Part IV: God in Himself
Part IV God in Himself Passage 20 There Exists a God Source: Summa Theologiae, 1a.2.1—3. Text from Summa Theologiae (Opera Omnia, Leonine edn., vol. iv).
Date: 1266-8, Italy, aged 42.
Type of passage and how to read: Modified disputed question (see Introduction).
Notes on translation: 'Self-evident' translates per se nota, and 'can be made evident' translates demonstrabile. 'What need not be and what must be' translates possibilia et necessaria.
See the note on parallel reading attached to Passage 33.
[Question 2] We consider first whether God exists... and that divides into three:
Is it self-evident that God exists?
Can it be made evident?
[Article 1] The first question [Is it self-evident that God exists?] we approach as follows:
It seems self-evident that God exists:
For [1] things of which we are innately aware—first principles, for instance—are said to be self-evident to us. But, as John Damascene' says, the awareness that God exists is implanted by nature in everyone. So it is self-evident that God exists.
God in Himself Moreover, [2] propositions are self-evident when we acknowledge them immediately we know what is meant by their terms: a characteristic according to Aristotle? of the first principles of demonstration. Thus, once we know what wholes and parts are, we acknowledge wholes to be always bigger than their parts. But once we understand what the word God means, it follows that God exists. For the word means that than which nothing greater can be meant. Consequently, since existing in thought and in fact is greater than existing in thought alone, and since, once we understand the word God, he exists in thought, he must also exist in fact. So it is self-evident that God exists.
Moreover, [3] it is self-evident that truth exists, for even denying it admits it. For if it doesn't exist, then it's true it doesn't exist, and if something's true, truth exists. Now God is truth itself: in John 14 [6], [Jesus says] I am the way, the truth, and the life. So it is self-evident that God exists.
No one can think the opposite of a self-evident proposition, as Aristotle's* discussion of the first principles of demonstration makes clear. But the opposite of the proposition that God exists can be thought, for the fool in Psalm 51 [1] said in his heart: There is no God. So it is not self-evident that God exists.
A self-evident proposition, though always self-evident in itself, is sometimes self-evident to us and sometimes not. For a proposition is self-evident when the predicate forms part of what the subject means: thus it is self-evident that human beings are animals, since being animal is part of what being human means. If then it is evident to everyone what it is to be this subject and what it is to have this predicate, the proposition itself will be self-evident to everyone; and this is clearly so for first principles of demonstration, which use common terms known to all, such as be and not be, whole and part. But if there are people to whom the meanings of subject and predicate are not evident, then the proposition, though self-evident in itself, will not be so to such people.
Which is why Boethius* says certain notions are self-evident and commonplace only to the learned, as, for example, that what isn't a body won't occupy space.
I maintain then that the proposition God exists is selfevident in itself, since its subject and predicate are identical:
God, I shall argue later, is his own existence. But because what it is to be God is not evident to us the proposition is not self-evident to us. It needs to be made evident by things less evident in themselves but more evident to us, namely,
Hence: to 1: The awareness that God exists is implanted in us by nature in no clear or specific way. Man is by nature aware of what by nature he desires: a happiness to be found only in God. But this is not, simply speaking, to be aware of God's existence, any more than to be aware of someone approaching is to be aware of Peter, even if it is Peter approaching; many, in fact, believe the perfect good which will make us happy to be riches, or pleasure, or some other such thing. to 2: Someone hearing the word God may very well not understand it to mean that than which nothing greater can be thought; indeed, some people have believed God to be a body. And even if the word God were generally recognized to have that meaning, nothing thus defined would thereby be granted existence in the world of fact, but merely in thought.
Unless one is given that something in fact exists than which nothing greater can be thought—and this nobody denying God's existence would grant—the conclusion that God in fact exists does not follow. to 3: It is self-evident that truth exists in general, but not selfevident to us that there exists a first Truth.
[Article 2] The second question [Can God's existence be made evident?] we approach as follows:
That God exists can't, it seems, be made evident:
God in Himself For [1] God's existence is an article of faith, and since St Paul in Hebrews 11 [1] says that faith is concerned with the unseen, its propositions can't be demonstrated, that is, made evident. So we can't demonstrate that God exists.
Moreover, [2] the central link in a demonstration is a definition. But as John Damascene' says, we can't know what God is but only what he isn't. So we can't demonstrate that God exists.
Moreover, [3] if we could demonstrate God to exist, it could only be by arguing from his effects. Now God and his effects are incommensurable, he being limitless and his effects limited and the limited not being able to measure the limitless. So, since effects incommensurate with their cause can't make it evident, it doesn't seem possible to demonstrate that God exists.
In the words of St Paul in Romans 1: 20 the hidden things of God can be clearly understood from the things that he has made. If so, we must be able to demonstrate that God exists from the things that he has made, for the first step in understanding a thing is to know that it exists.
