Thomas Aquinas is regarded as one of the most influential Christian thinkers in history who immensely determined the subsequent development of philosophy and theology. He could successfully blend Aristotelian ideas with religious doctrines and, thus, present new perspectives on the idea of God, faith, and the existence of the universe. However, his most prominent contribution is considered to be the formulation of the five arguments proving the existence of God, simply known as “the five ways” (Lawhead, 2015, p.185). Although Aquinas’s reasoning seems convincing at first glance, some counterarguments can be made to challenge the thinker’s views. This essay, therefore, seeks to illustrate one of the objections against St. Thomas’s idea of God, which appears while reading his fourth argument.
The fourth argument begins by postulating that existing entities can be ranged as being good, true, or noble to a greater or lesser extent. “More” and “less” are predicated to the things according to their correspondence with the idea of maximum, which has “most” as its predicate. Therefore, there should be something most good, most true, and most noble. Next, it is stated that the uttermost goodness, truth, and nobleness possess the uttermost reality. The latter being the maximum of some genus should be the cause of that entire genus; hence, there should be something that causes goodness, truth, nobility, and perfection. That cause is argued to be God.
The objection against Aquinas’s reasoning is based on the assertion that the thinker’s ideas of God are grounded on Judeo-Christian views of evil being lesser compared to good. The philosopher only uses “more” and “most” for the things that are considered to be positive. However, not all cultures share the same idea and some would rather consider evil to be equal to good. Therefore, the same logic could be applied to state that there is the existence of something most bad, most evil, etc. Similarly to the utmost goodness, the uttermost badness can be the first cause of bad things. As a result, negative things should also be considered as predicates of God. For that reason, Aquinas’s “fourth way” is not sufficient to prove at least the existence of a Judeo-Christian God.
Reference
Lawhead, W. F. (2015). The voyage of discovery: A historical introduction to philosophy (4th ed.). Cengage Advantage Books.