All right. Let me pray for our class and pray for the whole day. Father in heaven, thank you for what we've heard already from your word. And we pray as we end this class out that it would be fruitful and that we would know more about you as a result. We confess that you have revealed in us and even in the pagan your rules, your order. We confess that in our sin, we have ignored it, and therefore created more ignorance in ourselves. But Lord, we pray that we would be better servants, not only to your saints, but to the watching world, as we consider these things and develop sharper minds as a result. So Lord, let that be the end of this class. and all the others we do here. We pray that you would bless this entire day and all that we do. For your glory and your namesake, we pray it in Jesus' name. Amen. Alright, so this last class in part one of the Thought of Thomas Aquinas is deducing the attributes of God. So last week was demonstrating the existence of God, and now this one's going to be called deducing the attributes of God, and that chart on the board is going to explain the flow from last week to this week. You're going to hear Aquinas say probably, I don't know how many times in these four questions that we're going to be looking at today from question three to question six, you're going to hear him say a bunch of times things like, as has already been proven, as was already shown, and he'll cite question 2, article 3, and so on. So, having proven the existence of God in five ways, Aquinas turns to infer from these truths many other things that must also be true about God. That's the key. Must necessarily be true, because this is true, therefore this is also true. Two elements of this section of the Summa are unmistakable. I think all historians of philosophy would agree with this. First of all, his method is now deductive. However much he may have begun from some elements of induction. In other words, beginning from our own experience of effects, our own experience of motion in this world, our own experience of gradation in things. our own experience of things moving toward ends. You may say that there is an inductive element in there, and that's fine. People are going to differ on what to call Aquinas. Is he an empiricist? To what extent is he an Aristotelian? But now, I don't think anybody's going to disagree that now having shown that, he's going to deduce, he's going to make a particular... There's two kinds of reasoning, essentially. Induction and deduction. Induction is working from particulars to general principles, well, however much of that he may have mixed into his arguments at the beginning, here he's going to be working from general truths that are true, and having proven them, he's now going to deduce. Deduction works from the universal or general to the particular or specific. So, that's the first thing we can tell from this section. His method is now deductive. He's going to be working off the assumption of what sometimes is called the via negativa, in other words, the negative way to show things about God. The assumption that we cannot know directly what God is in his essence. but only what he is not. And at first you might look at that and it might be a little bit puzzling, but since he's proceeding in his overall train of reasoning from effects to the first cause, there is a sense in which Thomas has not yet spoken of the divine essence per se, but only his effects. I don't think he's saying that we can't buy that. nor were any of the medieval thinkers, saying that we cannot know anything about the essence of God. That's not what they're saying. I think that's one way that modern interpreters have interpreted it. It's by way, the key is way, via negative. In other words, the way of. There you're speaking of method. How do you get to that point? And the point right now is that he hasn't said anything about the essence of God except, in a sense, by negation. But in that very act of negation, so in this process, things are going to fall off, things are going to be shaven off. And what I mean by that, in a sense, these are going to be non-things. These are going to be things that you say, well, that can't be true about God. And because that can't be true about God, that can't be true about God either. And if that's impossible, then this can't be true about God either. And themes are going to fall off. But they're really not things at all, they're more like square circles. The idea of a potential first cause. We can't have a potential, that's what we're going to see. So as these things are taken away, this is what he's going to mean by the negative way. Showing what God cannot possibly be. That God is necessary has already been shown from the insufficiency of the effects to explain themselves. In this method, Most historians of philosophy see a departure from Augustine or Anselm. Again, the departure is on method, not on their basic beliefs. Gilson provides us with the upshot of this by saying about this, where he is so far, quote, knowing that a thing is, one has only to ask in what way it is. in order to know what it is. So, if you follow, you know, sometimes Gilson will speak like Deepak Chopra. In order to know, sorry, this is what he said so far, that it is, that's existence. To get what it is, we're going to be unpacking this the way that it is. And that'll get you closer to what it is. that you're talking about. This is purely just about method. Here's the problem I have today. There's a lot of attributes of God you can talk about, and Aquinas begins with the simplicity of God, the perfection of God, and the goodness of God. In my original notes, I moved on to talk about his infinity, his immutability, and his eternality, but as I'm taking notes and I'm writing things, I realize I've got nine or ten pages after those first three. I'm going to stop, because we don't have enough time. So, we've only got three points, and notice the form of these three points in your notes. It says, therefore, God is necessarily simple, second point. Therefore, God is necessarily perfect, third point. Therefore, God is necessarily good. What is the therefore about? Why would I start the point that way? As has already been proven, God exists. In other words, we're at step two now. Aquinas has already proven God's existence. That doesn't mean he's not going to be your friend or meet you at Starbucks if you're still an agnostic. It's not what it means. What it does mean is that he's already proven that, and so for anybody who is, A, intelligent enough to understand what he's saying in question two, and B, honest enough to... and three, I guess, assuming you don't have the munchies, you put all three of those together, for these people, students of theology, we're going to move on here. We're not going to live our life in this perpetual limbo and owe our speech to the agnostic or the unbeliever, okay? So, first you're going to talk to them, But for anybody who gets the proof, we're going to move on from that and see that because God exists, and what