“Somewhere in the World Is the Most Invincible Man”: Thomas Aquinas’ Argument from Degree and Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men
A few steps from a humorous exchange about the existence of a “most invincible man,” you find yourself face-to-face with a medieval argument for the existence of God
This exchange in Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men may be humorous, but it’s also only a step or two removed from articulating one of the five ways of knowing that God exists, as found in Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae:
Nobody’s invincible.
Somebody is.
Why do you say that?
Somewhere in the world is the most invincible man. Just as somewhere is the most vulnerable.
That’s a belief that you have?
No. It’s called statistics.
This fourth way of knowing that God exists is known as argumentum ex gradu or “argument from degree.” Here’s how Thomas puts it:
The fourth way is based on the gradation observed in things. Some things are found to be more good, more true, more noble, and so on, and other things less. But comparative terms describe varying degrees of approximation to a superlative; for example, things are hotter and hotter the nearer they approach what is hottest. Something therefore is the truest and best and most noble of things, and hence the most fully in being; for Aristotle says that the truest things are the things most fully in being. Now when many things possess some property in common, the one most fully possessing it causes it in the others: fire, to use Aristotle's example, the hottest of all things, causes all other things to be hot. There is something therefore which causes in all other things their being, their goodness, and whatever other perfections they have. And this we call God. (Summa Theologiae, 1a:2:3)