Come tonight to discuss with you the topic of the existence of God and to lay out to the extent

we can in the period of time that we have, an argument for the existence of God that we find

in St. Thomas Aquinas. Now, I know that a lot of people are familiar with St. Thomas Aquinas

in the so-called Five W ways. He's well-known throughout

our society and civilization for this attempt he offers to give arguments or proves for the

existence of God. And oftentimes if people know anything about St. Thomas Aquinas, they know only one thing,

oh yeah, he's a guy that tried to prove the existence of God.

And he does this in something called the Five Ways.

Those arguments, the Five Ways, are found in his great work, the Summa Theologier,

and they have been the source of much, much, much discussion down through the centuries.

What I'd like to do is offer to you tonight a version of the argument that is related to the

Five Ways, but is found in one of his other works called the Sumicontrugentilates, and it's an argument that

a number of contemporary philosophers find very satisfying, and it doesn't come with a lot of

the discussion and technical difficulties that we find in the five ways themselves. So I want to

lay that argument out for you.

But before I do that, what I want to do is give you something like the big picture

of how Aquinas thinks about argumentation for the existence of God.

And try to undo some of the misconceptions that people commonly have.

So let's start with a basic point.

St. Thomas Aquinas thinks it is possible for human beings

to have some knowledge of the existence of God

just by virtue of our natural intelligence.

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