Among St. Thomas’s famous five ways for proving the existence of God,
the 4th Way is probably the least favorite. There are a variety of reasons why this is the case,
but the most likely reason why the 4th Way is so unpopular is because it argues
for the existence of God based on so-called “gradations of being.”
This way of talking makes it seem like some things in the world have more
“being” than other things. For instance, a rock is considered to have less being
than a rose or an ant is considered to have less being than an elephant.
Many contemporary philosophers insist that the idea of gradations in being is
nonsense. If something exists, then it exists. If something does not exist, then it does not exist.
Full stop. There does not seem to be a middle ground, let alone a variation in degrees.
In this and the following videos, we’ll try to make
sense of this notion of “gradations” of being and how the 4th Way works.
This is how St. Thomas states the argument: “The fourth way is taken from the gradation
to be found in things. Among beings there are some more and some less good, true, noble and the like.
But "more" and "less" are predicated of different things, according as they resemble in their
different ways something which is the maximum, as a thing is said to be hotter according as it more
nearly resembles that which is hottest; so that there is something which is truest, something
best, something noblest and, consequently, something which is uttermost being; for those
things that are greatest in truth are greatest in being, as it is written in Metaphysics Book II.
Now the maximum in any genus is the cause of all in that genus; as fire, which is the maximum heat,
is the cause of all hot things. Therefore there must also be something which is to all
beings the cause of their being, goodness, and every other perfection; and this we call God.”
There is a lot to this argument. To make it easier to understand,
I think that we should break it down into 7 easy steps. Those steps are the following:
(1) If some property is found to exist in different things in greater or lesser
degree, then there must be some maximal degree of that property.
(2) The properties of being good, true, noble,
etc. are all found in different things to a greater or lesser degree.
(3) Therefore, there must be some instance where the properties of being good, true, noble,
etc. are all found to a maximal degree.
(4) If there is something that is maximally true, then there is something that is maximally being.
(5) Therefore, there is something that is maximally being.
(6) Each maximum in any genus is the cause of all in that genus.
(7) Therefore, the maximum being is the cause of all beings.
So there are the 7 easy steps. Well…maybe they
are not so easy. However, by breaking down the argument into these 7 steps,
it becomes easier to pinpoint parts of the argument that need to be clarified.
One thing that logic tells us that will make the task of understanding
this argument easier is that we do not need to worry about steps (3), (5),
and (7). Why? Because each of these steps is a conclusion of an argument. This is important
because the explanation of a conclusion just is the combination of reasons that lead up to it.
As a result, we can essentially ignore steps (3), (5), and (7) and focus our energy on
the other steps. Those steps are (1), (2), (4), and (6). Even with that smaller group of steps,
there is a lot to consider. For the rest of this video, I will just consider step (1).
Step (1) tells us that when a property exists in different things to different degrees,
then there must be some maximal degree of that property. Many people find this step doubtful.
Why? Well, let’s consider an example.
Let’s say there are two people, Fr. Thomas Joseph and Fr. Dominic. Now
let’s say hypothetically that Fr. Thomas Joseph is 5’2” and that Fr. Dominic is 6’
tall. We would say that they differ in height and that Fr. Dominic is “taller” and Fr. Thomas
Joseph is “shorter.” But just because Fr. Dominic is taller than Fr. Thomas Joseph,
it does not seem to be the case that there is some tallest thing that makes Fr. Dominic to
be tall and some shortest thing that makes Fr. Thomas Joseph to be short. That, at any rate,
is the intuitive argument against the first step in St. Thomas’s 4th Way.
However, I would argue that our intuitions here are overly Platonic and mistake the
point of the step. For one thing, St. Thomas is definitely not arguing that there is some
Platonic form of “tallness” in a far-off heaven that makes every tall thing tall.
When there is a group of individuals, like Fr. Dominic and Fr. Thomas Joseph, we say that Fr.
Dominic is tall and Fr. Thomas Joseph is short because we do have a tallest person in the room:
namely Fr. Dominic. Now let’s say that a 3rd person walks into the room: Fr. Ambrose. Let’s
say hypothetically that Fr. Ambrose is 6’3”. Now we can say that Fr. Dominic is only taller than
Fr. Thomas Joseph, and that Fr. Ambrose is both taller than Fr. Dominic and Fr. Thomas Joseph.
While Fr. Dominic is no longer the tallest in the room, there still is a tallest person in the room.
That person happens to be Fr. Ambrose. Taken this way, the first step seems obviously true, because
all it is saying is that when we have a group of things we are comparing with respect to a certain
quality, there will always be something that has that property to the greatest degree among them.
The reason why the first step seems wrong at first is that we tend to think that whatever
is the maximum must be the absolute maximum. That is the direction the argument is going, for sure,
but St. Thomas does not need to make such a strong claim to prove the truth of the first step.
All he needs to show for step (1) to be true is that when we say that some things are more
or less with respect to a particular property, then there must be some maximum of that property
that allows us to measure a difference in degree. Even if that maximum can change,
that does not take away from the fact that there must be a maximum when we make comparisons.
That should be enough to show the truth of step (1). We’ll continue with the others in
our next video on the 4th way. Until then, may God bless you and keep you in His grace.
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