More than Spiritual: Proofs for the Existence of God | Prof. Joshua Hochschild

The Thomistic Institute

Christianity, Society & Culture, Catholic Intellectual Tradition, Catholic, Philosophy, Religion & Spirituality, Thomism, Catholicism

4.8 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 3 February 2025

⏱️ 44 minutes

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Summary

Professor Joshua Hochschild argues that Aquinas' proofs for God's existence, specifically the first way, are simple, accessible, and not merely spiritual exercises, but rather starting points for a deeper understanding of God and the relationship between faith and reason.

This lecture was given on November 4th, 2024, at University of Texas at Austin.

For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.

About the Speaker:

Joshua Hochschild is Professor of Philosophy at Mount St. Mary’s University, where he also served six years as the inaugural Dean of the College of Liberal Arts. His primary research is in medieval logic, metaphysics, and ethics, with broad interest in liberal education and the continuing relevance of the Catholic intellectual tradition. He is the author of The Semantics of Analogy: Rereading Cajetan’s De Nominum Analogia (2010), translator of Claude Panaccio’s Mental Language: From Plato to William of Ockham (2017), and co-author of A Mind at Peace: Reclaiming an Ordered Soul in the Age of Distraction (2017). His writing has appeared in First Things, Commonweal, Modern Age and the Wall Street Journal. For 2020-21 he served as President of the American Catholic Philosophical Association.

Keywords: Aristotelianism, Causality, David Hume, Empirical Fact, First Cause, Natural Theology, Proof of God's Existence, Reason, Skepticism, Unmoved Mover

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Thomistic Institute podcast.
0:06.8	Our mission is to promote the Catholic intellectual tradition in the university, the church, and the wider public square.
0:13.1	The lectures on this podcast are organized by university students at Temistic Institute chapters around the world.
0:19.1	To learn more and to attend these events, visit us at to mystic institute.org.
0:25.5	So I expect that in the room there are some people who have read a lot of Aquinas
0:29.7	or who have heard about Aquinas on Proust for the Existence of God,
0:32.4	and then there are people who haven't ever touched on those things.
0:36.6	And so what I try to do when I give a lecture is speak in a way that could introduce people
0:43.1	to new ideas that they haven't heard of, but also hopefully engage people who are somewhat
0:47.9	familiar with these ideas and help them see new connections and new perspectives on those
0:53.0	ideas.
0:53.7	Whether I succeed or fail is
0:55.2	kind of up for you to tell me afterwards, so we'll have a discussion. But I am going to talk at you
0:59.3	for about 45 minutes or so with a prepared lecture. The Thomistic Institute records these and puts many of them
1:06.9	online as podcasts. So that's part of the reason why I prepare a lecture. But we do have
1:14.2	time to stay in this room and talk afterwards. And I would love to hear questions, especially if I
1:19.8	don't speak into whatever interest brought you here in the first place. You can ask questions
1:24.4	about whatever you want. Okay. So the title of this talk is more than spiritual
1:29.1	proofs for the existence of God. When Thomas Aquinas proves that God exists, it doesn't feel like a
1:37.8	spiritual exercise. Indeed, it doesn't even feel like a big deal, and Aquinas doesn't think it is a big deal.
1:45.7	To him, proof of God's existence is intellectually easy, historically uncontroversial, and even something of a compromise.
1:55.0	It was a plain matter of empirical fact for him that the existence of God can be proven.
	...

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