we mean by God exists is what it is, therefore, there are things we can infer or deduce or conclude that must also be true about His essence. So here's the big idea. Here's the big idea, and this summarizes it. That God must be all that He is, has already been proven. Okay, so we're moving... what's been proven is his existence, but if A equals A, then everything else that is true about God is necessarily true. Now, for the guy at Starbucks, the agnostic I was just talking about, it doesn't mean Thomas is not going to go back and meet him where he is, nor that you shouldn't. You should. However, as Christians, let's move on, let's deduce more, let's see more about God and see that it must necessarily be so. By the way, this isn't just medievalists that talk like this. Have you read A.W. Pink or even A.W. Tozer? A.W. Tozer's book, The Knowledge of the Holy. How many times does Tozer say something in that book like, it is unthinkable that God should be changing because of such and such. What's Tozer doing? Pretty much the same thing. Now, is he drawing it out philosophically like Aquinas? No. But for the layperson, Tozer is doing a great service, because he's saying, in effect, if this is true about God, it is unthinkable that this would not also be true about God. If God is infinite, He must be immutable, because what's immutability? Changelessness, inability to change, because if He changed, then He wouldn't be eternal, and you get the idea. That's the way Christians are supposed to think. Aquinas is just really, really good at it. That's the way to say it. That's a big idea. God must be all that he is, as has already been proven. So everything else we're going to talk about is already contained in the subject. It's what's called an analytical truth. Now, to an angel or a Christian philosopher, this might be what's called a tautology. In other words, because God's existence immediately implies, just as surely as A equals A, or that man is rational. Wait a minute. Man is rational is not as clear as A equals A. True to us, maybe, as we're first coming to logic, but somebody who's studied logic for 20 years, that man is rational is just as self-evident as A equals A. It's contained in A equals A. So all you're doing in analytical truth is you're unpacking the drawer more. Then you find another drawer inside the drawer and you unpack that more. That drawer was already inside the other drawer. You just didn't see it because you hadn't unpacked it yet. So all Aquinas is doing is showing the sense in which everything is already true, invincibly so, we're just catching up. This is why Thomas is hated. And by the way, this is why Protestant scholasticism was hated after the original Reformation. Because what they're showing you in unpacking the drawers is a bunch of stuff people that want to hedge their bets don't want to see, so they push the drawers back in. There's a right way to think about everything, and we can prove it. That's not a popular idea. That's very imperialistic. That's very suffocating, because that means that I've got to get this right. Now, eventually George is going to get too mysterious, and you run right into Romans 14.23, and there's stuff that God just has not been clear about. Okay, that's a separate subject. What about this stuff? Okay, let's get to the first one. Therefore, God is necessarily simple. Every word counts. Therefore, because it's already been proven, God is necessarily simple. By the way, simple doesn't mean easy to understand. That's not what he means by simple. He's talking about metaphysically his being. In other words, a unity not composed of parts. Singular thing. Singular being. So, this is in question three. It's the first one Aquinas chooses to speak about, and that might interest us. I think it should. We should ask ourselves, why would Aquinas list the simplicity of God first? And again, he's going to do this by logical negation. And what he's going to negate is that God could ever be composed of parts. So the first thing that falls off this non-A is composition. Or, say it this way, the first thing that falls off, the first thing, it's not a thing, that falls off is divine composition. Divine composition, you're going to say after today, why that's like a square circle. And that's exactly right. That's exactly what he wants you to get. Eight articles in this third question, and they all flow from the most crass, simple, and this is how I mean simple, like crass or superficial, notion of composition to the most subtle. And so he's going to first answer the idea that God could have a body. You might think, my goodness, everybody knows why God can't have a body. No, they don't. Have you read the shack? And that's why we have one of those children's catechism questions. What is God? God is a spirit and doesn't have a body like a man. That's pretty important. Five distinct objections Aquinas faces, and all of these argue, quote, from the scriptures that God has a body, in a sense. You can find people, lots of people, who will argue, quote, from the scriptures that God has a body in these five ways. Aquinas deals with all of them. One, because there are scriptures that talk about dimensions, high, wide, and so on. Secondly, appearance. Thirdly, body parts, the mouth of the Lord, His arm. Fourthly, posture, that He comes down from where He turns His face. And fifthly, location. Dimensions, appearance, body parts, posture, and location. All of the above are only ascribed to bodies, and therefore it would seem to the objector that God does indeed have a body. Well, I think we can all remember being presented with such difficulties before. Here's what Aquinas does. He quotes John 4.24. Again, this is the method in the scholastics. They'll say, on the contrary, and then they'll quote either a scripture or a church father or a philosopher. And here he quotes John 4.24. God is a spirit. And then he proceeds to prove that God is not a body in three ways. First, because no body is in motion unless it be put in motion, as is evident from induction. Now, it has already been proved, question 2, article 3, so what is he doing in that reference? He's giving you a premise in his argument. It has already been proved that God is the first mover and is himself unmoved. Therefore, it is clear that God is not a body. Secondly, because the first being must of necessity be in act, and in no way in potentiality. For although in any single thing that passes from potentiality to actuality, the potentiality is prior in time to the actuality. Nevertheless, absolutely speaking, in other words, not of things in this world, absolutely speaking, actuality is prior to potentiality. For whatever is potentiality can be reduced into actuality only by some being in actuality. Now, it has already been proven that God is the first being. It is therefore impossible that in God there should be any potentiality. But every body is in potentiality. The continuous, as such, is divisible to infinity. It is therefore impossible that God should be a body. Thirdly, because