Joshua Appel, pastoral assistant at Trinity Reformed Church, informs me that Aquinas’ argument from motion is not what many (including me) think it is. It is not an argument that God is the first domino in the line; rather, it is an argument that God is the universal magnet, the One toward which all things move. Once that’s stated, it seems obvious (and probably always has been to true students of Aquinas, unlike me). It is certainly the way Dante interpreted Aquinas: Love for God animates everything, so that all things move toward God as toward their final end. Likewise, this fits with Fergus Kerr’s claim that Aquinas is an “eschatological foundationalist,” for whom the foundation of knowledge is the beatific vision.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
Notes on Anosmia
One morning several years ago, as my wife, Wendy, and I were having breakfast together, I had…
Empire of Unreality
Shiva Naipaul (1945–1985) was the author of three novels and two books of mordant dispatches from places…
The Dreadful Christ of Pär Lagerkvist
It’s dangerous to meet a god,” says the disgraced Pythia in Pär Lagerkvist’s The Sibyl. Her observation…
