THE ORDER OF AQUINASS FIVE WAYS

Paul Gerard Horrigan, Ph.D., 2016.

There are interpreters of the philosophical thought of St. Thomas Aquinas who see no
specific order as regards the a posteriori quia effect to cause demonstrations of the existence of
God in Summa Theologiae, I, q. 2, a. 3, c., commonly known as the five ways.1 A. R. Mottes2
opinion concerning the ordering of the ways is that they have nothing necessary about them.
Joseph Owens writes that the arrangement in five ways is not repeated or referred to
elsewhere in the works of St. Thomas, even in those written later than the first part of the Summa
Theologiae. The arguments are divided differently in his different writings. Prima facie it
appears that the division into five ways had no special significance for St. Thomas. The
division has the earmarks of an apologetic arrangement that could be altered freely to suit the
purposes of the moment. The arrangement under the five ways, however, is still the mold in
which the arguments considered valid by modern Scholastic writers are usually cast.3 In his
1974 article, Aquinas and the Five Ways, Owens states concerning the quinque viae that there is
nothing sacrosanct about the number five or the particular arrangement in the Summa. That
Summa may indeed represent the height of Aquinass achievement. But the fact that in
subsequent writings he drew up proofs for the existence of God without any concern for aligning
them with the fivefold procedure shows sufficiently that he himself did not give the five ways a
privileged position. He never writes as though he had established five ways and only five for the
demonstration of Gods existence. Rather, the arrangement of the ways is left free, remaining
flexible and open to wide change as occasion happened to demand.4

On the other hand, a number of scholars retain that the five ways do have a definite
systematic ordering. According to Jacques Maritain in his book Approaches to God, the five

1
Studies on the Five Ways in general: P. BROCH, Las pruebas tradicionales de la existencia de Dios, Ciencia
Tomista, 48 (1933), pp. 145-162, 330-343 ; P. BROCH, Examen de las objeciones contra las cinco pruebas de la
existencia de Dios, Ciencia Tomista, 49 (1934), pp. 45-58 ; C. A. HART, Participation and the Thomistic Five
Ways, The New Scholasticism, 26 (1952), pp. 267-282 ; J. M. SANCHEZ-RUIZ, Las pruebas de la existencia de
Dios en el tomismo, Estudios Filosoficos, 6 (1957), pp. 53-96 ; S. VANNI ROVIGHI, Perenne validit delle
cinque vie di s. Tommaso, Aquinas, 3 (1960), pp. 198-213 ; J. GARCA ALVAREZ, De Quinque viis Sancti
Thomae defensio quaedam, Aquinas, 6 (1963), pp. 358-372 ; A. BERTULETTI, La prova dellesistenza di Dio e
le cinque vie, Aquinas, 9 (1966), pp. 346-359 ; E. NICOLETTI, La struttura delle cinque vie di s. Tommaso,
Aquinas, 12 (1969), pp. 47-58 ; L. DEWAN, The Number and Order of St. Thomas Five Ways, The Downside
Review, 92 (1974), pp. 1-18 ; W. DUNPHY, The Quinque viae and Some Parisian Professors of Philosophy, in
St. Thomas Aquinas: 1274-1974. Commemorative Studies, vol. 2, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto,
1974, pp. 73-93 ; J. OWENS, Aquinas and the Five Ways, The Monist, 58 (1974), pp. 16-35 ; F. LIVERZIANI,
Esperienzialit delle cinque vie? Nota su Aspetti del Tomismo di Giorgio Giannini, Aquinas, 22 (1979), pp.
414-427 ; W. J. HANKEY, The Place of the Proof for Gods Existence in the Summa Theologiae of Thomas
Aquinas, The Thomist, 46 (1982), pp. 370-393 ; J. F. X. KNASAS, Thomistic Existentialism and the Silence of the
Quinque Viae, The Modern Schoolman, 63 (1986), pp. 157-171 ; R. J. CONNELL, Preliminaries to the Five
Ways, in Thomistic Papers, IV (ed. L. Kennedy C.S.B.), The Center for Thomistic Studies, Houston, 1988, pp. 129-
167 ; J. R. WILCOX, The Five Ways and the Oneness of God, The Thomist, 62 (1998), pp. 245-268.
2
A. R. MOTTE, A propos des Cinq Voies, Revue des Sciences Philosophiques et Thologiques, 27 (1938), pp.
577-582.
3
J. OWENS, An Elementary Christian Metaphysics, Center for Thomistic Studies, Houston, TX, 1986, pp. 341-342.
4
J. OWENS, Aquinas and the Five Ways, The Monist, 58 (1974), p. 35.

