One God

​It's a common error for authors to believe that what they've written clearly expresses what they're thinking. That's one reason editors are so valuable to us. I'm fortunate that my eldest son is a good writer and editor. Unfortunately the combination of my procrastination and his busy schedule doesn’t lend itself to lengthy rewrites.
Last week, with my deadline fast approaching, I lassoed him on his way out the door. We quickly resolved all grammatical issues but he pointed out I hadn’t shown there is only one Creator. Mark would not return before my posting deadline and I didn’t want to publish any such explanation without edit so I promised to resolve that issue this week. Since my son had that concern about my blog, I knew others would as well. Not wanting to disappoint my readers, I simply appended my promise. I put it down in writing and published it! I promised to reduce 23 centuries of thought to one blog post. What was I thinking?
Here goes. Until Abraham, most people held many gods. The Abrahamic faiths; Judaism, Christianity, and Islam; know there is one God by divine revelation. This may be the prime example of an appeal to authority. Can we prove there is not a conclave of Gods who coauthored the universe?
Aristotle, who lived from 385 to 323 BC, was the first person recorded to profess an “unmoved mover”. Over 1500 years later Thomas Aquinas reasoned that any “uncaused cause”, as he rephrased it, must have the power to exist purely through itself, being without relying on anything else. No portion or aspect could require a cause without rendering the totality caused. He further argued that that which exists purely through itself could also have no restrictions. Any restriction is ultimately a cause to exist in a way that is not restricted.
Finally we arrive at the “uncaused cause” being one, singular. If there were more than one there would be at least one identifiable trait that's present in one and not in the others. That would restrict one particular “uncaused cause” to having that trait and the others to not having it. Since there can be no restrictions, there can be only one “uncaused cause”, therefore only one God.

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