If there is no Necessary Being, Nothing Exists

Author(s): Nelson Pike

Source: Noûs, Vol. 11, No. 4 (Nov., 1977), pp. 417-420
Published by: Wiley
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 If There Is No Necessary Being,
Nothing Exists
NELSON PIKE

OFCALIFORNIA,
UNIVERSlTY IRVINE

The third way is taken from possibility and necessity and runs thus.
We find in nature things that are possible to be and not to be since they
are found to be generated, and to corrupt, and consequently, they are
possible to be and not to be. But it is impossible for these always to
exist, for that which is possible not to be at some time is not. There-
fore, if everything is possible not to be, then at one time there could
have been nothing in existence. Now if this were true, even now there
would be nothing in existence, because that which does not exist only
begins to exist by something already existing. Therefore, if at one time
nothing was in existence, it would have been impossible for anything
to have begun to exist; and thus even now nothing would be in
existence-which is absurd. Therefore, if not all beings are merely
possible, but there must exist something the existence of which is
necessary. But every necessary being either has its necessity caused by
another or not. Now it is impossible to go on to infinity in necessary
things which have their necessity caused by another, as has already
been proved in regard to efficient causes. Therefore we cannot be
postulate the existence of some being have of itself its own necessity,
and not receiving it from another, but rather causing in other their
necessity. This all men speak ofas God.

([2]: Pt. I, Q.2, A.3)

This argument is openly fallacious. Using standard vocabu-

lary, let us say that an object is contingentif that object exists but
is such that it is possible for it not to exist. We shall count as
necessaryany object that exists but which is not contingent, i.e.
any object that exists but which is such that it is not possible for
it not to exist.1 Now assume that for any contingent object,
there is a time when it does not exist. It does not follow from
this assumption alone that if there exists no necessary being,
there is a time when nothing exists. Though no (single) con-
tingent object exists at all times, it could be that for each time,
some contingent object or other exists. (From "All men are
mortals", it does not follow that the human species will some-
day be extinct.) So much is clear and has been pinpointed by a
number of contemporary philosophers.2 What is not clear,
NOUS 11 (1977) 417
i 1977 by Indiana University

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418 NOUS

however, is the importance to be attached to this purely logical

deficiency in St. Thomas' third argument for the existence of
God. In an article entitled "Aquinas' Third Way" [10] Thomas
Mautner argues that the deficiency is crucial that efforts to
interpret the argument in such a way as to avoid it have so far
proved unsuccessful. The same position is taken by Alvin
Plantinga in Chapter I of Godand OtherMinds [1I1] and again in
Part I, Sec. A of his more recent book God, Freedomand Evil
[112].The suggestion is that the reductio program embodied in
the Third Way should be dismissed as a failure. What I want to
point out in the three paragraphs to follow, however, is that
within the passagejust quoted from Part I, Question 2, Article
3 of the Summa Theologica, St. Thomas employs two substan-
tive principles which, if granted, are-sufficient to deliver the
conclusion that if there exists no necessary being, nothing
exists. Though the argument actually offered is invalid, its
conclusion can be effectively derived without supplementing,
or in any way altering the materials provided in the text. If I
am right about this, the logical defect mentioned above will
have to be regarded as a surface problem only. The real issue
lies deeper: they rest with the question of whether the two
substantive principles now to be identified are sound.
In the fifth sentence of the passage quoted above, St.
Thomas says: ". . . that which does not exist only begins to exist
by something already existing". Assume (as we did above) that
for any contingent object, there is a time when it does not exist.
St. Thomas seems clearly to be supposing as well that for any
contingent object, at least one of the times when it does not
exist is prior to a time when it does exist. It follows that every
contingent object begins to exist; and what we are here being
told is that every object that begins to exist is brought into
existence by something else. That is to say that every contin-
gent object has a cause. Further, St. Thomas says that what-
ever brings something into existence must be "already exist-
ing". This is a point emphasized in his formulation of the
Second Way. In the present context it entails that the cause of
any contingent object has a cause that is prior to the contin-
gent object in question. I should add that commentators on
the writings of St. Thomas have often insisted that the notion
of priority herein involved is not temporal priority.3 Though
this is hard to believe given the emphasis on temporal themes
in the original presentation, I shall not presuppose a conclu-
sion as regards this textual issue. In the sequel I shall assume

