It is necessary to flesh out the nature of the necessary being if the cosmological argument is to be informative.

Although Aquinas was quick to make the identification between God and the first mover or first cause (growing out of his contention that philosophy is the handmaiden of theology, such that in philosophy faith seeks understanding, not confirmation), such identification seems to go beyond the causal reasoning that informs the argument (although one can argue that it is consistent with the larger picture of God and his properties that Aquinas paints in his Summae). Some (Rasmussen, O’Connor, Koons) have plowed ahead in developing this stage 2 process by showing how and what properties—simplicity,...