St. Thomas Aquinas Argument Paper

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St. Thomas Aquinas attempted to solve the problem regarding God’s inability to sin and His omnipotence, or ability to do anything. Nelson Pike shows that St. Thomas Aquinas presents three possible solutions to this problem, but only the third will be discussed in this paper. St. Thomas’ goal is to prove that God can coherently be both omnipotent and impeccable. In this instance, impeccable means perfectly good and therefore lacking evil. At this point, it may be helpful to specify how the terms “good” and “evil’ will be used moving forward. In his discussion, Pike defines evil as “Any situation which is such that if one were to (knowingly) bring it about (though it is avoidable), that individual would be morally reprehensible” (212). This definition …show more content…
. . if He were to bring about such a situation, it would no longer count as evil” (212). One may wonder why Aquinas would allow God such an exception. God could be granted exception because He is generally considered to be a substantially different being than humans. God is typically considered to be a remarkable being with infinite power and goodness. Such a being would certainly differ greatly from humans. It is common to think that different types of beings are held to different standards of good and evil. The fact that we do not tend to hold animals to the same moral standards as we hold humans to should illustrate this point sufficiently. As Pike notes, the difference between humans and God leads one following Aquinas’ argument to believe that God would have a standard of good and evil specific to Him alone (212). Under Aquinas’ solution, God could not be judged according to our standards of “morally blameworthy” and “perfectly good” because they are for humans and He is held to entirely different standards (212). Furthermore, St. Thomas may have specified God’s standards such that He can never be considered evil, but that information is unknown and unneeded. According to this solution, God can in fact be both omnipotent and impeccable, thus …show more content…
Thomas Aquinas’ argument, one may think that a major problem arises. In the first objection, Pike says that God cannot be held to an entirely different standard of moral goodness than humans are held to (212). Then in the second objection, Pike goes onto say that God is held to a higher standard of moral goodness than humans (214). At first glance, it can feel like Pike made an apparent contradiction. That said, I do not think his objections contradict one another. In the first objection, Pike shows that if God had His own standard of moral goodness, it would be based in something other than the praiseworthy deeds our standard is based in (212). What exactly would God’s standard of moral goodness be based in? Well, some other set of acts that do not carry with them the complete praise we typically give to perfectly good acts. Because this other quality does not carry with it the praise that we base our admiration of impeccability on, it does make God impeccable (212). In his second objection, Pike says that God should be held to a more exact (or higher) standard than humans (214). “Higher standard” does not explicitly imply an entirely different standard. A “higher standard” is usually based in the same qualities as the standard it rises above (in this case, the praise for moral acts), just with a stricter criterion. God’s higher standard would still require acts which we consider morally praiseworthy (in His case, to a