Much has changed in the realm of philosophy and theology since the 13th century, when St Thomas Aquinas presented his Five Ways to prove the existence of God. In the next few issues of the Herald I’ll be looking at each of these ways to consider whether they still have the same power to convince us as they had 750 years ago.
Aquinas begins his first proof for God’s existence with the seemingly obvious fact that some things in the world move. Following Aristotle, Aquinas tells us that movement is nothing other than the reduction of something from potentiality to actuality. As an example, one could consider holding a ball and letting it go: the moment you let it go, the ball is actually very close to your hand, but it has the potentiality to be on the ground. The ball’s movement as it falls is therefore just the actualisation of its potentiality to be on the ground.