There are two kinds of demonstration: those that argue from cause to effect, following the natural order of things themselves and showing why things are as they are; and those that argue from effect to cause, following the order in which we know things and simply showing how things are—for when effects are more apparent to us than their cause we come to know the cause through its effects. Now any effect that is better known to us than its cause can demonstrate that its cause exists: for effects are dependent on their causes and can only occur if their causes already exist. From effects evident to us, therefore, we can demonstrate something that is not self-evident to us, namely, that God exists.
. to 1: The truths about God which St Paul says we can know by natural reasoning—that God exists, for example—are not articles of faith but presupposed by them. For faith presupposes some natural knowledge just as grace does nature and any perfection what it perfects. However, there is nothing to stop an individual accepting on faith some truth he can't demonstrate, even if it be in itself something that demonstration can make evident. to 2: When we argue from effect to cause, the effect must take the place of a definition of the cause in the proof that the cause exists; and especially so when the cause is God. For when proving anything to exist the central link is not what the thing is—we cannot even ask what it is until we know that it exists—but rather what we use the name of the thing to mean. Now, as we shall see, what the word God means derives from his effects; so when demonstrating from effects that God exists we are able to start from what the word God means. to 3: Only effects commensurate with their cause can give comprehensive knowledge of it, but, as we have said, any effect whatever can make it clear that the cause exists. God's effects then are enough to prove that God exists, even if they are not enough to help us comprehend what he is.
{Article 3] The third question [Does God exist?] we approach as follows:
It seems there is no God:
For [1] if one of two mutually exclusive things were to exist unbounded, the other would be totally destroyed. But the word God implies some unbounded good. So if God existed, no evil would ever be encountered. Evil is, however, encountered in the world. So God does not exist.
Moreover, [2] when a few causes fully account for some effect it doesn't need more. But it seems that everything we observe in this world can be fully accounted for by other causes, without assuming a God: natural effects by natural causes, and contrived effects by human reasoning and will.
There is therefore no need to assume that God exists.
Exodus 3 [14] represents God as saying: I am who am.
God in Himself In reply:
There are five ways of proving there is a God:
The first and most obvious way is based on change. For certainly some things are changing: this we plainly see. Now anything changing is being changed by something else. (This is so because what makes things changeable is unrealized potentiality, but what makes them cause change is their already realized state: causing change brings into being what was previously only able to be, and can only be done by something which already is. For example, the actual heat of fire causes wood, able to be hot, to become actually hot, and so causes change in the wood; now what is actually hot can't at the same time be potentially hot but only potentially cold, can't at the same time be actual and potential in the same respect but only in different respects; so that what is changing can't be the very thing that is causing the same change, can't be changing itself, but must be being changed by something else.) Again this something else, if itself changing, must be being changed by yet another thing; and this last by another.
But this can't go on for ever, since then there would be no first cause of the change, and as a result no subsequent causes. (Only when acted on by a first cause do intermediate causes produce a change; unless a hand moves the stick, the stick won't move anything else.) So we are forced eventually to come to a first cause of change not itself being changed by anything, and this is what everyone understands by God.
The second way is based on the very notion of agent cause.
In the observable world causes are found ordered in series: we never observe, nor ever could, something causing itself, for this would mean it preceded itself, and this is not possible.
But a series of causes can't go on for ever, for in any such series an earlier member causes an intermediate and the intermediate a last (whether the intermediate be one or many). Now eliminating a cause eliminates its effects, and unless there's a first cause there won't be a last or an intermediate. But if a series of causes goes on for ever it will have no first cause, and so no intermediate causes and no last effect, which is clearly false. So we are forced to postulate some first agent cause, to which everyone gives the name God.
The third way is based on what need not be and on what must be, and runs as follows. Some of the things we come across can be but need not be, for we find them being generated and destroyed, thus sometimes in being and sometimes not. Now everything cannot be like this, for a thing that need not be was once not; and if everything need not be, once upon a time there was nothing. But if that were true there would be nothing even now, because something that does not exist can only begin to exist through something that already exists. If nothing was in being nothing could begin to be, and nothing would be in being now, which is clearly false. Not everything then is the sort that need not be; some things must be, and these may or may not owe this necessity to something else. But just as we proved that a series of agent causes can't go on for ever, so also a series of things which must be and owe this to other things. So we are forced to postulate something which of itself must be, owing this to nothing outside itself, but being itself the cause that other things must be.
The fourth way is based on the levels found in things.
Some things are found to be better, truer, more excellent than others. Such comparative terms describe varying degrees of approximation to a superlative; for example, things are hotter the nearer they approach what is hottest. So there is something which is the truest and best and most excellent of things, and hence the most fully in being; for Aristotle® says that the truest things are the things most fully in being.
Now when many things possess a property in common, the one most fully possessing it causes it in the others: fire, as Aristotle says, the hottest of all things, causes all other things to be hot. So there is something that causes in all other things their being, their goodness, and whatever other perfections they have. And this is what we call God.
The fifth way is based on the guidedness of nature. Goaldirected behaviour is observed in all bodies in nature, even those lacking awareness; for we see their behaviour hardly ever varying and practically always turning out well, which God in Himself shows they truly tend to goals and do not merely hit them by accident. But nothing lacking awareness can tend to a goal except it be directed by someone with awareness and understanding: arrows by archers, for example. So everything in nature is directed to its goal by someone with understanding, and this we call God.
