The First Cause

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of a causal series continuing infinitely into the past. Essentially, Aquinas succeeds in justifying that the universe has a definitive beginning and proceeds to explain the necessity of God as the agent of this beginning.
For the purpose of understanding Aquinas' argument, causality can be defined as the relationship between two consecutive events and the presumption that one always precludes the other and in fact brings it about. What Aquinas' argues is that in order for an event to happen, a force must be applied by something else. Aquinas uses the analogy of a stick moving something only if a hand moves the stick. However, he contends that this series of cause and effect cannot go back into an infinite past. According to his Summa Theologica, Aquinas reasons that "…this cannot go back to infinity. If it did, there would be no first cause of change and, consequently, no other causes of change-for something can be a secondary cause of change only if it is changed by a ...

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