Summa Blogologica - Question 3: Our God is a "Simple" God

 

The things below come from Question 3 of the Summa Theologiae, “Whether God is Simple.” They discuss many attributes of God, as does the great part of the Summa, all adding up to God being quite simple. You’ll soon understand what I mean. Here we go:

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God cannot have a body for a body is of matter and form. Matter and form are complimented by one other ingredient to make a body, which is the ability of change. Remember in the quinque viae (Five Proofs) that change was a proof of God, which made this “God” the necessary being for all other change in the world? That idea is important here for obvious reasons because God cannot undergo change (otherwise He would require a thing before and more powerful than Himself) and it directly shows why he does not have a body, by cause (a priori) and not effect (a posteriori).  [NOTE: think of a priori and a posteriori as evidence of something having happened prior to, and evidence of something having happened after, hence cause and effect]

Essence and nature are used interchangeably as terms, and God is the same as His essence or nature. Essence is what a thing “is”, e.g., humans have a nature that is “universal”. The argument against here is that God cannot be “in” Himself. That is, God does not have a body and so there is nothing to be in. However, God is just pure act, the prime mover, He is not like or akin to anything like a genus or species like offspring of another thing, He just is who He is and so whatever He is, is in fact, His very nature. “I am who I am.” Creatures receive their essence when they are created, but God was never created and so He never received his existence, but so instead He is His existence. This is a H.U.G.E. idea that the reader must remember going forward!

An accident is an external thing which is associated with a thing. For example, a hat has black color, it has its shape, its size, its smell, its taste. All of these things are accidents. So with God, we say that He has no accidents, obviously, because He does not have matter and form (hyle and morphe).

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In all of these ideas, as difficult to grasp as they might be, they make for what we refer to as the Simplicity of God. God is simple. Simple things are not complex. Complex things are made up of matter, form, accidents, bodies, … some have legs, eyes, DNA, proteins … but God has none of these. He might be infinite, powerful, and omniscient, but there are no complexities in God. God is simple! See?

Questions?