God is the most noble of beings. Now, stop right here, because I made a typo here, so cross it off in your notes like I just did in mine. Now, it is impossible for a body, it says God, I totally messed up there, so cross that out and put a body. Now, it is impossible for a body to be the most noble of beings, for a body must be either animate or inanimate. And an animate body is manifestly nobler than an inanimate body. But an animate body is not animate precisely as body, otherwise all bodies would be animate. Therefore, its animation depends upon some other thing, as our body depends for its animation on the soul. By the way, he's going to use that same line of reasoning to show that the soul is in that sense prior to the body. They're not separable, but you'll get the idea. Well, they are separable temporarily, but I mean ultimately, I'm talking about. Hence, that by which a body becomes animated must be nobler than the body. Therefore, it is impossible that God should be a body. Now, obviously at any of those points, first of all, this is unfamiliar to us. Talking like this with proof is unfamiliar to us. We are backwards in the modern world. Oh, just the more garden variety set in motion. Just motion versus non-motion. Yeah, so just on the most generic level. And so at any of those three points, I suppose, we might need to review some of the proofs from last week. And noble, there's another one. Noble, according to who? And again, we're subjectivists. Noble just means greater. It's greater to be in motion than to need to be set in motion. Why? Because you have less existence, and existence is greater than non-existence. So by greater, he means something mathematical and logical. It doesn't mean like, what happens to, oh, I think that color is nicer than that. He doesn't mean it. He doesn't talk like that. That's not the way people used to talk. We're actually the lame brain subjectivists. This is actually talking about reality as if it's real. I'm sorry to interrupt you. Yep. Third point. Right. Right, yes, so right after it says, because God is the most noble of beings, and right there it says, now it is impossible for, and I typed God, right there, cross that out and put a body. Yeah, it is impossible for a body to be the most noble of beings. Right, no, that's fine, that's fine. Okay, so in those three ways. So, now notice how he did that. Three basic ways to move from what was already proven, in question two, to what God cannot be, namely a body. So let's just trace this from last week to this week. So he's going to go from existence to essence. And what he's going to do from last week is he's going to borrow from the first way, the first way, and then a hybrid of the fourth and first way to show his three ways that God cannot be a body. The first way, he talked about motion. So from motion, it is impossible that a body can be the most noble of all beings because it's not in motion except that it is put in motion by another. So if the first way was right, then that follows by resistless logic. In the second way, still from the first way in existence, there was actuality preceding potentiality. And this is going to be crucial as we go on, because if that's true, that ultimately something has to be activated by another substance and act, Well, let's skip ahead to the third one, the most noble of all beings, but a body cannot be in pure act. It always has to be activated by another. Remember, a potential thing, the actual thing, but that process can't get started unless a third thing, namely the substance in act, activates it. Now, that's not ultimately true of any body. So a body cannot be in a pure state of actuality. What about the Law of Inertia? The Law of Inertia is just descriptive of something already in that process. That's all that is. It's descriptive, it's not ultimately ontological. It's true in heaven too. Of the pure actuality? Yes. In that sense, we're always in motion, but we're always in a greater motion. In a sense, there's always, to borrow from thermodynamics, there's always new energy being pumped into the system, new knowledge of God, new whatever. But of course, in that, where's that coming from? It's coming from God. God's upholding us. God's giving us greater and greater capacity, growing our soul, and so forth. And then the third way to show that a body cannot, that God cannot be a body was, oh yeah, because God is the most noble of all beings, in other words, the most excellent. That was shown from the fourth, okay, and now he's going to borrow a little bit back from the first because there was an impossibility of an infinite regress. That's actually the first and the second argument. There can't be an infinite regress. And so in those noble beings, animate or inanimate, he's ruling out inanimate, so an animate has to be a greater being. Why? Same reason over here. It goes back to this. So you see what's going on here. There's deduction, deduction, deduction. If this general thing is true, one species of it is true, and so forth and so on. That actually works. The reason why this is not taught in school and everything's focused on induction is because you have more general truths, you have bigger circles, in other words, a more threatening world to the modern educator and the modern state. But this isn't just the way they thought back then, this is the only right way to think about anything. Two things about Aquinas' thoughts so far are going to give us a clue of why he chooses divine simplicity first. This is not a random choice. And by the way, I am not saying that other doctrines of God that don't start here are doing something deficient. For example, on the other side of the ledger, you could look at John Calvin in the Institutes of Christian Religion. He only mentions two attributes of God in the Institutes, namely His infinity and His spirituality. Calvin has a reason for that, and it's also brilliant. They're doing something different. They're both teaching, they're both training up introductory theology students, but Aquinas is doing it philosophically at this point in an act of deduction. Calvin's trying to prevent people from idolatry, because that's where he's coming out of. Okay? And so there's a reason they do what they do. I'm not saying one's better than another. They're doing what they're doing for their particular time and place. But two clues about why Aquinas starts with divine simplicity. First of all, remember what we started with, that idea of the negative way, the via negativa. He's showing what God is like by showing what cannot be. He's negating, he's negating, he's negating. That means that when he gets going, he's really still only at this idea of a supreme act of being. And he is not yet at the idea of God's existence being his essence in every way. He's got to build that. It doesn't mean he's building God. It means he's building our idea of God. And so by distinguishing between simplicity and composition, have that in your mind, that's the opposites. Simplicity versus composition. By