Reflections on Thomas' Arguments for the Existence of God
Part 4, A Cause Unlike Any Cause
Today is my final reflection on the apophatic nature of Thomas Aquinas' arguments for the existence of God.
When we think about how causality works in Thomas' arguments the temptation is to think of causality univocally. That is to say, we are tempted to think of God's "causality" as being similar to creaturely causality. In this imagination, which is hard to escape, God is a cause among or alongside other causes. Perhaps the "first cause," but a cause like all other causes.
The problem here is that what makes God's "causality" different isn't its being "first," its temporal primacy. Rather, God's "causality" is wholly different from any understanding we might have of causality. When we say God "causes" something we have no idea what that might mean. Which is why I've been putting "causality" in scare quotes when applied to God.
In the Summa, Thomas gets at this distinction by making a contrast between primary (God) and secondary (creaturely) causality. And by "primary" Thomas doesn't just mean "temporally prior to." He also means "ontologically different."
Now, people have long puzzled over how primary causality relates to secondary causality. Some even find the relationship incoherent. The "causal joint" between divine and creaturely causality is hard to specify. I don't want to deny those puzzles and questions. I simply want to note that the mysteries here are due to the fact that we can't conceive of how God is a "cause." There is an apophatic mystery on one side of the equation which means any "mechanistic" understanding of the divine/creaturely relationship will always be epistemically thwarted. We just can't imagine how God's "causality" is working on His side of the relationship.
The simple point here is that when we think about Thomas' arguments for the existence of God, especially his arguments about infinite causal regress, we should never imagine a chain of dominos falling, where God is the first domino. God isn't a domino among other dominos. Whatever God does as "first cause" or "primary cause," as both Creator and Sustainer, is unlike anything we can imagine. God "causes" differently. And because of that, an apophatic Mystery haunts all of Thomas' arguments for the existence of God. So while Thomas' arguments seem to be logical proofs, they are actually the first step toward a mystical encounter with God.
I agree that the way God causes is unlike how we cause, but I do think that analogy can help! The analogy to authorship is helpful for me. To take an example from recent reading, why does Frodo leave the Shire in Lord of the Rings? One cause is that Gandalf charges him to do so. But another is that JRR Tolkien had a story to tell. These are two different ways of thinking of "causes".
Not only are they different philosophically, but also in terms of personal meaning. If Frodo thinks of his quest as a somewhat accidental link in a chain of Bilbo stumbling across the Ring and then Frodo happening to be his favorite nephew, then it's easy to imagine life being otherwise: "I wish the Ring had never come to me". If there is no why, then the blessings and challenges of my life are just downstream consequences of events, and I'm just existentially coping to the extent I can.
It is Sam who keeps coming back to the idea that they are characters in a Story, and therefore, they are not only especially chosen for their roles, but are being born along on the current of a Will that has a desire to see those roles fulfilled. And _that_ is part of what sustains Sam, and allows him to sustain Frodo, when mere existential coping gives out.
Richard, I very much appreciate your comments on Thomas, which I think are exactly right. Even to use the word "proofs" is a categorical mistake. To even think of proving something related to divine agency is a silly categorical mistake. More than that, it's human hubris. Falling down before the apophatic mystery of God is not a cop out, but a refusal to engage in idolatry, for what else is idolatry but forming a god after our own understanding of whet a god should be like. We can understand very little about creation or providence apart from the conviction that God is love, and that is all we can or need to know about thesd mysteries.