The Aristotelian argument actually proves that the First Cause is causing the world to be the way it is at every moment of every day.Ī possible objection would be that perhaps the series of causes is infinite.

The point of the argument is not that without the First Cause the universe could not have gotten started it is, rather, that without the First Cause no change would be occurring right now. The significance of the First Cause is not just that it is “first” but that it is the kind of cause that requires no cause because it is Pure Act, that is, all actuality and no potential.

No, the Aristotelian proof claims that the series of causes we observe in the material world must be traceable back to a cause that is not itself caused, that is, to an Unactualized Actualizer. The Aristotelian proof does not claim that there had to be a First Cause to get the whole sequence of causes started Aristotle himself thought that the material world had always existed. If we analyze the changes that take place all around us every day, we find that all of them have causes (changers) and these causes can be understood in series with one thing actualizing another and that thing itself being actualized by something else. So, when a change occurs, that change requires a changer. This led him to state a fundamental principle: change requires a changer. The coffee always was potentially cold and just needed something (like cool air) to actualize that potential. But Aristotle argued that the coldness does not come out of nothing but rather is an actualization of the potential contained in the coffee. So, he argued, it must be our senses deceiving us. How can the coldness of the coffee come into existence out of nothing? It is impossible. Parmenides had argued that all change is an illusion because he thought that actual change is impossible. We see qualitative change, change of location, change in size, and substantial change (as for example when a living thing dies). This is the starting point of the argument. 1 of his book, Five Proofs for the Existence of God (Ignatius, 2017). I am indebted to the excellent description of Aristotle’s argument provided by Ed Feser in Ch. In this article I want to discuss a proof for the existence of the First Cause that comes from Aristotle.

Ed feser five proofs