Pints With Aquinas - 56: What are the 4 causes of Aristotle? How do they apply to your 5 ways?

Episode Date: May 9, 2017

Today we look at Aristotle's 4 causes and see how they apply to Aquinas' 5 proofs for the existence of God. --- HUGE THANKS to the following Patrons: Tom Dickson, Jack Buss, Sean McNicholl, Jed Florstat, Daniel Szafran, Phillip Hadden Katie Kuchar, Phillipe Ortiz, Russell T Potee, Sarah Jacob, Fernando Enrile SPONSORS EL Investments: https://www.elinvestments.net/pints Exodus 90: https://exodus90.com/mattfradd/  Hallow: http://hallow.app/mattfradd  STRIVE: https://www.strive21.com/  GIVING Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mattfradd This show (and all the plans we have in store) wouldn't be possible without you. I can't thank those of you who support me enough. Seriously! Thanks for essentially being a co-producer coproducer of the show. LINKS Website: https://pintswithaquinas.com/ Merch: https://teespring.com/stores/matt-fradd FREE 21 Day Detox From Porn Course: https://www.strive21.com/ SOCIAL Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattfradd Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfradd MY BOOKS  Does God Exist: https://www.amazon.com/Does-God-Exist-Socratic-Dialogue-ebook/dp/B081ZGYJW3/ref=sr_1_9?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586377974&sr=8-9 Marian Consecration With Aquinas: https://www.amazon.com/Marian-Consecration-Aquinas-Growing-Closer-ebook/dp/B083XRQMTF/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586379026&sr=8-4 The Porn Myth: https://www.ignatius.com/The-Porn-Myth-P1985.aspx CONTACT Book me to speak: https://www.mattfradd.com/speakerrequestform

Pints with Aquinas depends on your support. If you're an awesome person and want to prove it, go to pintswithaquinas.com, click the Patreon banner, and there you can learn how to support the show for as little as $2 a month. Every dollar helps, and we are grateful for your support. Welcome to Pints with Aquinas episode 56. I'm Matt Fradd. Welcome to Pints with Aquinas episode 56. I'm Matt Fradd. If you could sit down with St. Thomas Aquinas over a pint of beer and ask him any one question, what would it be? Today we'll ask St. Thomas about the four causes of Aristotle and how they apply to Aquinas' five proofs for the existence of God. Thanks for joining us again at Pints with Aquinas. This is the show where you and I pull up a barstool

next to the angelic doctor and discuss theology and philosophy. Kind of a complicated question today, right? You might be thinking, what are the four causes? I think I understand the five ways. What do those two have to do with each other? That's what I want to talk about today. So today's episode can be thought of as something to listen to, to then go ahead and read the five ways of St. Thomas Aquinas in order to better understand them. I've told you all before that right now, I'm currently co-writing a book with philosopher Robert Delfino on the five ways of St. Thomas Aquinas. And it's coming along really nicely.

We think it'll be out either by the end of the year or sometime at the start of 2018. So, look out for that. Essentially, it's a Socratic dialogue on the five ways of Aquinas because we think many people understand, say, the arguments put forth by William Lane Craig and other evangelical philosophers, and those are tremendous and we should understand them, but not too many Catholics could sum up quite easily the five ways of Aquinas, and that's what this book will help you do. So, let's talk a little bit first about the four causes, and then we'll talk about the five ways, how the four causes relate. So, because there are different kinds

of causes, there will be different ways of establishing, potentially, that God exists. ways of establishing, potentially, that God exists. Now, as you all know, Aquinas was very influenced by Aristotle, who discussed four different kinds of causes. $10 if you can tell me what they are right now. Go! I have no way of knowing if you actually said them. So, here they are. Material, formal, efficient, and final. Material, formal, efficient, and final. Material, formal, efficient, and final. One more. Material, formal, efficient, and final. Let me promise you, by the end of this podcast, you will know exactly what each of those means and as I say, how they apply to the five ways. What you may not know, so maybe you have studied Aristotle and you know about those four causes, which were what? Material, formal, efficient, and final. But you may not know that each of the five ways emphasizes one of these causes.

