The Four Ways
Consider the following typical chain of causes, some of which are efficient and some are final, that all act simultaneously like gears of a clock:
(1) There is a supply of HDTVs at Best Buy which, given also my desire to buy an HDTV, moves me to (2) be on my way to Best Buy, which moves me to (3) hold enough cash in my pocket for my purchase, which moves Jack to (4) notice that, which moves him, given his vicious character, to (5) desire to mug me, which moves him to (6) stop me and demand my money or my life, which moves me to (7) defend myself by (8) having my mind move my hand, which (9) moves the staff, which (10) strikes Jack, who (11) falls to the ground.
And also a process:
(1′) A body is moving at constant speed in a vacuum relative to some other body.
In both cases we have arrived not to an unmoved mover but to an ultimate given, namely (a) to my subjective valuation of an HDTV as a good, that is, as something that will promote my happiness; and (b) to the propensity of an object to persist in uniform motion. Of that Mises writes:
Since time immemorial men have been eager to know the prime mover, the cause of all being and of all change, the ultimate substance from which everything stems and which is the cause of itself. Science is more modest. It is aware of the limits of the human mind and of the human search for knowledge. It aims at tracing back every phenomenon to its cause. But it realizes that these endeavors must necessarily strike against insurmountable walls. There are phenomena which cannot be analyzed and traced back to other phenomena. They are the ultimate given. (Human Action, 17)
To deduce the existence of the prime mover and the first cause, we must attribute to it the creation and sustenance of the natures of these ultimate givens, both of inanimate objects and human beings.
Therefore, Aquinas’s “fifth way” from “the governance of the world” should have been the first. For through it we establish that “God can be called ‘Prime Mover’ inasmuch as He inserts Himself between the mover and moved, whereby there is a change in motion, such as momentum or direction; and ‘First Cause’ as the world’s programmer or lawgiver.” Thus, God permeates the universe as the sustainer of its laws, the powers or causal dispositions of its objects including space and time, and the connections between any mover and the moved and between any cause and its effect. While God does not muck around with the world in a crude fashion by shoving things to and fro, “a secondary cause proposes but the first cause disposes.”
Aquinas’s first three arguments, in conjunction with the fifth, demonstrate that there must exist something which
- was never brought into being (2)
- is not being kept in existence by some force or forces (2)
- cannot corrupt or disappear (3)
- cannot change (1)
This being, then, exists and has no passive potency in it. The inevitable conclusion is that it is a pure act.
Aquinas’s fourth argument establishes God’s perfection. I will consider it in the next post.