Aquinas on the Eternality and Necessity of the World
discussion note by David Reiter and Nathanael Johnston
Erskine College, USA
Published January 13, 2009
In this note, we present a new observation of relevance to Aquinas’s
third way. Scholars have noted that Aquinas recognizes the existence of a
multiplicity of necessary beings, but it has not been recognized that Aquinas’s
views concerning the eternality of the world commit him to the epistemic
possibility that the world itself is a necessary being. We explain how Aquinas
is committed to this possibility and explore its bearing on the success or
failure of the third way as a demonstration of God’s existence.
