Summa Blogologica - Questions 9 & 10: The Immutable and Eternal God

Today I decided that I would be running together two Questions from the Summa Theologica in one post.

The first is Question 9, God's Immutability. Immutable means changeless. Not changeless by ordination or by virtue of testimony, but changeless by nature. Below I will explain better.

The other is Question 10, God's Eternity. God exists forever. Always has, always will.

In this post I will introduce a term all philosophers or theology students need to understand, and that is "a posteriori" which simply means "by effect" or "when something is derived from observation". Second, remember what "potential" things are. It is anything which can undergo a change in order to become perfected.

--------------------------------------------

Question 9

God and God alone is a changeless being. Things which change are prone to potentiality; they are seeking perfection; things that are imperfect are finite. But God is infinite, everywhere, perfect, and has no potential. God is therefore unchangeable, or immutable.

Question 10

God’s eternal nature is due a posteriori (by effect) to His essence as existence. If He is existence itself then He has always existed. Further, His other qualities as immutable and infinite make Him the only eternal being, as eternity belongs to Him alone. What must be understood is that eternity does not share and is not the same thing as time, for God created and began time and is what our finite minds can conceive as “time” but not as a thing is created or born or began – God is outside all of these.

----------------------------------------------

I tell you truthfully, even though I wrote this and it all makes sense to me, it is difficult to decipher. Spend time on these Summa posts. Your understanding of God and His "awesome" qualities will provide you with such a humility and reverence for Him. Seek the truth!

Summa Blogologica - Question 8: The Existence of God in Things.

We are SO CLOSE to finishing the Summa Theologica's explanation on God's Essence (His Nature). I continuously labor to find fresh and easy ways to explain this without losing any of the "must know" knowledge. This all requires a couple reviews, so please don't get discouraged.

Once you get all of this it promotes a great quality in your reflections on God and you will also be able to understand Him in applications to your life. For example, once you understand that God is unchangeable, and understand that He IS love (not a selective and subjective love, but loves all of creation), we can have a deeper gratitude for His work in our lives, and less fear and worry when we sin. So stick with me!

Question 8 is next. St. Thomas answers the topic of God being "in" things. We say off hand that God is in things all the time (omnipresent), in acts of love, in mercy, etc. The explanation here can be extended to that, but is a more rudamentary in that we are saying that God is in things in basic principal. Don't get too wrapped up there. You'll see. In order to understand God's existence in things, you must understand God's existence at all. Links for that are below.

Remember the difference between an accident (when something is belongs to a thing but is not its essence, like a hat can be black and smelly) and nature (what a thing IS). So here we go:

---------------------------------------------------------

God is in all things as that of a being of an agent, and not simply as a part of their essence or as an accident. By this “agent” we mean that God is the first act (see God's existence as "first act"), and as such must be joined or present to the continuous movement of beings. If it is a being at all, it must be attached to it effect if it should continuously exist; God is the first cause. Further, we can extrapolate that God must be everywhere, omnipresent, due to this logical conclusion. The limitless cannot be limited, and the infinite cannot be finite. He is also everywhere in three ways: essence, presence, and power. Essence by agent of efficient cause (see God's existence), presence by perfect knowledge and infinite existence, power by creator of all things. These are not accidents in other things and so He alone is not particular but universal in His infinity of presence and power.

-----------------------------------------------------------

I said in the first post on God's existence that the concepts there would be used over and over. Here, they really matter. The take-away here is that God is everywhere because as in infinite being, which is a product of His existence and infiniteness, He must be everywhere. Review Question 7 for the infinity of God.

Are you having fun yet?