One thing I can't seem to get my mind around is how he (Aquinas) said that nothing can come from nothing/nothing can create itself, yet he seems to refute that in the case of G!d.
One thing I can't seem to get my mind around is how he (Aquinas) said that nothing can come from nothing/nothing can create itself, yet he seems to refute that in the case of G!d.
The crux of the question is delightfully simple: If God made the world and everything in it, who made God?
The answer is equally simple: God isn't made, God just is.
Aquinas 'proves' the eternal nature of God in his 'Five Proofs' (ST I-I, q2, a3). But Aquinas argues the proof of the idea of God as such, and he bases his arguments on the propositions of Aristotle, and Aristotle was not arguing the existence of God the Father of the Christian Tradition, but the existence of God itself. For Aristotle, God is an ontological reality, indeed a necessity, to explain the world. It is the relationship between God and the world that distinguishes so radically the difference between the Christian and the Hellenic traditions. For Aquinas, this is a given, Sacred Doctrine is the Revelation of that which cannot be ascertained by reason, but that does not make it unreasonable, just unknowable. The Greeks came up with atomic theory, science has pursued it relentlessly, and in the 1920s, the thesis was proved. Subsequently, and in light of science, our understanding of 'atoms' has changed significantly from the idea the Greeks had in mind (the smallest 'bit of stuff' common to everything, and of which everything is constructed), we now talk of waves as well as particles, and of sub-atomic particles themselves ... but the Greek idea was never beyond reason, just beyond proof. There is no reason therefore, to refute what is beyond reason simply because it is cannot be demonstrated, if that were the case, science would never have advanced at all.
To return to the Five Proofs, Aquinas and Aristotle are defining the very term objectively, by ascribing qualities to that which we call God, from the philosophical perspective. In Scripture, on the other hand, we learn that "God is love" (1 John 4:8), a self-evident statement (a conviction, not a philosophical position) founded on a belief in the Incarnation and the mission of the Son ("For God so loved the world, as to give his only begotten Son" John 3:16). But Aquinas is not addressing this order of conviction, rather, in his argument, he is demonstrating that the conviction is not unreasonable.
First Proof: Motion.
Aquinas says "whatever is in motion is put in motion by another". A thing possesses actuality in respect of what it is, and potentiality in respect of what it can be but isn't. An acorn can be a tree, squirrel food, a kitten's plaything, a cup of tea ... but an acorn is not any one of these until acted upon, by sun and rain and soil, or a squirrel, or a kitten, etc. This is what Aquinas means by motion.
Therefore, whatever is in motion must be put in motion by another. If that by which it is put in motion be itself put in motion, then this also must needs be put in motion by another, and that by another again. But this cannot go on to infinity, because then there would be no first mover, and, consequently, no other mover; seeing that subsequent movers move only inasmuch as they are put in motion by the first mover ... Therefore it is necessary to arrive at a first mover, put in motion by no other; and this everyone understands to be God.
If God is the First Mover, God is not Himself moved, in the sense that there is no potential to be in God that God is not already in actuality.
So God was not caused to be, or moved to exist — God always is, and indeed we pray God "was, is now, and ever shall be", but it is given that God is not 'was' nor 'will be' in any way different than He 'is'. If God is understood properly, as a concept, there can never a 'before God was' nor an 'after God'.
Second Proof: Cause and Effect.
"There is no case known (neither is it, indeed, possible) in which a thing is found to be the efficient cause of itself; for so it would be prior to itself, which is impossible ... Therefore it is necessary to admit a first efficient cause, to which everyone gives the name of God."
This follows much from the first. Things are, because they are caused to be (either directly or indirectly). We trace the cosmos back to the Big Bang and the Primordial Atom, the one thing that is the cause of everything ... but eventually we must allow the one thing that is, that is not itself caused, and this the philosophers call God. If that Primordial Atom is without itself cause, it is also without movement — it is what it is and has no need to move to be something else — therefore, without God, there is no reasonable explanation for why whatever went bang in the Big Bang to go bang in the first place ...
God, in this respect, cannot cause Himself — there cannot be 'a nothing' which says "I will be God".
Third Proof: Necessary and Contingent Being
That which does not exist only begins to exist by something already existing. Therefore, if at one time nothing was in existence, it would have been impossible for anything to have begun to exist; and thus even now nothing would be in existence — which is absurd. Therefore ... there must exist something the existence of which is necessary (for other things to exist). But every necessary thing either has its necessity caused by another, or not. Therefore we cannot but postulate the existence of some being having of itself its own necessity, and not receiving it from another, but rather causing in others their necessity. This all men speak of as God.
To recap then, of God we know:
He is eternally and,
He was not caused and,
He is what He is (there is nothing to cause Him other than He is), and,
He is the cause of all things and,
He is not altered nor changed in any way by what He causes.
Thomas