1
ways of Thomas Aquinas not only constitute five typically distinct arguments; but, as the reader
has no doubt remarked during the course of this exposition, they are also distributed in a certain
order in which the depth of the thought and the complexity of the discussion increase. In
proportion as the mind delves deeper into the world of experience in order to reach the first
starting point of its thinking, it discerns in the First Being more and more meaningful aspects,
and richer perspectives are disclosed to it.5

Lawrence Dewan, O.P.s position regarding the numbering and ordering of the five ways
is interesting and much more detailed than is Maritains. For Dewan, the first four ways are
developed in accordance with Aristotles presentation of being as distinguished according to
actuality and potentiality. In the ninth book of the Metaphysics, we have, first, a doctrine of
three types of being actually: actuality, operation and being imperfectly; and, subsequently, a
discussion of being actually or actuality in terms of priority, goodness and truth. Now this is
closer to the order of the first four of St. Thomas ways than would happen by chance. The first
way starts from being imperfectly or imperfect actuality, i.e. motion considered as the actuality
of the potential or movable. The second way starts from operation, i.e. motion considered in
comparison to the motive or operative power. The third way, viewing things as revealed by
generation and corruption, considers substantial being or actuality. The fourth way, then,
considers things according as one is better than another, truer or more intelligible than another,
nobler than (i.e. prior in perfection to) another. Thus the first four ways seem to be constructed
on the basis of the Aristotelian doctrine of being, according as being signifies that which is
distinguished according to actuality and potentialitywe have a reason for the first four of St.
Thomass five ways, i.e. as regards their order and number. The first three correspond to the
three modes of being actually, taken in the order of their knowability for us. In this light, we can
understand quite well the only indication of order St. Thomas himself gives us: The first and
more manifest way The fourth way, itself multiple, sums up the variety of visions, according
to its various properties, of being as distinguished according to actuality and potentiality.6

If the first four ways are to be considered as a kind of unit, then why is the fifth way
included in the list as the final way? Is it a kind of second unit? How does the quinta via add
anything more to the first four? Dewan replies: The suggestion I wish to make is that, just as we
have already considered the first four ways as a kind of unit, so the fifth way constitutes a second
unit. Thus, the article would have two main parts, the first four ways and the fifth. Is there any
reason, other than the systematic completeness of the first four ways, for positing this two-fold
structure? If we wish to capture this duality in as compact a form as possible, we can take the
fourth way as summing up the first four. Thus we have God as an intelligent kind of being
(aliquid intelligens), by which all natural beings are ordered to their goal. This duality, I
suggest, corresponds to the plan of the Summa Theologiae as a whole. We can see this plan in
various texts. The first place seems to be Summa Theologiae I, q. 1, a. 7, where the subject
matter of the science St. Thomas calls Sacred Doctrine is under discussion: But all [items]
are treated in Sacred Doctrine in function of the intelligibility of God, either because they are
God Himself, or because they have an order to God, as to their origin and the goal And then,
at q. 2, prologue, we read: Therefore, because the principal intention of this Sacred Doctrine is

5
J. MARITAIN, Approaches to God, Macmillan, New York, 1967, pp. 62-63.
6
L. DEWAN, The Number and Order of St. Thomass Five Ways, The Downside Review, 92 (1974), pp. 14, 16-
17.

2
to communicate the knowledge of God, and not only according as He is in Himself, but also
according as He is the origin of things and their goal, and especially of the rational
creaturefirst we shall treat of God; secondly of the movement of the rational creature unto
God; thirdly of Christ, who as man is for us the way of tending unto God.

Now, the consideration concerning God will be tripartite. For first we shall consider
those [things] which pertain to the Divine Essence; secondly, those which pertain to the
distinction of Persons; thirdly, those which pertain to the coming-forth of creatures from Him.
We see, particularly in the last-quoted paragraph, how God in Himself becomes telescoped
with God as origin of things, to constitute the matter of the First Part of the Summa; whereas
the treatment of God as Goal of all takes on the special form of Goal of man, and constitutes
the general subject-matter of the Second and Third Parts of the Summa. My suggestion is that the
article on the existence of God acquires its over-all order from the fact that it is God, as subject
of the science called Sacred Doctrine, whose existence is being demonstrated. Accordingly,
one might say that the first four ways constitute a starting-point for the First Part of the Summa,
whereas the fifth way constitutes a starting-point for the Second and Third Parts. Our explanation
of the order of the ways thus, in a way, coincides with the causal explanation, but explains why
that explanation, by itself, is inadequate. The duality we see as the larger structure of the article
reflects the duality of efficient and final causality, God as beginning and end of all. But the
system that has been worked out for the first four ways is the way it is because of the variety
proper to being as actuality. Our intention here is to propose the order which St. Thomas himself
had in mind in writing the article, and not merely an order which holds but which escaped his
notice. It does not seem to us that, given St. Thomass interest in questions of order, the interest
he showed in sets of proofs for the existence of God, and the carefully polished form which the
Summa article (I, q. 2, a. 3) has, it does not seem to us likely that the order we have described
was unintended.78

