The Concept of the Divine in Western Thought and St. Thomas Aquinas’ Method of Demonstrating the Existence of the Divine: A Critical Study

Abstract

Ever since the appearance of man in this universe, man has though about the existence of a wondrous phenomenon out side of himself and beyond natural world around him. He believed that this wondrous phenomenon caused changes in the nature world. When man’s thought and knowledge developed to some extent, he began to reflect on this wondrous phenomenon. At one point, when he experienced the benefits that nature gave him and its fury, he viewed nature itself as that wondrous phenomenon and began to worship it. This wondrous phenomenon which had been associated with nature was later re-conceived as the divine. This paper discusses the evolution of thought about the divine from the time of Greek philosophers to Christian philosophy and critically examines the manner in which St. Thomas Aquinas demonstrates the existence of God. The paper focuses primarily on the ways in which St. Thomas Aquinas demonstrates the existence of God. The paper focuses primarily on the ways in which St. Thomas Aquinas addresses some of the misconceptions and ambiguities surrounding the existence of God before his time and lays a strong foundation for his theory of the divine. The paper is based on the assumptions that there were philosophical ides found in Christian thought and that St. Thomas Aquinas sought to understand God from a philosophical point of view. The paper engages with the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas and literature that discusses those writings, bringing together both descriptive and comparative research approaches.