s the necessary being, God. (4) The fourth way takes into consideration the transcendental qualities of reality, "the good, the true, the noble," and so forth, which we find in things to a greater or lesser degree. But transcendental qualities are nothing other than being, expressed through one of its attributes; hence things under our experience are beings to a greater or lesser degree. But the greater and lesser are not intelligible unless they are related to that which is the highest in that order; and what is the highest is also the cause of all that exists in that order. Therefore there exists the highest degree of being and it is the cause of all limited being. This is God. (5) Order exists in the world about us. Hence there must exist an intelligence responsible for the order of the universe. This is God. Thus, in brief, we have Aquinas' five proofs for the existence of God; proofs from the notion of motion, cause, contingency, perfection, and order.The proofs for the existence of God are also means of knowing something of God's essence. This knowledge, however, remains always essentially inadequate and incomplete.One way of knowing God is the way of negative theology, that is, by removing from the concept of God all that implies imperfection, potentiality, materiality. In other words, by this method we arrive at a knowledge of God through considering what He is not.A second method is that of analogy. God is the cause of the world. Now every object reflects some perfection of the cause from which it proceeds. Hence it is possible for the human mind to rise to the perfections of God from the consideration of the perfection it finds in creatures. This it does, naturally, by removing all imperfection and potentiality from the creatures considered. The resultant idea of the nature of God is thus had through analogy with the perfections of the created universe....