And so, let's explain briefly about the four causes. The easiest way to understand them is to think of a sculptor producing a statue, okay? A sculptor producing a statue. So, the material cause is the stuff out of which the statue is made. So, statues can be made of all different kinds of material, right? So, wood, cement, metal, for instance. But let's, in this little thought experiment to help us understand the four causes, let's go for the classic ancient Roman statue, which would be made out of marble, all right? Now, the formal cause, so we now know what the material cause is, right? The stuff out of which the thing is produced or just is, okay? Now, the formal cause is that which makes it the kind of thing that it is. So, in this case, what is it that makes it the kind of statue that it is? Well,

when you look at a statue, usually you can tell fairly quickly that it's a statue of a lion, say, or a human being or something else. So, what is it? Well, it's the shape, isn't it, of the statue that tells you what it is a statue of. So, in this case, the shape is the formal cause. Now, just to make things a little more complicated, usually the formal cause will not be the shape of the thing. And people get tripped up on this, right? Because when you think form, you think shape. And when you think formal cause, you think shape of the thing. And here I am saying that the formal cause of a statue is its shape, but that doesn't always apply. So, for instance, you know, you, right, the thing that you are, the thing that gives form to the material that you are is your soul. So, your soul is the formal cause of your body. soul as the formal cause of your body. But in this case, since the statue is a human artifact, which is made to embody a shape, that'll be the formal cause. So, that should make sense,

right? A statue without a shape, what is that? It's nothing. It's not a statue. However, as I say, different natural... Here's another way of thinking about it, okay? Here's a way of seeing why the formal cause isn't always the shape and most often isn't, right? Think of natural substances like gold and lead, okay? Gold and lead. Gold and lead can have the same shape. For example, if you make it into a coin, make them into coins. But they're not the same kind of substance, are they? For example, gold is an excellent conductor of electricity, lead not so much. So, it's not the shape that makes gold and lead different substances. Neither does matter, right? That would be, again, the material cause make them different kinds of substances. Both gold and lead are material substances and thus being material, right, is something, the fact that they are material,

that's something that they share in common. So, what accounts for the difference? Well, what accounts for the difference between gold and lead is that they have different formal causes. So, the formal cause is something intrinsic to an individual substance, which gives it the necessary properties that it has. So, again, in the case of living things, Aristotle had a special name for the formal cause, and I just mentioned a moment ago. What is it? The soul. So, a piece of gold and a dog are both material substances, but the dog is alive while the gold isn't. It's the soul which is internal to the dog that accounts for why dogs are living substances. And by the way, this is why, you know, Aristotle and Aquinas differentiate between three different types of souls. Rational souls, okay, which persons are rational creatures with rational souls.

Animals have sensitive souls and even plants have vegetative souls. So, everything that is alive has a soul. Now, let's say a carcass. I don't know why I'm laughing when I said carcass. That was really creepy. A carcass. A carcass on the side of the road is not alive precisely because it doesn't have a soul, right? The soul is the difference between an alive thing and then the thing that's dead. You know what changed? Well, no one has a soul. So, although it might be tempting to identify the formal cause with essence, okay, what a thing is. Aquinas argues that full essence of a material substance must take into account both the formal and the material causes. So, when I say formal cause, don't hear essence, okay? So, this is because in the case of material substances, neither the Neither the material cause nor the formal cause by itself is a complete substance.

Only together do they make a complete substance. Now, however, when considering the relationship between these two kinds of causes, the formal cause is the active and primary cause responsible for making something to be the kind of substance it is, whereas the material cause is, as it were, the passive and the secondary cause. So, in this way, we can say that form is, what would we say, form is actuality and matter is potentiality. matter is potentiality. Now, returning to this example of the statue, the efficient cause, what's that? So, we've talked about what the formal cause is, talked about what the material cause is. What's the efficient cause, right? Well, the efficient cause is that which is responsible for producing X, in this case, the statue. So, the marble changes into a statue

because the sculptor hammers and chisels a shape into the marble. Okay. So, while it's technically true, I guess, to some extent to say that the person hammering the marble is the efficient cause. Aristotle advises us to be more precise in the second book of the physics, chapter three. He points out that not every human being knows how to sculpt a statue out of marble with hammer and chisel. So, he would say only those humans who possess the art of sculpting, which is a kind of knowledge, are able to do so. So, it is the art of sculpting that is the efficient cause. But that might be a little technical aside. When we usually talk about the efficient cause, we talk about the thing or the one bringing X into being. So, final cause here. I didn't mean to do that.

The final cause is the final cause. The final cause is that for the sake of which all was done. It is the aim or the goal of the process. So, in this case, the final cause is what? Well, it's the statue itself. That's the whole point of the endeavor. The final cause guided the process, didn't it, from start to finish, as it were, guided the process, didn't it, from start to finish, as it were, exerting influence over the material, formal, and efficient causes. So, for example, marble was chosen because it's a good material to make a statue out of, right? If we use pudding, for example, or jello, this is obviously going to be a poor choice for a statue and some kind of

