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:

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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.

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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?

Summa Blogologica - Question 6: The Goodness of God

Now we get to the good stuff. The previous Summa Blogologica posts were the roots, the foundation of the rest of the understanding of God and His nature. The rest is vital as well but now we get to learn about the love of God, the good of God, and more. All the things Christians say about God that matter.

The Summa Theologica Question 5 reasons with Goodness in General, now Question 6 answers the Goodness of God. I will include the objections given by Thomas Aquinas because they help unfold the understanding a little bit.

Here we go:

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Article 1 consists of whether God is good. The objections state that God cannot be good because (1) good belongs to things of order, species and order, to which God is not, and (2) God cannot be good because good is desirable but God is not desirable by all as all do not know God. The reply is that God is the first and final cause, and thus he is also the cause of goodness and all good comes from Him. Why is that? Remember in Question 5 we learned that anything that has being has goodness? Well if God created everything then all goodness comes from Him. The mode, species and order are found in the essence of the cause, God is the cause. One does not need to know God as Himself, but can have natural knowledge of divine intelligence, and also all things seek their own perfection (goodness) and subtly seek God in this way.

Article 2 consists of whether God is the supreme good. The objections state that God is not the absolute good because, (1) supreme good adds something to good, but God has nothing added to him (he is not a compound being) but is simple, (2 & 3) to say God is the supreme good is to say there are other good things, but “God alone is good”. The reply to these is that the good between God and man are not univocal, that is, they are not the same thing. As creatures, we only “have” this good as imparted from the creator and is therefore limited, but God is not. God is the good - it is His very nature to be good, and not have good like us.

Article 3 consists of whether to be essentially good belongs to God alone. We know that, as all good comes from God, we must remember that God is His essence and anything coming from His emanation into thing is only possesses that thing which in this case is goodness; we have good, God is good.

Article 4 consist of whether all things are good by the divine goodness. God caused the goodness in things, and creatures are therefore good by reason of the divine goodness.

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Simple? What you need to know is in Articles 1, 3 and 4. What we must understand is essence/nature. For lack of easier terms, essence is nature, and they are what a thing is. We are human and so we have a human nature which has attributes. God does not have a nature, He is His nature. That is everything in understanding God. Because He is the cause of things, and nothing causes Him, He just is - period. .

Therefore, in the case of Goodness, we know that God does not have goodness, but is Goodness. The Goodness in the world is an effect of His act and will.

God - Is - Good . Its not just a nice thing we say to complement Him Questions? Comments? Gripes?

Summa Blogologica - Question 5: Goodness in General

So last blog post in Summa Question 4, towards the end I said something about the link to the Summa itself and then had a link for the summarized version. Anyone see the irony here? The Summa is short for summary. It was written by Aquinas to be a summary of the Christian faith. It ended up being, still, a very high level and difficult read. And we think often we are more intellectual than the best of antiquity. I seriously disagree. Not to say we are not advanced thinkers, but on the topics of basic philosophy and universal concepts, we fall so short of the genius of these.

With that, next is Question 5, Goodness in General. What is good at all?  Eh, who knows. Well, you’re about to know! Because Aquinas knows and now I know, I want you to know! Ya know? If you haven't done so already, make sure you have a basic understanding of perfections: do that in Question 4.

Here. We. Go:

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Goodness comes from a desire for a thing’s perfection, and all things that are actual have perfection of some degree. Anything that really exists has this perfection and so "being"  does not differ from goodness in idea. In other words, we can know of a thing without knowing it is good. So there is not a REAL distinction, but an IDEAL distinction.

“Idea” is prior to a thing because we form a word in our mind which corresponds to a thing we intend it to be. We only discover goodness after we discover the thing and determine it to be good. In other words, we know of the being before we know that it is good at all.

Every being, as being is good. Because all things are in some way perfect or contain some perfection, and perfection is desirable, and perfection is what we find as goodness, all beings are good. Being = some perfection = goodness .

Goodness is the aspect of final cause because, as discussed in previously, goodness is in things which have perfection. Perfections are desirable and so are being sought out which is akin to finality “in-view” and so goodness has the aspect of final cause as opposed to other causes.

As said before, anything can be good so long that it is perfect because in this way it is desired. This goodness is ordered in a thing’s form and furthermore, a thing’s form in a things species. When a number, or given part of form is given to or added to this form, the species is changed; hence this follows as an order. Thus, goodness does consist of mode, species, and order.

