Date of Award
6-1-1963
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Theology (ThD)
Department
Systematic Theology
First Advisor
Erwin Lueker
Scripture References in this Resource (separated by semi-colons)
Psalm 13:1;
Abstract
Many of the ancient Stoics never experienced any serious problem concerning the existence of God because they tended to be pantheistic. The orthodox Stoic could put his hand anywhere in the universe and affirm with confidence, "Here is god.” Plato’s “highest good” and Aristotle’s “unmoved mover” are actually monotheistic proofs. Both of these men accepted the traditional gods of Greece but they were searching for a metaphysical ultimate to account for all reality. However when one encounters St. Thomas in the thirteenth century he discovers that these metaphysical ultimates of the ancients resemble the Christian God. St. Thomas calmly presents five classic proofs for the existence of what others called ens realissimum. Four hundred years later Immanuel Kant startled Europe with his scholarly refutation of these hoary arguments. (Actually he was refuting "the badly presented rationalist arguments of Wolff.") Now the problem for consideration is whether or not Kant's withering criticism is valid.
Recommended Citation
Ridall, Robert, "Quinque Viave: The Five Ways of St Thomas Aquinas" (1963). Doctor of Theology Dissertation. 42.
https://scholar.csl.edu/thd/42
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