For Maurice Holloway, there is a definite ordering among the five ways in that, as they
succeed one another, they become increasingly metaphysical, becoming more and more involved
in the actuality of things: Each way exploits to a greater degree than the last the actuality of
things. Motion, or an existent as changing, is for us the most obvious and manifest characteristic
of sensible beings. Thus this evidence constitutes a good starting point; it is a good first way. But
in itself such a characteristic of being is the least perfect and least stable manifestation of
existential act. For here the very being of change is becoming, the reality of change consisting
precisely in an ordering or movement to further being. The second way is more actual than the
first, for here our evidence is not the change itself that a being is undergoing in its existence, but
the activity that is responsible for such a change. The third way analyzes the natures from which
such activity flows, which natures, as possessive of substantial being, are more perfect and stable
than the accidental activity they exercise. But in the third way we analyzed these natures from
the aspect of their corruptibility and contingency. We considered substantial being precisely as
imperfect, namely, as corruptible and contingent. In the fourth way our concern was an explicitly
metaphysical one. For in this way we analyzed existents insofar as they manifested perfections
that as such involved no imperfection, the minoration of these perfections being due to the

7
The conception of the plan of this Summa article which we have proposed also helps explain why the fifth way is
even more summary than the others.
8
L. DEWAN, op. cit., pp. 17-18.

3
limiting essence in which they were exercised. But the perfections themselves, as considered
apart from their limiting principle, had nothing of contingency or imperfection about them. The
fifth way, the way of wisdom, is directly concerned with the existent as most actual. Here the
transcendent property of being that this way considers is being as good, as perfect; hence, as
desirable and therefore as finalizing the activity of natural agents. Thus the causality involved in
the fifth way is final causality.9

More recently, Jason Mitchell maintains in his 2012 article, The Method of Resolutio and
the Structure of the Five Ways, that the five ways can be structured in accordance with the
resolutio. The via resolutionis is a movement of analysis, in which the reason proceeds from
effect to cause, from the particular to the universal, from the multiple to the simple. Mitchell
explains that Aquinass Five Ways can be structured in accordance with the metaphysical
method of resolutio. The real distinction between subject and its accidents is complemented by
the reduction of accidental movement to the first immobile mover (First Way). The distinction
between prime matter and substantial form requires two levels of causality reflected in the Third
Way and in its reduction of possible beings subject to generation and corruption, to some
necessary being in need of an ulterior reduction. The real composition of essence and actus
essendi is fundamental to the Fourth Way, interpreted as a way of participation. A fourth stage in
resolutio considers the ordered operation of finite beings and this consideration is complemented
by the Fifth Way.10 Mitchell also writes in the same article: If we anticipate the arguments of
the Five Ways, we see that there is a correspondence between the order of the Five Ways and the
main stages of the resolutio secundum rationem.

[1] First, there is a need for an ultimate efficient cause of accidental change. For, if the
ens in actu that reduces the subject in potency to act is also mobile, then the resolution must
continue until it reaches a first ens in actu which is not able to be reduced from potency to act.

[2] Second, there is a need for an ultimate efficient cause of substantial forms. For, if the
universal nature that causes the whole of the species gives evidence of depending on another in
some way, then the resolution must continue to a first cause which does not depend of another
being in any way.

[3] Third, there is a need for an ultimate efficient-exemplary cause of all beings that are
composed of substantial essence and participated actus essendi. Only that which is Esse per
essentiam is able to produce and measure that which is per participationem.

[4] Finally, there is a need for an ultimate governing cause of the ordered operari of the
created suppositum. The substantial form alone is insufficient in explaining the frequent
attainment of the end. Hence, there is a need, on the one hand, for an intellect capable of ordering
the nature to its end and, on the other, for a distinction between the way that natural beings,
which lack intelligence, are governed and the way that spiritual beings, endowed with
intelligence, are governed by God and participate in his governance.11

9
M. HOLLOWAY, An Introduction to Natural Theology, Appleton-Century-Crofts, New York, 1959, pp. 134-135.
10
J. MITCHELL, The Method of Resolutio and the Structure of the Five Ways, Alpha Omega, 15.3 (2012), p. 381.
11
J. MITCHELL, op. cit., p. 361.