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The title originally was the question of whether God exists.

And so this is a talk that I had given before

for other chapters of the Thomistic Institute.

But Ben said he thought it would be really interesting to plumb the depths of the first way argument.

So what I'm giving is sort of a meld of the two talks.

I'm going to give a little background about the methodology that Aquinas uses to prove God's existence

and then we'll get into the so-called first-way

argument. I should note that as he noted, I am a professor of philosophy. Aquinas by profession

was a theologian and so we might ask, well, what are we doing here? And what's his consideration

of philosophy and philosophical arguments?

Aquinas, like other medievals, viewed philosophy, the process of natural reasoning

and scientific demonstrative argumentation as the handmaiden of theology.

Theology bases, it's argumentative too in his mind, but it bases its

arguments from premises drawn from faith and revelation. Philosophy draws its premises from

experience and reason alone. And so frequently Aquinas will offer distinctly philosophical arguments regarding God,

regarding other issues that theology examines as well. And he sees this as philosophy in the service of theology.

So what we're going to be doing is looking at some arguments that he offers,

...