Chapter 6 - The Third Way

Summary

Chapter 6 examines the Third Way, which features a distinction between possible and necessary beings, while concluding to a necessary being that exists of itself. A translation and the argument’s premises are followed by an overview of how the argument works. Attention is given to an argument in Aquinas’s Summa contra Gentiles that strongly resembles the Third Way. The chapter then turns to characterizing what Aquinas means by possible and necessary beings. There is substantial discussion of the crucial premise, that if there were only possible beings, then at some time nothing (none) would exist. It is explained that ambiguity surrounding the reference to “some time” allows commentators to read the argument in different ways. The last section of the chapter considers the second half of the argument, which argues that there must exist an uncaused being that is “necessary of itself (per se)” to account for all beings with caused existence that comes from something else. The being is God Aquinas concludes.