natural light of human reason, which is fallible and prone to error.  Sacred doctrine, on the other hand, derives its certainty from “the light of the divine knowledge”, which is infallible and cannot err.

I can’t overestimate the importance of Thomas’s words here.  On this point rests the entire project of metaphysics.  On this truth rests the entire legitimacy of the theological endeavor.  And this important truth determines the place of philosophy and science in relation to metaphysics and theology.  Modernity has rejected Thomas’s epistemology by enthroning human reason above God.  Post-modernity has abandoned this truth by questioning the very legitimacy of divine certitude and overarching metanarratives. Thomas unashamedly points to God as the infallible author, standard, and source of all truth, and defends the project of theology by appealing to the perfection of God.  If the modern church needs anything today, it’s a renewed vision of God’s majesty and its need to permeate all aspects of life and doctrine.  Thomas can help us profoundly here.

Concerning the higher worth of its subject matter, sacred doctrine is nobler than other sciences because it treats of those things which “by their sublimity” transcend human reason.  Thomas’s specific responses to his two objections address the weakness of human reason and the subordinate role of philosophical science in clarifying concepts difficult for human reason to comprehend.  What is “in itself” the more certain, may seem to us the less certain on account of our weak intelligence and not on account of its non-existence.

Here is what I consider the meat of Thomas’s argument in this very important article.  I hope you enjoy!

“I answer that, since this science is partly speculative and partly practical, it transcends all others speculative and practical.

Now one speculative science is said to be nobler than another, either by reason of its greater certitude, or by reason of the higher worth of its subject matter.  In both these respects this science surpasses other speculative sciences; in point of greater certitude, because other sciences derive their certitude from the natural light of human reason, which can err; whereas this derives its certitude from the light of divine knowledge, which cannot be misled: in point of the higher worth of its subject matter, because this science treats chiefly of those things which by their sublimity transcend human reason; while other sciences consider only those things which are within reasons grasp.

Of the practical sciences, that one is nobler which is ordained to a further purpose, as political science is nobler than military science; for the good of the army is directed to the good of the State.  But the purpose of this science, in so far as it is practical, is eternal bliss; to which as an ultimate end the purposes of every practical science are directed.  Hence, it is clear that from every standpoint it is nobler than other sciences.

-Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, [I, 1, 5]