The 16th century theologian St Thomas Aquinas proposed the Cosmological argument for the existence of God. This is a basically an argument based upon cause. Aquinas’s argument had four facets: motion, causation, contingency, and degree. The fundamental argument claims that all things have a cause, and even the causes have causes. But Aquinas argued that there had to be one original cause for all things, which itself was not caused. He argued this is God. Like the Teleological argument, it doesn’t necessarily isolate this as Jehovah, but as with before, it can be properly argued that the Bible is the error-free word of God. The Bible identifies Jehovah as the one God.
These four elements to his argument are really four different perspectives on the argument of cause. All things are in motion, so there had to be the original unmoved mover. All things are caused, so there had to be an uncaused first cause. All living beings are contingent beings, meaning the world doesn’t need any one of them for life to go on. If I were never born, it wouldn’t have been the end of the world. So if everything is contingent, there has to be an original necessary being from which all other living contingencies occur. And all things exist to degrees, meaning some things are of better quality than others. You can buy two apples from the store and one tastes fine and the other is starting to rot. So there has to be that being of the highest degree possible from which all other things can be measured.
Aquinas argued that all of these must backtrack to their original or you would have what is known as an infinite regression of things, which means they go back infinitely. Aquinas never offers proof for why this is true, but treat it like a tautology. This is the main argument against Cosmology. Skeptics want to ask Why can’t there ever be an infinite regression of things? But there is a reason Aquinas didn’t feel the need to develop this because it is somewhat obvious, truly a logical tautology. If you see a chain of dominoes falling, you know not only that the first domino had to fall, but that someone had to knock it over.
A form of this is the question Where did God come from? It is proposed that if all things need a cause, then God needs a cause. This is specious and ignores the entire Cosmological argument. There must be an original cause that was not caused or you have an infinite regression of all things, which is absurd. Skeptics have never shown how an infinite regression is even possible. In fact, every skeptic accepts the law of Entropy as thermodynamically true. If everything is in a state of running down, moving from order to disorder, then all things had a beginning. The strongest evidence for the argument of cause is that the Bible uses it.
- “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1).
- “For every house was built by someone, and He who built all things is God” (Hebrews 3:4).
St Thomas Aquinas and his Cosmological argument for the existence of God is a real eagle eyes perspective on the subject of cause (in case you’re curious, Aquinas is based upon the Latin word for eagle). Cosmology proves the existence of God and the Bible proves that the one true God is our Creator and Savior, Jehovah. He is not only the starting point of all things physical, but spiritual. The concept and means of Redemption was in the mind of God before He Created our world. And He made everything in the world and us in it precisely to suit His spiritual ends. God Created all things so that we might seek out such a loving God Who would not only make us, but bless us with all the good this world has to offer.