Goodness is divided among either of the three but they are all different thing in their relativity to the appetite for the thing. If a thing tends toward another it is useful; if a thing for its own sake achieves its appetite completely, that thing is virtuous; but that thing which achieves its appetite to respite or rest, that thing is pleasant.   

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What a blast right? The keys are in knowing what Goodness is and how virtue is thus defined. This is different from fundamental moral theology and is only discussing the goodness of THINGS, not ACTS  of the will.

 

 

Bear that in mind.

 

 

 

Think now on God calling the created world "very good" in Genesis 1:31. More like, "completion in view" than, "wow, I did a fantastic job!"

As always, for more reading on Question 5, go here for the Summa and go here for the summarized Summa.

Next we will look at the goodness of/in God.

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?

Summa Blogologica - Question 2: God's Existence

It may be a surprise to some but the argument for God goes back further than Christianity. In fact, when Paul discusses the "unknown God" to the Greeks at the Areopagus in Acts 17, he is talking to a people who have heard some of these ideas but haven't generally accepted them. Remember, Socrates was put to death for his radical views on a single God, and his ethical ideals which closely mirror the teachings of Christianity.

Belief in one God precurses Christianity and was developed outside God's revelation to the Hebrews. Socrates, Parmenides, Aristotle and a slew of others were discussing the idea of an all powerful God.

St. Thomas Aquinas (STA) was "lucky" enough to live at the time in which the works of Aristotle were brand spanking new in Latin. He was able to "synthisize" these works. Not without controversy, he had his fair share of opposition from within the Church for "baptizing a pagan". That lesson is for another day, but what I wanted to unfold here is his contribution to the reasons to believe in a God. And this is how he chose to start out his Summa Theologiae. If he were to write a mass of information about God, he would first need to prove God exists. It was meant to be a "summary" of the Christian beliefs and teachings, but ended up for many to be a difficult read. He addresses it to those with a basic education, but to him, that would have been one filled with a good lexicon of philosophical terms - which many today are without. I'll attempt in this series of posts titled "Summa Blogologica" to ease the pain to bring forth the teachings. So lets dive in!

Question 2 (question 1 was more of a quick recap of nature of doctrine, read it here if you want) answers for the existence of God. That is, how do we know God exists? This is called his "quinque viae" or "five ways" since there are to him, five means of knowing God exists from "proof". Keep in mind this is not the sort of "proof" that is offered in labs where material hypothesis are testable, because God is not a material thing, but instead is on the basis of logic and to many "self evident" or "obvious". Here we go:

The first is motion. Where motion exists there must be a mover and ultimately there must be a first mover, unmoved. For example all things are set in motion by another, but there, by that very rule, cannot be an infinite set of movers; there has to be a prime and first act of motion. This is God.

The second is efficient cause, where like motion, there are effects in the universe and each effect has a cause. Because we know no particular thing which caused itself, each cause in turn has its father cause and ultimately there must be a first cause which is uncaused. This is God.

Third is the concern of possibility or "contingency". Things that are contingent do not have to exist (not necessary) but are only possible. Obviously, things in the universe do exist so there must have been a thing in the universe which was necessary and non-contingent. The contingent undergo change and thus are finally existent like the master bringing the sculpture out of the marble. The sculpture was possible but needed a change to come out of the material. That change is unnecessary, it ever needed to happen. Therefore anything that is unnecessary but is, we cant deduce that a necessary thing brought it into being. This necessary being is God.

Fourth is the gradation, or the degrees of perfection in which things are observed. In things we find varying levels of good and better, more and less, etc., which are smaller levels of an utmost in their category. There are levels of beauty, levels of light, levels of love, and all intellects recognize this but ultimately there has to be a best or a perfect or an utmost.  This utmost is God.

Finally, the fifth proof of God’s existence is the observation of governance in the world. Things in the world act in specific ways as if programmed (governed) like a computer and every computer has a program which requires intelligence; an intelligent programmer. This is God.

To read more go here and have some fun: http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1002.htm

These are VERY important themes moving forward into the Summa so please, if you follow along ensure you understand God as the "first mover" or "first act" or "prime mover" as those terms will be used a "whole heck of a lot" as my brother used to say.

Questions? Comments?  When I was a kid pictures would make reading better, here you go: