Chapter 15 Self-Quiz

. Anselm's "ontological" argument for the existence of God

begins with easily observed facts about the world.

moves from the premise that I exist to the conclusion that God exists.

purports to establish that "There is no God" is self-contradictory.

begins from the idea of God as the greatest thing I can conceive.

. The fool who "says in his heart" that there is no God

believes that God doesn't exist and also that God does exist.

is an impossibility, since being such a fool is self-contradictory.

is obviously not thinking of God at all.

could be correct, but is mistaken according to Anselm.

. Anselm's argument

moves from existence to essence.

presupposes that God exists.

starts from essence and ends with existence.

begins with premises derived from Christian faith.

. Thomas Aquinas

depends on Anselm's ontological argument to buttress faith with reason.

rejects Anselm's argument as invalid.

thinks that God's existence cannot be proved, but must be accepted on faith.

holds that we are not in the right epistemological position to use Anselm's argument.

. Reason and revelation, Aquinas holds,

are irreconcilably in conflict.

are two compatible sources of truth.

cannot deal with the same topics.

both depend on faith for their validation.

. Existence, Aquinas tells us,

is included in form, the principle of actuality in things.

is something we can take for granted.

is something added to the essence of finite things.

derives from essence, and from essence alone.

. The argument for God's existence from change

claims that every change is a transition from actuality to potentiality.

assumes that something can be simultaneously both potentially hot and actually hot.

assumes that changes can be traced back to infinity.

argues that without a first cause of change there would be no intermediate causers of change.

. In the argument from possibility and necessity, Aquinas reasons that

since at one time nothing existed, something must have come from nothing.

not every being could be a merely possible being.

every being is a necessary being, otherwise there would be an infinite regress.

some necessary beings have their being caused by merely possible beings.

. We cannot know, Aquinas says,

anything about God's nature, because all our knowledge begins in sense experience.

that God's very substance is being itself.

that God is the cause of the world.

what the nature of God is through direct acquaintance.

. Aquinas says that a human soul

is the form of a human body.

inhabits the body like a sailor his ship.

is potentially a human being.

is the substance of a human being, which in turn is a composite of form and matter.

. What we know first and most easily, according to Aquinas,

is the soul.

are the contents of our own minds.

are things like carrots and clouds.

are ideas of things like carrots and clouds.

. What is right for us to do, according to natural law,

can be known only through careful attention to what is described as natural in the Scriptures.

is whatever naturally feels right.

is whatever God, the author of nature, arbitrarily legislates as right.

expresses our nature as rational human beings.

Quiz Content