doing that, he is removing from our whole idea of God any attributes which can be either accidental or potential. So, in getting rid of this square circle of divine composition, contradiction in terms, by getting rid of this idea as a non-A, as a square circle, two other things we have to get out of our mind, and fall with it, I should say, the idea of any accidents in God, and the idea of any potentiality in God. So, let's put potential. So, let's put A and B. By chopping down the tree of divine composition, you are also chopping the branches of accidents and potential in God. So, if the tree of divine composition falls, then so do its branches of accidents in God and potential in God. That's what he's going to show. That's why he's doing it. In other words, he has demonstrated that no attribute of God can be separate from God. The simplicity of God means that he is not a complex of matter and form, like things in this world. Nor is he even a complex of form and form, such as an angel. Unlike any other being, God is all of his attributes. So when this falls off, One of the things that you should see remaining, which doesn't mean you see the whole of God, the caricature, but it means you see one thing must be true. God must be all of his attributes, which implies further, though Thomas doesn't go there right now, but that all of God's attributes must be all of his other attributes. His holiness must be infinite, for example. His justice must be loving and his love must be just. God must be all of his attributes. Now, to the argument that God's existence is not his essence, Aquinas answers that this can be disproven in three ways. So stop. An objection has arisen—I'm just summarizing because I can't read it word for word, we'd be here forever—an objection has arisen that God can't be all of his attributes. So they're still trying to revive this idea. God can't be all his attributes. Aquinas disproves this in three ways, and this quote is in your notes. Whatever a thing has besides its essence must be caused either by the constituent principles of that essence or by some exterior agent. Now, it is impossible for a thing's existence to be caused by its essential constituent principles, for nothing can be the sufficient cause of its own existence if its existence is caused. Therefore, that thing whose existence differs from its essence must have its existence caused by another. But this cannot be true of God, the first efficient cause. Therefore, it is impossible that in God his existence should differ from his essence. So, let's do that on the board. So, if you want to maintain that God is one of the beings, whose essence is different from his existence, then these things are going to have to be caused by something outside of himself. As we're going to see, if they're caused by something inside of themselves, then something has to activate that, some other substance and act. So, that process can't go on forever. What you're going to eventually back up to is an essence that creates the existence. So I have over here essence number one flowing left to right into the circle. The circle is going to represent this particular substance. So the existence of this substance will be caused by its essence. Any being in which you can separate the essence from the existence, that existence is caused by its essence. We saw that with the blue ball and a few other examples. So, he shows that if that's true about God, then God is not the first cause, but since he's already proven that he is the first cause, then that falls by resistless logic. Secondly, here's the second way to show it. Existence is that which makes every form or nature actual. Now, stop right there. Somebody get me some water, this happened last week too. And everybody's just kind of watching me choke. Anyway, remember this whole thing from left to right, whether it's the scrap of lumber or the table or anything else, do you remember there had to be a third thing to activate? Because remember how did Aquinas say it? No potentiality can raise itself to actuality or everything that is in motion is put in motion by another. There's two ways he says it. So you always need a third thing, namely some other being in act. So existence, ultimately, is always going to precede essence. Why? For the same reason that actuality is always going to precede potentiality, ultimately. On the linear plane, locomotion, what's potential precedes what's actual. That's introductory physics. But metaphysics, ultimately, potential can only be raised to actuality by another substance in act. Okay, so the second way he's going to say it, existence is that which makes every form or nature actual. He says, for goodness and humanity are spoken of as actual only because they are spoken of as existing. Existence must be compared to essence, if the latter is a distinct reality, as actuality is to potentiality. So what did he do? He just said the same thing I did. Ultimately, existence comes before this happens, which is the same way of saying, ultimately, actuality precedes potentiality going to actuality. Therefore, since in God there is no potentiality as shown above, so now he appeals back to article one of this, since he's already proven that in this section, since there is no potentiality in God, as shown above, it follows, he's just this massive deduction, it won't stop. It follows that in him, essence does not differ from existence. Therefore, his essence is his existence. Thirdly, Because just as that which has fire but is not itself fire is on fire by participation, so that which has existence but is not existence is a being by participation. So why does it pick fire? It doesn't matter. The particular example he uses doesn't matter. The point is that anything that's in existence is either existence itself or is in existence by participation. But God is his own essence, as shown above, article 3. And there he means question 2, article 3. God is his own existence. Remember, necessary being versus contingent being. Since I've proven that... If, therefore, he is not his own existence, he will not be essential, but participated being. He will not, therefore, be the first being, which is absurd. Remember, you needed a first being, even if you want to play that game and say, fine, he's not the first being. Well then, just like Anselm's proof, then you have to pick one that is, because he's already proven that there must not be a first being. What are you going to do, put that dog out of its misery here? It's just funny, because I hear the howling, and then I see him go out there, and it's like, huh, I wonder how he's going to handle it. Okay. All right, so that's the end of that statement. So he shows in three ways that God's existence must be his essence. And that brings up the second reason that Aquinas begins with divine simplicity, and that is that in addition to banishing from our minds composition in God, he also seeks to banish any notion of divine potentiality as self-contradictory. He's already kind of drew that out, that with chopping