St Bonaventure and the Origin of the Universe

Yesterday was the feast day of St Bonaventure. Although much could be said about the Seraphic Doctor, I’d like to focus on this: he was a proponent of a fascinating apologetic, called the Kalam cosmological argument.

Now, cosmology has nothing to do with cosmetics, cosmetic surgery, or anything like that! Cosmology has to do with the cosmos -the universe, and its origins. The Kalam argument became popular among Islamic philosophers in the Middle Ages, but not so much among Catholics. One notable exception was St Bonaventure.

The argument goes like this:

1) The universe (obviously) exists. 2) The universe either had a beginning or no beginning. 3) If a beginning – the beginning was either caused or not caused. 4) If it was caused – the cause was either personally caused or not personally caused.

If accepted, the argument ends with the universe being caused by a personal God. Each part of the argument presents you with a dilemma. Once you answer one question, it presents you with another, until you come to an inescapable conclusion.

Let’s take a look at point 2: The universe either had a beginning or no beginning. There are many who claim that the universe need not have a beginning point, or a first cause. They advocate an infinite number of causes stretching back in time through the history of the universe. However, there is no such thing as an actual infinite number of causes. There is no such thing as as an actual infinite number of anything!

For example, imagine, if you will, a library where there is an infinite number of red books, and an infinite number of black books. If someone signs a red book out of the library, there would still be just as many red books as black books in the library, since there is an infinite number of each! But this is obviously not the case in actuality. Hence, there can not be an infinite number of causes stretching back through the history of the universe. There had to be a first cause, a beginning, to the universe.

In future posts I’ll take a look at the rest of the Kalam argument.