Existence of God by Thomas Aquinas and St. Anselm - Essay Example

The paper "Existence of God by Thomas Aquinas and St. Anselm" is an exceptional example of an essay on religion and theology. Two historical points of view on the existence of God were presented by Thomas Aquinas and St. Anselm. Aquinas focused on the infinity of time, reason, existence, qualities and movement, and how God is a necessary being to defeat the concept of infinity, a concept of God’s necessity. Anselm presented his argument by using the nature of being, an ontological view on God’s existence.

Anselm argued that God is greater than any thought. Since reality and being necessary is greater than just mere mind or understanding and not necessary, then God must exist in reality and is necessary to exist.Both arguments point out that God is a necessary being because it has its purpose, to stop the infinity of time and to have something that can be used as a comparison for greatness. Aquinas and Anselm focus on God’s purpose to prove his existence. They show that since man believes in infinite regression or things coming to exist because of another and another and so on there must be something that is the ultimate end of all the reasons for existence.

This is the same as for the concept of greatness. Since man can always seek for a comparison, that something is greater than something and another thing is greater than that and so on, then there must be a being that could be the greatest of all where nothing is greater than it. Aquinas and Anselm point out that God is the endpoint and the start point of everything. He is the root of everything, of all concepts, values, reason, movement, and existence. This shows that God must be the ultimate start and end of everything.

To use this as a proof of God’s existence is using human logic and understanding. Their argument proves that God exists because it is the limit of human logic. Human understanding cannot stop infinite regression so they placed a being on the start and the end of it all that is the ultimate being, nothing is greater than it because it is the greatest.