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NECESSARY BEING 419

only that whatever sense of "prior" is intended, if X is prior to

Y, X and Y are not identical (nothing is prior to itself); and if X
is prior to Y and Y is prior to Z, then X is prior to Z. The
relation of priority is irreflexive and transitive.
In the ninth sentence of the passage we are considering,
St. Thomas says: ". . . it is impossible to go on to infinity in
necessary things which have their necessity caused by another,
as has been already proved in regard to efficient causes". I'm
not sure what it means to say that a necessary thing might have
its necessitycaused by another, but drawing attention to the last
phrase contained in this sentence, St. Thomas is obviously
re-employing a second principle articulated in his formula-
tion of the Second Way, viz. that with respect to any sequence
of objects that are causally related, "... it is not possible to go
on to infinity". Every causal series has a finite number of
members.
Assume that every contingent object has a cause that
exists prior to it. Assume, too, that every causal series has a
finite number of members. Taking note of the trivial logical
truth that every existing object is either contingent or not
contingent (in the second case it is a necessary being), it follows
that if there exists no necessary being, nothing exists. The
following argument, in other words, is valid:4
1. It is not the case that there exists a necessary being.
2. Every contingent object has a cause that is prior to it.
3. Every causal series has a finite number of members.
4. .-. Nothing exists.
Line three tells us that if there is a causal series, it has a finite
number of members. But lines one and two taken together tell
us that if there is a causal series, it has an infinite number of
members. As regards the latter, suppose that no necessary
being exists (line one). If there existed a causal series, it would
then be composed entirely of contingent beings. But under
these circumstances, line two would require that for any con-
tingent object in the series, there is another contingent object
in the series which is prior to it. Since the relation of priority is
irreflexive and transitive, it follows that the series would have
an infinite number of members. But from this we can con-
clude that there is no causal series. If we show that whatever
causal series there is has both a finite number of members and
an infinite number of members, what we show is that there is

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420 NOUS

no causal series at all. Nothing could fit this description. Now,

going back once again to line two, we can affirm that if there is
a contingent object, it is a member of a causal series. It follows
that if there is no causal series, there are no contingent objects.
But if there are no contingent objects and there are no neces-
sary objects either (the latter is affirmed in line one), then
since all existing objects are either contingent or necessary,
there are no objects at all. Given the principles formulated in
line two and three together with the trivial truth that all
existing objects are either contingent or not contingent (nec-
essary), it follows that if there is no necessary being, nothing
exists.
REFERENCES
[1] G.E.M. Anscombe and Peter Geach, ThreePhilosophers(Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1961).
[2] St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologicatrans. by Fathers of the English
Dominican Province (New York: Benzinger Bros., Inc., 1947).
[3] T. Patterson Brown, "St. Thomas' Doctrine of Necessary Being," Philo-
sophical Review 1964.
[41 E.A, Burtt, Typesof Religious Philosophy (New York: Harper, 1951).
[5] F. Copleston, Aquinas (Middelsex: Penguin Books, 1957).
[6] R.B. Edwards, "Composition and the Cosmological Argument," Mind
1968.-
[7] R. Garagou-Lagrange, God:His Existenceand Nature (St. Louis: Herder,
1936).
[8] John Hick, "Necessary Being," ScottishJournal of Philosophy 1961.
[9] E. A. Mascall, He Who Is (London: Longmans and Green, 1943).
[10] Thomas Mautner, "Aquinas's Third Way,"AmericanPhilosophicalQuar-
terly October, 1969.
[11] A. Plantinga, God and Other Minds (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1967).
[12] , God, Freedomand Evil (New York: Harper and Row, 1974).
[13] James Ross, PhilosophicalTheology (New York:Bobbs-Merrill, 1969).
[14] CJ.F. Williams, "God and Logical Necessity," Philosophical Quarterly
1961.
NOTES
1The notions of contingency and necessity that are involved here are
probably not to be understood as logical concepts. Some kind of material
contingency and necessity are no doubt involved. For a discussion of this
point see [3], [8], and [1].
2See, for example, [9]:48, [4], [14], [6] and [13E: 164-5.
3See, fore3ample, [7]: Vol. 1, Ch. III, par. 36; [5]:122-5; and [1]:111-2.
4My colleague Peter Woodruff has constructed a formal version of the
following argument. I have chosen not to include the formalized version
here because it is lengthy and does not add much in the way of clarity to the
verbal presentation.

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