down the tree of divine composition, he also cuts down the branches of divine accidents or divine potentiality. Those, again, should be regarded as square circles. It's a contradiction in terms to think that in the first cause there could be any accidental properties, because then it would have to be caused by another outside of himself, square circle. Or any divine potentiality, because then it would have to be activated by something other than the first cause, square circle. So because of all that has already been proven, it is logically impossible that anything in God's being or anything in His working Anything in his motive, anything in his reason, anything in his decree can never be actualized by another. This is why Thomas should have been a Calvinist. And of course, he was in a lot of areas, but not in others. But if you're a Catholic and you buy into these arguments, you should immediately leave the Catholic Church and become Reformed. Because, if this is true, he's already saying in the early going that it is impossible, it is a square circle, to suggest that God could ever even do anything for any other reason than His own glory. It is logically impossible. Nothing else exists outside of Himself to move Himself. So he's already proven, in looking at this, an idea that is attributed to Aquinas, and I love this idea. If all of this is true, then the first cause must be a synonym for a pure act of being, or what's sometimes called pure actuality. It's just the opposite way of saying that in God there can be no potentiality. Nothing dormant, in other words. Nothing inert, in the sense of needing something to activate him, or put him in a different direction, or re-channel him, or anything else. So from this it follows that there are no accidental properties in God, since an accident, classically defined, is any predicate or any property not essential or substantial. Even, for example, when we say that God is related to Abraham. God made a covenant to Abraham. Is making a covenant to Abraham a predicate of God? Yes, but only in our conception of him. He did not need to make a covenant with Abraham, so there's no accidental properties in God's being. Those are relational properties that relate to the creature and not something that are necessary about him. So if it does not belong to such a substance to exist, any other accidental thing, then of accidental things it's possible for such a thing to either be or not to be. We saw that in the third way to show the existence of God. So when Thomas gives us his reason for the impossibility of accidents in God, he picks right back up in that same stream of thought, and he says, I answer that from all that we have said, it is clear that there can be no accident in God. First, because a subject is compared to its accidents as potentiality to actuality. So let's draw one more picture, and it's the same picture. A subject, any subject. Okay? Actually, let's do it the other way around in this case. Now I'm going to make the circle to be the subject. So in other words, anything, any substance. Okay, so watch what he says. A subject is compared to its accidents as potentiality to actuality. So a subject is something that is accidental. Maybe I should have done it the other way. All of its properties, in other words, so remember the blue ball. All of these things are things that affect it. They're things from the outside. Blueness existed before it, it'll exist afterwards. Roundness existed before it, it'll exist afterwards. In other words, everything about that thing, even baldness, existed before it, it'll exist after it. So in any of these things, a subject is compared to its accidents as potentiality to actuality. Because a subject is, in some sense, made actual by its accidents. But there can be no potentiality in God, as was shown in question 2, article 3, and so on. And he adds more to the inference. And so, one last piece to why God is altogether simple and not composed of parts is this. He adds this. This is sort of a second way to show it. Because every composite, everything made of parts, is posterior to its component parts. So now let's just change the words in the same picture. Over here with subject we'll put composite. In other words, something made of parts. And then over here in accidents we'll put component parts. And just to make it picturesque, let's divide it up like a pizza pie, just to demonstrate that it has parts, that that's what we're talking about. Every composite is posterior comes after its component parts and is dependent on them. Stop right there. Have you ever thought of that? Is that clear? Is that obvious to you? Everything you can think of that has a body, is made of parts, is an effect, or that you can attribute things to, is caused entirely by all the things, not the other way around. Did you know that? Or do you tend to think of things as the thing, and then all the things that make it up? It's like it's a glass. Okay, but what's the glass? Right? So this is entirely made up of things which come before it. And, because every composite has a cause, for things in themselves different cannot unite unless something causes them to unite. So, why can't there be multiple gods and why can't there be multiple things in God? Answer, because then something would come before Him to do the uniting, to bring them together. Now, I can imagine an objection to that, which I'll get to in just a second. But there's more to this. He lists actually, I think there's between five or seven different answers to this objection. But these two reasons will suffice. Because what composition amounts to is a collection of thing, one thing. If the plurality of things can be spoken of as one thing at all, then it is because the collection itself is an effect of that by which they were collected. So there cannot be any composition in God. If anyone objects, that perhaps God's the one that does this. So now God is the glass and all the stuff that fills in our attributes. So you might think of it like that. Maybe God does this with his own attributes from all eternity. But then I would have to ask that person, what is God? That he does this with things that are not his own essence. Is he nothing before he starts collecting his somethings? And from where does he get his somethings? In other words, it may be asked in what sense these separate things are really his attributes at all and not separate entities. The second way to see it, the same thing, is that there has to be an intelligibility of the unity itself. How can we call these composite parts one except by a unity that is above them all? How can we say the words of God when we say the words the righteousness of God? or the immutability of God, and so forth, except by something higher and greater than any of the attributes, which is the real first cause, instead of these. Consequently, it is illogical that the first cause can be composed of parts, for then the cause of the unity of the parts, the cause of the existence of the parts, could not be. So, hopefully I've sufficiently smothered, destroyed the idea that there can be anything such as divine composition. And if that's true, then contained in that is the impossibility of divine accidental properties and divine potentiality. So, why is divine simplicity chosen first? Well, I don't know all of Aquinas' real reasons. All I know is this. In showing that, he's shown this. And in showing this, you're pretty much already at the Reformed phase. because there can't be anything else true other than what we believe about everything. He's already proven that you stop everything and join the Reformation. Now, the Catholics didn't necessarily take everything that way, and Aquinas, I believe, makes a boo-boo later in his thought, and we'll get to that when we talk about the second class, but this is a powerful, earth-shattering idea that eliminates anything else. Secondly, God is necessarily perfect. This is question four and it's divided into three articles. Are you kidding me? Okay. The three questions that are asked are whether God is perfect, whether God is perfect universally, in other words, having in himself the perfection of all things, and whether creatures can be said to be like God. In other words, if God is perfect, how can you say perfect things are like him? Now, a lot of the objections to divine perfection in this section might seem odd to us, but the value of the section is to get a good handle on the idea of perfection, not least because of how it's going to set us up to understand the opposite idea, defection. This idea of perfection and defection is actually going to help us again when we get to nature and natural law. But in any event, yes, God is perfect. Aquinas says, A thing is perfect in proportion to its state of actuality. What's he doing? He's going back. I know, it's beautiful. He's doing it again. He's moving from this to this. He's not off on a new subject now, which has nothing to do with anything. He's saying, because I've just proven all that stuff, therefore I prove that thing. And because of that thing now, I'm going to bring out another drawer, or another circle within the circle. He's even defining perfection this way. Well, how can he not? How can perfection be anything other than what's in God? Because of what he's already proven. So a thing is perfect in proportion to its state of actuality, in other words, its state of being. Because we call that perfect which lacks nothing of the mode of its perfection. And yes, the perfection of all things is in God, by which Thomas means that the universal of any particular thing is in God's essence. And so a couple of objections are going to help clarify things for us. There's three of them that I have here. There's three of them in this section. Objection one, it seems that the perfection of all things are not in God. For God is simple. So what's this objector doing? He's saying, you just said that God is simple, not composed of parts. He's one thing, not many things, right? So what is he going to borrow from Aquinas' language in order to form the objection? For God is simple, as shown above, whereas the perfections of things are many and diverse. Therefore, the perfections of all things are not in God. Objection 2. Further, he's going to build off the same idea, opposites cannot coexist. Now, the perfections of things are opposed to each other, for each thing is perfected by its specific difference. In other words, what's the perfection of good? What's the perfection of evil? This is one example. But the differences by which these genuses are divided and species constituted are opposite to each other. Therefore, because opposites cannot coexist in the same subject, it seems that the perfection of all things are not in God. In other words, you can't say God is good and God is bad. And if the perfections of both, which are opposites, are in him, then he is a living contradiction, if ever there was one. That's the idea. There's a category mistake, hopefully you catch it. Objection 3. Further, a living thing is more perfect than what merely exists, and an intelligent thing than what merely lives. Therefore, life is more perfect than existence, and knowledge more perfect than life. but the essence of God is existence itself. Therefore, He has not the perfections of life and knowledge and other similar perfections." In other words, this person is thinking in their mind, you're defining God as this, you're defining the first being as this, all these other things coming from this, and yet, there are other things, and not merely things, but more excellent, because It is more excellent to live than simply to exist, and it is more excellent to be intelligent living things than merely be alive. Therefore, it is more excellent to be intelligent than merely to exist. But you're starting God's perfections over here. What about the perfections of these? So there's category mistakes everywhere. And against these misunderstandings, Aquinas argues that God pre-possesses all things. And this can be shown in two ways. First, he appeals once again to the principle of sufficient reason. He shows that of the perfection of things, every effect can only possess what its cause has the power to produce. Since he had already proven that this process of sufficient causes cannot go back to infinity, it follows that of perfections, only God possesses them in his being. He says, quote, from what has already been proved, God is existence itself, in itself subsistent. That should say in, by the way, I think it says if in your notes. In itself subsistent. So consequently, God must contain within himself the whole perfection of being. Now these are sufficient to refute the objections, which is probably why the specific replies he gives are pretty brief. But then he goes on to talk about how things can be called like God. And that's interesting, but we'll actually wait till part two to get to this, because it starts to get into his theory of language, all speech being analogical and not the other two. So we're not going to get into that right now. But the idea, again, in this idea of goodness and evil, the way—actually, we're going to show this a little bit in God Being Good, but when we call something evil, we're calling something not perfect. And so the perfection of that is just a matter of speaking. If I speak about a perfection of defection, or in a sense if I say, what is the most excellent extent of evil? I'm not talking about a perfection of being, but I'm talking about a spectrum of non-being. So it's the very opposite. Last section, therefore God is necessarily good, trying to streamline this. I've already streamlined by getting just these three attributes, but God is necessarily good. This is important, though, to get an objective view of goodness. So to show what's meant by the goodness of God, Aquinas must first deduce certain things about goodness in general, and so question five of the Summa is called, goodness in general. Six articles are going to help him work out that Augustine was right to inherit from Plato the language that goodness must follow being in our conception of it. So when I say that, I mean he was right to borrow the lingo from Plato. But Plato, remember, wasn't going to be able to answer the question of what goodness ultimately is as a singular being. Now remember, Aquinas has already proven that God must be simple and perfect. So he's already proven that when he gets to goodness. But there's going to be a distinction here. Let me say it like this. Metaphysically, let's say in a sense, up here in God, being equals goodness. Remember? From simplicity. But, two, epistemologically, down here for us, as we're looking at good things, it is crucially important that we understand being preceding goodness. In other words, that we understand a distinction between them. Epistemologically, it is crucially important that we define goodness by being, but that doesn't mean that they're separated in God. And you're going to see why as we go on. So it's not that there is being apart from the good. But, here's why, catch every word of the sentence, it is that all things are good insofar as they subsist in the one whose essence is to exist and to be in pure act. Here's how Aquinas says it, quote, goodness and being are really the same. and differ only in idea, which is clear from the following argument." So, ready for Aquinas' argument that this must be? And I'm going to show it in the form of a Venn diagram and a syllogism when I'm done with this paragraph, because it takes the form of a syllogism. First he quotes Aristotle from his Ethics in saying, goodness is what all desire. So he starts out with that premise. Goodness is what all desire. Now he's going to come back to it and justify it, but let's just start with that. Goodness is what all desire. Now it is clear that a thing is desirable only insofar as it is perfect. In other words, the not just the nth degree of that thing, but if you knew that there was a greater degree, you would want that, if it was inherently desirable. So, only insofar as it is perfect. For all desire their own perfection. Now, that's another premise he's going to add. But everything is perfect so far as it is actual. Therefore, there's the conclusion of the syllogism, therefore it is clear that a thing is perfect so far as it exists. For it... Stop! Wait a minute! So everything that exists is perfect? No! Remember? Nothing exists but God in this sense. Remember? Everything is either potential or actualized. And that thing, this simultaneous motion, it is in His being that we live and move and have our being. Nothing is actually existing except what He's speaking into existence. So it has to be perfected. In other words, it can lack nothing, and that nothing includes the something of actuality. Nothing is more of a being than being. And if it lacks being, which is everything except for God, it's not perfect. He says, therefore it is clear that a thing is perfect so far as it exists. For it is existence that makes all things actual, as is clear from the foregoing." And he quotes Question 3, Article 4, that's the... Question 3 on simplicity, Article 4, and then Question 4, Article 1, on perfection. So he's shown from simplicity and perfection that it is existence that makes all things actual. So, since I've already proven that, it is clear that goodness and being are really the same. But, goodness presents the aspect of desirableness, which being does not present. In other words, it's not that they're different things, it's that we have an idea here of desirableness. And so, for our sake, we treat them differently. They're intelligible. Now, let me draw out the syllogism and the diagram that I promised you. Here's what he said in that argument. In premise one, it is clear that a thing is desirable only insofar it is perfect. Remember, all S is P. In this case, all goodness is desirable in that, or only in so far as it is perfect. So all goodness, desirableness, depends on perfection. And, then he says, but everything is perfect so far as it is actual. Another all S is P. Okay? Well, that's another way of saying the syllogism. All goodness is of the perfect. All that is desired is of the perfect. All that is perfect is of what is. Therefore, all goodness is of what is. Now, why on earth does that matter? Is that just an intellectual exercise for a little logic class? No. Now, the first reason it matters might seem entirely theoretical at first, but I think as we'll see, all the practical reasons will also fall back on this theoretical truth. So first, quote, that thing is prior in idea which is first conceived by the intellect. Now, the first thing conceived by the intellect is being, because everything is knowable only in as much as it is in actuality. Hence, being is the proper object of the intellect and is primarily intelligible, as sound is that which is primarily audible. Therefore, in idea, being is prior to goodness." Now, if you got lost in any point here, here's why this matters. Aquinas is meaning what is good, his definition of what is good, is in an objective sense. So, immediately we think of the concept of goodness entirely subjectively, and that is exactly why we have all the problems in the Church that we do today. Ultimately, it's because people don't get this idea. So that's horrible, that's a deeply philosophical idea, why would they do that? I understand that, but that is the idea that if they got, that would be straightened out. An objective sense of goodness. Now the term in idea here that he uses, it's this way, they're separate in idea, has a referent in the way it is, goodness. Not in the subjective sense of how this or that finite mind may be able to comprehend what is good, or may choose to comprehend what is good. This objective or theoretical reason immediately implies all the practical reasons. Here's the practical reason. To the degree that we don't define what is good by what is, ultimately, then we have nothing left but the subjective sense. In other words, what happens to please my finite set of expectations? But these are all largely the product of the error that in turn results from our being finite and being sinful. And that raises a lot of other difficulties that unfortunately I don't have the time to get into, but the idea that, wait, that implies that all things are good. So, for example, triangles are good, dead flies are good, they exist. Okay, then we can catch the first point about what is meant by existence. Does that also necessitate that either evil doesn't really exist, or maybe the evil things are really good, and isn't that a contradiction? Well, let me close with this, because this is Aquinas' summary answer to all of these misgivings, by saying this, on the contrary, every being that is not God is God's creature. Now, every creature of God is good, and he quotes 1 Timothy 4.4, and God is the greatest good. Therefore, or in that way, every being is good. He says, I answer that, every being as being is good. for all being as being, in other words, in the sense that it is a being, or only insofar as it is being, has actuality as and is, in some way, perfect. By perfect, remember, he means that objectively, not subjectively and gooey like we do. Perfect meaning it is lacking nothing in what it ought to be. You say, well, who gets to define that? Glad you asked God. God's the one who exists, and He fills up the sum of everything being exactly where it ought to be. He says, and perfection implies desirability and goodness, as is clear from Article 1. Hence it follows that every being as such is good. As such just means as a being, being as being. Now that answers all the suspicions that there could ever be a sort of mundane being, or mundane subject of study in school, such that it is neutral to goodness. But it also gives us a clue as to how instances of evil depend for their reality upon the being which is perfectly good. And so in reply to Objection 2, in Article 3, he points out that, quote, no being can be spoken of as evil formally as being. In other words, you can't call a thing evil as being. but only so far as it lacks being. Thus a man is said to be evil because he lacks some virtue. And an eye is said to be evil because it lacks the power to see well. And by evil he just means, you know, I'm bringing this... Where were you? Eye on the date of... He doesn't mean that. He just means this is a bad eye. My eye sucks. That's all he means by that. So there's degrees of evil he's talking about. So let's think about that for a second, because I think that's going to help us. When we call a man evil, it's not because he's a man. Well, if you're a feminist, it is. But when you call a man evil, it's not because he has being. It's just the opposite. It's because of the degree to which he has fallen away from that which a man is. Right? If I say, not man, or say like, bad man, what do I mean? I mean, not man. Not as a man to be. In other words, it is defection precisely from perfection that the word evil means. Evil is nothing but the defection from being. Therefore, it is certain that goodness is being. Last point. Somebody could object. Wait a minute. Wait a minute, Thomas. We don't call an eye evil for lacking the power of sight, but we call an evil eye that which sees perfectly well and uses it for wicked designs. But such an objector should have stuck around for Article 4, because Thomas considers the role of the end cause in any good thing. So think about this, both the blind eye and the evil eye, if you have something sinister in mind, both of them ultimately are going to lack the same being, different degrees. So, the reason that the evil in the eyes of the blind and the evil eye of the seer or the sorcerer, the reason that they're species of the same darkened genus is because in both instances the eye is not what it was meant to be. One's just physical. But they both have a moral dimension. Whether the deprivation of being is the consequence of a prior defection, like when the disciples in John 9 said to Jesus, was this man born blind because... And Jesus doesn't deny that his parents were sinners or that sin causes this thing. He was just saying that's not what's on display here. So whether that deprivation of being in the eye is cause of a prior defection before the man was born, or whether the deprivation of being is a process of defection that you're morally culpable of right now, such as in the case of Saruman's false wizardry and his crystal ball. In both cases, notice that the I is and is not. That is, the end of eyes, seeing, is not what it is in its perfection. The eye is, it's participating in being, and it is not in its perfection. It is not what ultimately is in seeing. Aquinas does a pretty interesting breakdown about the way goodness is manifested in the world, and the way goodness is manifested in us, in our seeking, in our ends, and it's only then that he gets to the goodness of God, which is comparatively a smaller section. Why? Because he does such a thorough job on the goodness of God in general that he has very little else to prove. I don't even know what else to say because we don't have time and it's only three attributes and what do you do with that? I don't know. Here's the point. It's all deduction. He's unpacking the jury. That's the most important thing I think I can say today is that the reason this is so great And why people who don't like truth are so annoyed by it is, by the way, it doesn't mean confounded by it. We can all be confounded. I look at things seven times, twenty times, like, what is he saying? I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about these authors who are critical of Aquinas or critical of the medieval way of thinking or scholasticism. This is why they don't like the suffocation of realizing, wait a minute, there's a right way to think about everything and I can prove it and that has moral consequences. That means you've got to get on the right side and you've got to do it quick. You're going to die sometime in the next 10 years, 60 years, whatever. And they're saying that the drawers have been unpacked and your job is to get the next drawer or take this stuff into the fight and that is absolutely suffocating if you don't like truth. So, let me end it with that. In the sense of the order that he's going in, it won't be any different at all. One difference is that Aquinas is working by negation, so he's cutting off, I want to say branches, but he's shaving off, sanding off things that can't be the case, and the same picture is ultimately emerging. except that he hasn't really even gone beyond God, whereas with Augustine and the chain of being, you would talk about God and angels and man and less rational animals, such as the animals, and nature and so on. So Augustine's is more metaphysical and kind of all at once, big system, versus Aquinas is going to draw it out by negation. Any other questions or comments? Matt, you still there? Our South Carolina campus? Got any questions? Yes. All right. Well, I've got five minutes left. I have a quick question. Sure. Just real quick, a simple one. In the first stage of your notes, When the reference to potentiality being continuous and as such is divisible to infinity, is that a reference to Zeno's? He may have had Zeno in mind, but the most general reference it has is just the two different kinds of quantity. So in mathematics, there's discrete quantity, in other words, points or entities in and of themselves versus continuous quantity. And in continuous quantity, whether you're talking about a line that has infinitely divisible points, or whether you're talking about a physical substance of some sort, in either case, the continuous, by definition, is infinitely divisible. Um, in principle, of course, that, again, that proff forever, which is part of Aquinas's point, but yeah, absolutely. Uh, it, Zeno may have come to mind, uh, but I think he's going more general, uh, as far as continuity in anything implies divisibility. So yeah, I think that's where he was going. Very good. Well, it looks like the kids are invading, so I think.