Does God Exist? | Prof. Matthew Dugandzic

The Thomistic Institute

Christianity, Society & Culture, Catholic Intellectual Tradition, Catholic, Philosophy, Religion & Spirituality, Thomism, Catholicism

4.8 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 22 November 2022

⏱️ 36 minutes

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Summary

This lecture was given at Harvard University on October 3, 2022. For more information on upcoming events, visit thomisticinstitute.org About the speaker: Matthew Dugandzic joined the theology faculty at St. Mary’s Seminary and University in 2019 after completing a Ph.D. in moral theology at The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. His dissertation, "A Thomistic Account of the Habituation of the Passions," explored the ways in which people can develop virtuous affective inclinations. Dr. Dugandzic's scholarship focuses on medieval thought, especially Thomas Aquinas' anthropology, psychology, and ethics. His work on Christ's passions recently appeared in the European Journal for the Study of Thomas Aquinas and his other writings on the passions and on bioethics have appeared in New Blackfriars and National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly. His current research focuses on the sources that Aquinas used in developing his understanding of virtue and on recovering ancient and medieval wisdom regarding economics in order to apply this wisdom to contemporary financial problems (like student loan debt). Dr. Dugandzic has taught courses in fundamental moral theology, bioethics, theological anthropology, and Catholic social teaching. In addition to his work in the academy, Dr. Dugandzic has also brought his theological expertise to the aid of the Church, having taught theology to RCIA groups, catechists, and candidates for the permanent diaconate. In addition to his doctorate, Dr. Dugandzic holds a BSc in biology from Concordia University in Montréal, Québec and an MA in religious studies from St. Joseph’s Seminary in Yonkers, New York. He and his wife, Audra, live in Baltimore, MD. In his spare time, he likes to play hockey, which he enjoys almost as much as reading theology.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This talk is brought to you by the Thomistic Institute.
0:04.0	For more talks like this, visit us at tamistic institute.org.
0:09.0	So I was asked to talk about the existence of God, and the very broad title of the talk was,
0:19.0	does God exist? The answer is yes, and I guess my work is done.
0:24.1	But to be, to focus the talk a bit, I was asked to talk about things that would be interesting to people who are not Catholic.
0:33.3	I don't really know what that is, but I'm going to do my best. I decided to focus on Aquinas, since this is the Timistic Institute, and that's what I do. I focus on Aquinas in my work. So I thought I'd talk about Aquinas' proofs for God's existence. And as I'm sure many of you know, there are five in particular, but given the time constraints, trying to go over all five would be too much.
0:56.0	So I'm really going to focus on what Aquinas considers to be the most evident of the five proofs, which is the first, the argument from motion.
1:05.0	And I'm going in particular to try to pull out some of the Greek influences from Aristotle, and then perhaps
1:15.2	also a bit of the Aquinas' more contemporary influences from the Arabic world.
1:21.5	And finally, I will also talk a little bit about Aquinas' second proof because it's largely, it's quite
1:28.8	similar to the first, but it kind of looks at the same problem from a different angle.
1:33.4	So, okay, to begin, I will say that the aim of Aquinas' proof and subsequently of this talk is not necessarily to prove
1:49.9	that the God of Christianity exists, but rather that God broadly considered exists, God as understood
1:58.7	by a broad group of people. And we'll talk a bit more about what that
2:03.6	means in a bit. So in other words, the proof doesn't demonstrate the existence of the triune
2:10.1	God, for example, but it does show that there is a ground of all existence that is timeless, eternal,
2:16.8	and the source of all that is.
2:19.2	Okay. So I'm going to go through this first proof here, line by line, explain the logic
2:26.6	behind the distinctions that Aquinas is making. And in my opinion, each of the five
2:33.6	proofs of Aquinas for God's existence is relatively easy to understand,
2:39.0	but there are two things that can often impede one's comprehension of them. And the first is that some of the words used in this proof have meanings in Latin that don't directly correspond to their
2:54.5	English cognates or to their English translations.
	...

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