shape had to be selected and put into the marble because you know an uncarved piece of marble by itself just isn't a statue it's a block of marble now the art of sculpting or the sculptor is the efficient cause so lastly the statue itself which is the goal or the art of sculptor is the efficient cause. So, lastly, the statue itself, which is the goal or the art of sculpting, is the final cause. Thus, all four causes are necessary to give a general explanation of how statues are produced. Just here's a side note, maybe I should have said this at the start. Just here's a side note. Maybe I should have said this at the start. Sometimes it's easier to begin to grasp what Aristotle which helped the artist bring it about. And then just, you know, the final cause, which is the statue, which, you know, led these other things to the final state that it is in now. Okay. So, I hope that that is a help. So, I know, look, here's the deal, y'all. Y'all listen to this podcast,

not just because it's entertaining. I know I'm very entertaining, thank you very much. But you also listen to it because you want to learn stuff. And honestly, even though it's kind of annoying, repetition is the key to learning. So, what are those four causes? Try and pause now and say it yourself. What are the four causes? What do they mean? So, we'd have the material cause, formal cause, efficient cause, and final cause, okay? So, what does all that have to do with the five proofs that Aquinas gives for the existence of God? gives for the existence of God? Well, as I said in the beginning, I share about the four causes because in a sense, it's necessary to understand these five ways. So, for example, the first, second, and third ways of St. Thomas Aquinas focus on efficient causality, but from different

perspectives. So, the first way begins by focusing on the efficient cause of the kinds of changes we experience in our day-to-day lives with our senses, such as warming our bodies when we take a hot shower or something or bath. Now, because no being can be at the same time in a state of actuality and potentiality with respect to the same thing, this way eventually argues to a first efficient cause that is pure actuality. The second way focuses on efficient causality in general, arguing that the order of efficient causes we experience demands a first uncaused efficient cause. The third way focuses on how efficient causality is related to existence. We just did a whole podcast on this. If you're interested in listening to the third way, scroll down a bit or up a bit, whatever the case may be, and you'll see this whole podcast I did

with Robert Delfino on the third way. But essentially, beings that are efficiently caused only possess existence contingently, not necessarily. This way eventually argues that only a necessary being, that is a being possessing existence through itself, can explain why anything exists at all. Now, the fourth way is particularly tricky. The fourth proof of the existence of God that Aquinas offers involves exemplar causation, which is related to the formal cause. To understand that, let's return back to that example of the statue. The material and formal causes of the statue, all right? So, the marble is the material cause and the shape, which was the formal cause. These things, okay, are intrinsic to the statue. They are part of the actual statue, just like eyes and nose are part of a human being.

However, in this case, the efficient cause, whether we speak of the art of sculpting or the sculptor, that is the one who possesses that art, is extrinsic to the statue. to the statue. But isn't it true that the sculptor had in mind what kind of statue, you know, he or she wanted to produce before beginning the project? That makes sense, right? I mean, suppose the sculptor wanted to produce a statue of a three-headed lion. The shape that exists in the sculptor's mind prior to making the statue, that is what I mean when I talk about exemplar cause. So, it's that in the likeness of which something is made. The sculptor tries to bring the shape of the statue in conformity with the shape in his mind. Again, the exemplar cause. So, for this reason, the exemplar cause is called the extrinsic formal cause. Have another beer, have a drink, go on. All right. So, in the fourth way, Aquinas argues that the gradations of goodness and beauty we see in things in this world

have God as their exemplar cause. Now, finally, the fifth way focuses on the final causality exhibited by non-intelligent natural things. What do I mean? Well, think of magnets, for example. By their nature, magnets are attracted to other magnets. That is, opposite poles of magnets attract each other. other magnets, that is opposite poles of magnets attract each other. So, when studying the fifth way, along with other stuff Aquinas has said in other texts and stuff that help clarify it, because remember, these arguments that Aquinas offers in the first part of the Summa Theologiae aren't meant to be taken in isolation of the rest of his text. But when studying the fifth way, it becomes clear that when something non-intelligent has a natural inclination to an end or goal that is good, an extrinsic intelligent cause is needed to explain why it has that natural inclination. The reasons why this is so, they're going to become clearer. Maybe we'll have

to do another whole podcast on the fifth way. But for now, Aquinas' analogy, and he uses in the fifth way about the arrow and the archer, will provide a rough understanding. So, think for a second. Think of arrows. Arrows are not intelligent and thus they cannot move themselves by intelligence to whatever they're trying to hit, the bullseye. Now, if a hundred arrows are fired from the bow and all of them hit the bullseye, it would make no sense to attribute this outcome to chance, and if you're still skeptical then fine 500 right a thousand right if you saw that happen you wouldn't be like oh it just happened by chance they were flying through the air and hit the bullseye right no instead it's the intelligence

