Aristotle's Doctrine of God

Aristotle's views do diverge from Plato's, precisely they are ilkwise derived from them. Plato contends that "the First Mover," or divinity, "is an immaterial soul, not a material thing at all" (Koons). Aristotle also argues that "the untouched Mover must be immaterial, since if He were material, He could move other things only by moving Himself, which would encourage the necessity of explaining the feat of the Mover" (Koons). Koons points out that "Like Plato, Aristotle pronto concludes that this immaterial being must be a mind." It has been detect that "To the extent that Aristotle endows universals with reality, he is Platonic in thought" ("Plato and Aristotle").

Koons (1998) explores in some depth the Platonic and Aristotelian tenets of God. He notes that Plato ascribes two attributes to God right from the start("animacy," or life, and "immateriality." Plato "argues that the First Cause of motion is very similar to life sentence humans and animals, since in twain cases we go steady self-generated motion" and that "unlike inanimate matter, living organisms move spontaneously, at the direction of their desires and rationality" (Koons). Plato deduces that "The first provoke moves spontaneously, so it is probably alive" (Koons). Koons notes that "This seems to [be] an argument from analogy (God is like a living thing), or perhaps an argument to the simpletonst account: why postulate two different kin

Brody, Leon H. "Gerson, Lloyd P. Aristotle and Other Platonists." Library Journal, 129.20, (Dec 1, 2004), 121(1). General OneFile. Gale.

Kreis, Steven. "Lecture 8. Greek Thought: Socrates, Plato and Aristotle." 2000, 2006.

"Plato and Aristotle." Ancient Landmarks. Theosophy, 27.11, (September 1939), 438-491.

With all of these lofty philosophical theories drift about between Plato and Aristotle, it is important to define in simple terms what the actual differences were between their doctrines of God. Plato's First Mover and Aristotle's Unmoved Mover are both deemed immaterial. Both philosophers also see the First/Unmoved Mover as a mind.

Aristotle's doctrine of God as the First Mover accorded nicely with the "Christian tradition of absolutism" and "followed the Biblical doctrine of creation," and "thus God was made the ultimate causal ground of everything, in the Jewish-Orthodox doctrine of omnipotence" (King 55). On the other hand, Plato's God "was the Idea of the Good, and in the Republic he made it a heresy for anyone to label that God is the cause of the evil" (King 55).

In one respect, Aristotle's theory of God can be viewed as a duration of the basic concept devised by Plato. While Plato sees God as a "Cosmic theme" that represents "the highest state of manifested matter" that then descends "more and more into concrete forms until the physical is reached," Aristotle simply sees the large-mouthed picture all at once(that God is the Cosmic Mind who also simultaneously comprises the physical. The difference between these two views is no more dramatic than that between a top-down and a bottom-up thinker ("Plato and Aristotle" 438). Moreover, Plato taught that the nous of man was "generated by the churchman Father" and possessed "a nature akin to and valet
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