For explanatory purposes, Aquinas draws to the mind the example of a fire and the logs that make up the fire. He argues that nothing can be in motion except that which poses potentiality, for change is simply the motion from potency to actuality.
Click To TweetĪquinas describes the type of motion he has in mind here by utilizing the language of potency and act. God is the unmoved first mover who lacks potentiality, parts, and accidental qualities. Aquinas argues that recounting the causative effect of motion back to its source will run into an abundance of causes until one arrives at the first mover-God himself. If it is true that much is in motion around us, it also must be true that something set these items in motion.
Aquinas argues that “in the world some things are in motion.” This is evident to us, as we perceive our creaturely surroundings and see change and motion everywhere-time, space, matter, etc. The first of Aquinas’s five proofs is pertinent to our discussion here as it pertains to motion. Brain Davies notes that these five proofs “are famous and have given rise to a huge amount of literature both expository and critical.” Summarizing the “famous” five arguments, Michael Dodds says they can be categorized as: “(1) motion (2) efficient causality (3) contingency and necessity in beings (4) grades of perfection in beings and (5) finality in nature.” The First Mover In the Prima Pars of Summa Theologica, Aquinas says of divine simplicity, “when the existence of a thing has been ascertained there remains the further question of the manner of its existence.” Question three of the Summa is an appropriate place for the Italian theologian to assert this proposition as the previous question deals with Aquinas’s five proofs for the existence of God.
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