Lesson 17 - A Simple Argument for the Existence of God

One of St. Thomas Aquinas’s simplest and most straightforward arguments for the existence of God might be called the argument from world-order. Aquinas thinks that Scripture itself urges human reason to consider this argument.

“Scripture urges us to look at the stars,” Saint Thomas says, “for through their great order it is shown that everything is subject to the will and providence of the creator.”

Yet, it is not only the order of the stars that impresses human reason, but the order of all things in the universe.

Course Reading

Summa Contra Gentiles III, c. 38 | St. Thomas Aquinas

Summa Theologiae I, q. 2, a. 3 | St. Thomas Aquinas

Excerpt from the Summa Contra Gentiles III, c. 38:

It remains to investigate the kind of knowledge in which the ultimate felicity of an intellectual substance consists. For there is a common and confused knowledge of God which is found in practically all men; this is due either to the fact that it is self-evident that God exists, just as other principles of demonstration are—a view held by some people, as we said in Book One [25]—or, what seems indeed to be true, that man can immediately reach some sort of knowledge of God by natural reason. For, when men see that things in nature run according to a definite order, and that ordering does not occur without an orderer, they perceive in most cases that there is some orderer of the things that we see.

Course Listening

Does God Exist? | Prof. Gaven Kerr

Does God Exist? An Argument for God's Existence from Thomas Aquinas | Fr. James Brent, O.P.