First Cause
First Cause is term introduced by Aristotle and used in philosophy and theology. Aristotle noted that things in nature are caused and that these causes in nature exist in a chain, stretching backward. The cause of the cat you see today, for example, was its parent cats, and the cause of those parents were the grandparent cats, and so on. The same for the oak tree you see; it was caused by an acorn from a previous oak tree, which in turn was caused by an acorn tree from a previous oak tree, and so on, stretching back to whenever.
The central question about such causal chains, raised by Aristotle and others, is whether they must have a starting point. Aristotle, and others following him, claim that the answer is yes, that there must be a First Cause because such causal chains cannot be infinite in length.
Aristotle himself did not identify the First Cause with God, but theists, such as Thomas Aquinas, identify this First Cause with God, and use this argument, usually known as the argument from causation, as an argument for the existence of God. This argument was the second of Aquinas' Five Ways of proving (he thought) the existence of God.
The First Cause Argument
The first cause argument rests on several assumptions or premises. The first is that beings are not the cause of themselves. The second is that there must be an exception to that first premise or assumption; there must be a being that (who) is the cause of itself (himself). Thus Aristotle and others who accept and use this argument say that the first cause is different from all other beings in that the first cause is self-caused. They hold that God, or the First Cause, is a self-caused being, unlike all other beings because those other beings are other-caused. How this self-cause exists or how it came about (if it did—the other possibility is that it is infinite in duration into the past) are unanswered questions.
Another assumption usually made by anyone who accepts or uses the first cause argument is that there is only one such First Cause. Strictly speaking, this assumption is an extraneous one because first cause arguments, by themselves, would permit any number of such first causes because there could be numerous causal chains with no necessity that those causal chains ever converge into one single starting point or First Cause.
First cause arguments say nothing about the character or characteristics of the first cause—whether that being is beneficent and good or malevolent and evil or some combination of those, whether that being is personal or impersonal, whether that being has desires and intentions, or other such questions. To answer or solve those questions, additional evidence or argument is needed, none of which comes from or is supplied by the first cause argument itself.
See also
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
- Aquinas, St. Thomas. Summa Theologica, Part 1, Question 2, Article 3. 1st complete American ed. Literally tr. by Fathers of the English Dominican Province; with synoptical charts. New York: Benziger Bros., 1947-48.
- Aquinas, St. Thomas. St Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologica (translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province) (5 Volume Set) Christian Classics; New edition, 1981 ISBN 0870610635 ISBN 978-0870610639
- Aquinas, St. Thomas. Aquinas's Shorter Summa: Saint Thomas's Own Concise Version of His Summa Theologica Sophia Institute Press; New Ed edition, 2001. ISBN 1928832431 ISBN 978-1928832430
- Aristotle, Physics, esp. Bks. VII and VIII, The Basic Works of Aristotle, Ed. with introd. by Richard McKeon. New York: Random House, 1941. Modern Library; Reprint edition, 2001. ISBN 0375757996 ISBN 978-0375757990
- Honyman Gillespie, William. The Argument, a Priori, for the Being and the Attributes of the Lord God: The Absolute One and First Cause. Edinburgh: Clark, 1906.
- Negri, Vitali. The Creator and the Created; The Philosophy of "Existence" and the Knowledge of the "First Cause". Los Angeles: DeVorss & co, 1933
- Trundle, Robert C. Medieval Modal Logic & Science: Augustine on Necessary Truth & Thomas on Its Impossibility Without a First Cause. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1999. ISBN 0761813985 ISBN 9780761813989 ISBN 9780761813989 ISBN 0761813985
- Villanueva, Tino. Primera Causa = First Cause. Merrick, N.Y.: Cross-Cultural Communications, 1999. ISBN 0893041769 ISBN 9780893041762 ISBN 9780893041762 ISBN 0893041769 ISBN 0893041777 ISBN 9780893041779 ISBN 9780893041779 ISBN 0893041777
External links
- "The First Cause Argument", Peter Kreeft, Catholic Educator's Resource Center
- Aristotle on Causality, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Medieval Theories of Causation, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Aristotle (384-322 B.C.E.): Motion and its Place in Nature, The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Aristotle (384-322 B.C.E.): General Introduction, The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Saint Thomas Aquinas, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Summa Theologica, Catholic Encyclopedia
- St. Thomas Aquinas, Catholic Encyclopedia
