CFS-WB-CH04

things are in motion, or change, the second way is concerned about the
cause of that change. In fact, borrowing from the ancient Greek philosopher
Aristotle, Aquinas believed that all things that are actualized (that
is, change from potency to act) have four causes for that change. One
of those causes is the efficient (or agent) cause. An efficient cause
is like an agent that causes other things to happen in some way. For
example, an architect must imagine the house before he draws it. The
idea of the house in the architect’s mind is a cause of the house she
draws on paper. But what caused the thought (idea) of the house in the
first place? That would be the will of the architect who chooses to think
of an idea for a house before drawing it. The architect is thus the efficient
cause of the actual house someone builds, even if she did not
build it herself.
Like the first argument, efficient causes cannot go on infinitely
into the past. There must be a first efficient cause — an eternal first
cause — that did not come to be by anything else, but just is. God is the
name we give to that first efficient cause.
Efficient Cause: In
philosophy, the agent who
brings a thing into being or
initiates a change.
An architect who conceives
and designs a house is the
efficient cause of that house,
even if she does not build it
herself.
Image courtesy Shutterstock.
© Sophia Institute for Teachers
Unit 2, Chapter 4: Philosophical Proofs of an Intelligent Creator
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