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addresses, name of head of area publications, etc. - about publishing houses
and institutions that could publish the book).
Enunciation
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The second way
to prove the existence of God is based on efficient causality and is structured
as follows:
1. We found
that in the sensible world there are an order of efficient causes that are
subordinate to each other.
2. But can not
happen that a thing to be his own cause because in that case should be prior to
itself, which is impossible.
3. However,
the series of efficent causes can not be extended indefinitely because there is
always subordinate causes which dependent on the influence of all the causes
previous and as, suppressed a cause, the
effect is removed, if there were any cause that be the first, neither would exist
the intermediate or the last, or any effect, which is obviously false. It is
therefore necessary to have a First cause that is not in turn caused.
4. This First
cause that is not caused by any other and to the which are subordinate all
other causes is that we all know by the name of God.
5. Therefore, God exists.
(The detailed explanation of each premise is in
the book. Likewise the answer to the main objections that have been made to
this argument. Here we will only present the answer to one of them)…
Objection 2: The argument of the second way incurs in an insurmountable
internal contradiction because first tell us that “everything has a cause” and
after tell us that there is something that has no cause and that something is
God. In any case, if it’s mantained the principle that "everything has a
cause", it could still ask "What caused God?" and after
"What caused what caused God?" and so on to infinity. However, as the
chain can not be extended to infinity, we must stop us in God. But why should
we stop there? why we can not stop us in the material world itself? There is no
reason, then, to think that God is necessarily the First cause. Therefore, the second way
is invalid.
Response: Evidently this
objection is based on a poor understanding (if not ignorance) of the starting
point of the second thomist way. In first place, Saint Thomas Aquinas at no
moment says that “everything has a
cause” but rather simply that “we find that in this material world there is a
certain order of efficient causes” (1). Moreover, as already was clarified in
the explanation of the first premise, the definition that we have taken of the
principle of causality is not that “everything has a cause” but rather that
“every contingent being has a cause” or “Whatever begins to exist has a cause”. But
God is not a contingent being nor has begun to exist because He is, by
definition, Subsistent and Eternal. Therefore, He does not require a cause (at
least in the sense of “efficient cause”). Then, there is no “insurmountable
contradiction” in the thomist argument.
However, there
are still those who ignore all the metaphysical background of the five ways and
persist in error asking “But then what caused God?” Pathetic example of this is
the English philosopher Bertrand Russell whom, in his famous book Why I am not a Christian?, says: “When I
was young and was debating these questions very seriously in my mind, had
accepted the argument of the First Cause, until the day that, at age 18, I read
the Autobiography of John Stuart
Mill, and found this sentence: “My father taught me that the question “Who made
me?” can not be answered, because immediately suggests the question “Who made
God?”. That simple sentence showed me, as I still think, the fallacy of the
argument of the First cause. If everything must have a cause, then God must
have a cause”. (2)
No Mr.
Russell, to God nobody did him. He is the Subsistent Being. He exist by himself,
by its very essence and, therefore, does not require of another being for to
exist. Then, there is no reason for that He ask to himself, “Where am I?”, as
Kant pretended (3). In any case we can say that God has a reason for be, not
cause. His reason for be is himself. So
if it wants to talk about cause, the most that one could speak would be of a
“aristotelian formal cause” (understanding that in this case God is totally
identify with his “form”, being Pure Form) but never, in any sense, of
something like the “efficient cause” (as if the being of God were materially
configured by another being).
Finally, the
objection tells us that, in any case, if it’s required a First causa, this
cause does not have to be necessarily God because we can simply stop the chain
of causality in the material world itself. In particular, this objection comes
from Hume. In his Dialogues Concerning
Natural Religion he tells us: “How can we satisfy ourselves in regard to
the cause of that Being, whom you suppose is the Author of Nature, or, according
your system anthropomorphic, the ideal world which give sense to the material
world? Have we not the same reason to refer this ideal world to another ideal
world, or rather, to a new intelligent principle? But if we stop here, what is
it that makes us stop in this point? Why we not stop us at the material world?”.
(4)
With respect
to this critique we must reply that the material world can no be in no way the First
uncaused cause. Why? Because it presents the two characteristics that make
necessary that a being has a cause: 1) is contingent (as we will prove in the
explanation of the first premise of the third way), and 2) has begun to
existence (as we will prove in the response to the fifth objection to this
way). Instead God is by definition Subsistent and Eternal, so that has his
reason for be in Himself and, therefore, it is unnecessary to refer him to
another God or to “another ideal world”.
Thus is maintained conclusion of the second way.
References:
1) St. Thomas
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Ia, q. 2, a.
3, response.
2) Bertrand
Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian, Edhasa
Press, Barcelona, 1979, p. 10.
3) Cf.
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason,
Taurus Press, 1993, p. 375.
4) David Hume,
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion,
1779, Part. IV.