and skill of the archer or archers that explains why all these arrows have hit the bullseye. Now, here's a problem because Dawkins misunderstands this as well. Don't let the analogy fall you into thinking that God is some grand puppeteer, right? Where he's sort of like directing these individual things to their end. And if, you know, because natural things, right, aren't puppets, you're not a puppet, right? Yeah. Natural things possess causal powers and inclinations as part of their essence. So, what the fifth way seeks to explain is why non-intelligent things have as part of their essence the natural inclinations that they possess. So, while Aquinas argues in the fifth way that there must be extrinsic to non-intelligent natural things and intelligent cause that's responsible for them having such natural inclinations, he doesn't conceive of God as this big puppeteer or watchmaker. Rather, for Aquinas, God is creator, responsible for giving non-intelligent

natural things both their existence and their essence, which includes natural inclinations. So, I mentioned the watchmaker idea a moment ago. In contrast, watchmakers do not give, I don't know, what is made up in a watch? Glass, metal, springs. They don't give to the metal or glass they use its existence, essence, or natural inclinations. Instead, watchmakers work with the inclinations natural things already have and try to get them to do something not contained in their essence. For what end? To tell time. Now, I've got to just say this real quick because I'm sure some of you are thinking it. Obviously, a common modern objection to the fifth way would be to claim that mechanisms of biological evolution can account for

the natural inclinations of living things. However, not so fast, Richard Dawkins and co. Even if we grant the truth of this objection, it wouldn't account for the natural inclinations of the non-living particles of physics, such as electrons, which existed billions of years before biological evolution took place and which actually make it possible, which make biological evolution possible. Electrons, by natural inclinations, are, they tell me, right, attracted to protons, which helps to form atoms. So, if electrons didn't have this natural inclination, then none of the elements of the periodic table you studied in chemistry would form, and thus none of the physical life forms we experience, including yourself, would exist anywhere in the physical universe. By the way, do you remember studying the periodic

table? We did this thing, I forget, I was in like grade eight and we would take just like the two letters or the one letter that sort of stood for the entire name and it went like this, if I can remember it, H.E. Lee Bebkenoff, Nina Magalsips, Clark Akar. Okay, let's be honest. That is the most periodic table. I'm looking that up right now. That's the most crazy thing you've heard in this entire podcast. You thought the rest of the stuff was hard and then I started speaking that. Yeah. So, that's how we remember it, right? Let's see here. I'm going off on a total tangent here. So, you've got like hydrogen, helium, lithium, right? So, H is for hydrogen, right? H for helium, Li for lithium,

and so forth. So, yeah, that's the way to remember it. H-H-L-E-B-K-N-O-F-N-E-N-A-M-G-A-L-S-I-P-S-lar, Kaka, and Ka, C-A stands for calcium. That's how you remember the first 20 things on the periodic table. But I just went off on a huge tangent and I shouldn't have and I apologize back to what we were saying, all right? So anyway, the point is in evaluating Aquinas' fifth way, if you want to do it fairly, we have to take into account things we have learned about the natural world since the time of Aquinas, right?

So, and this is just something I think we should just keep in mind. The principle of charity in philosophy requires that we consider the best and strongest interpretation of Aquinas' arguments. Something some critics, not mentioning any names, fail to do. And this is just something we should all do. I read The Benedict Option recently. It's a fantastic book. You should read it too if you want. But I tweeted something like called the Aquinas Option. And I said something like understanding and then reiterating your opponent's position sympathetically and more convincingly than they did before responding to it. That's the approach we ought to have before responding

to someone. Anyway, so, okay, so today we've looked at the four causes and how they apply and help us better understand the five proofs for the existence of God by Thomas Aquinas. Now, if you're interested in learning about those specific proofs themselves, you know, look back through this podcast and you're going to see the first way, the third way, and so forth. And that'll help you gain a deeper understanding of them. And of course, when the book finally comes out, I'll be sure to tell you all about it. It's going to be great. Thanks so much for listening to this week's edition of Pints with Aquinas. Would you mind if I asked you to do a couple of things for me? The first is

consider rating Pints with Aquinas, not rating, giving. Give me your money. That's what I want to say. Consider giving money to Pints with Aquinas, even $2 a month. Think about that. If this show has blessed you, all I'm saying is could you give me 12 bucks a year, right? And maybe you can give more. Maybe you can give five. Maybe you can give 10. Maybe you can give 20. But if you could give to this show, it would help us. It would help the quality of these shows. It would make sure that these short shows keep going. It will make it so that I don't have to start doing them only once every two weeks and so forth. coming out and we're doing all these sorts of things to bolster your experience so you can better understand the life and thought of St. Thomas Aquinas. And in order to do all that, we need financial support. So go to pintswithaquinas.com, click the Patreon banner and learn how you can support and about the different thank you gifts I'll give you in return. And

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