Hence: to 1: As Augustine' says: Since God is supremely good, he would not allow any evil at all in his works if he wasn't sufficiently almighty and good to bring good even from evil.
It is therefore a mark of his unbounded goodness that God allows evils to exist and draws from them good. to 2: Natural causes pursue fixed goals under the direction of some superior cause, and so their effects must also be traced back to God as the first of all causes. In the same manner contrived effects must also be traced back to a higher cause than human reasoning and will, for these are changeable and can cease to exist, and, as we have seen, everything that can change or cease to exist must be traced back to a first cause which cannot change and of itself must be.
Passage 21 God is his Own Existence Source: Thomas's public disputations on the Power of God, 7.2.
Text from Quaestiones Disputatae de Potentia (Marietti edn., Turin, 1953), with corrections from the Leonine text in preparation.
Date: 1266-7, Italy, aged 42.
Type of passage and how to read:
Public disputation (see Introduction).
Notes on translation: Read the notes on translation for Passage 6.
The verbs 'to be' and 'to exist' both translate the verb esse.
Throughout I have used 'substance' for substantia and 'essence' for essentia. The student will notice (1) that these two words are used synonymously (the Greek background of both is the word ousia), and that (2) the distinction between esse (existence) and essentia
(essence) here asserted of creatures and denied of God is carefully God is his Own Existence nuanced: sensitive to essentia as an abstract form of esse (see objection [7] and answer), to existence as meaning actually having essence (see Hence to 1), and to essence as causally involved in existence (compare objection [10] and its answer with the In reply of Question 5, Article 3, in Passage 1, and with related passages in other works of Thomas, e.g., Metaphysics, 4.2. [558], and Summa
[Question 7] The subject for debate is The Simpleness of God's Substance...
[Article 2] And in the second place we are asked: Is it God's substance or essence to exist?
For [1] John Damascene' says that it is clear that God exists, but what he is in substance or nature is altogether beyond comprehension and unknown. Now the same thing can't be both known and unknown. So God's existing is not the same as his substance or essence.
But it was said [by the respondent] that God's existing is just as unknown to us as his substance is.
But against that: [2] whether God exists and what he is are quite different questions, to one of which we know the answer and to the other of which we don't, as is clear from the authority already quoted. So what responds to the question whether God exists is not the same as what responds to the question what he is. But God's existing answers to the whether question, and his substance or nature to the what question.
But it was said [by the respondent] that God's existing is known not in itself but by what resembles it in creatures.
But against that: [3] creatures have both existence and substance or nature, both come from God and both must resemble him, since what agents do reflect what they are. So if we know God's existence by created existence's resemblance, we must be able to know his substance by created substance's resemblance: and in | that case we must know not only that God exists but what he is.
God in Himself Moreover, [4] things differ from each other in substance.
But they can't differ by what they have in common: so, as Aristotle? says, you don't mention existence in definitions because it won't distinguish what you're defining from anything else. So the substance of anything distinguished from other things can't be its existing, since that is what everything has in common. Now God is something distinct from all other things. So existing can't be his substance.
Moreover, [5] things are different only if they have differing existence. But this thing's existing doesn't differ from that thing's existing as existing, but only as existing in this or that a nature. So any existing which is not in a nature added to existing itself wouldn't differ from any other existing. If to exist is God's substance then, it will follow that he is the existing all have in common.
Moreover, [6] being (period!) is the being everything has in common. But if God were his own existing, he would be being (period!). He would be what everything has in common and could be attributed to everything: God would be compounded of all things. Now that is a heresy, and also contradicts the opinion of Aristotle,> who said that the first cause rules everything and is mixed in with nothing.
Moreover, [7] non-abstract terms don't properly apply to what is absolutely simple. But existing is this sort of term: for existing seems to relate to essence as white to whiteness.*
So saying God's substance is existing uses terms badly.
Moreover, [8] Boethius® says that Everything existent shares in existence in order to be, and in something else in order to be something. But God is; so over and above his existence there must be something else in him by which he is something.
Moreover, [9] one shouldn't attribute to God, who is utterly perfect, what is utterly imperfect. Now existing, like ultimate matter, is utterly imperfect: ultimate matter is indeterminate relative to every form, and in the same way existing is utterly imperfect and indeterminate relative to every special category
{of being]. So, if ultimate matter doesn't belong in God, neither should one attribute existing to God's substance.
God is his Own Existence Moreover, [10] what is thought of as an effect can't be attributed to the first of all substances, which is uncaused.
But that is what existence is like, since everything that exists has existence through its essence. So God's substance can't be said to be existence itself.
Moreover, [11] a proposition is self-evident if its subject and predicate are identical. Now if God's substance is his own very existence, then the subject and predicate of the proposition God exists will be identical. And then it will be a selfevident proposition, which is clearly false since it needs proving. So God's existence can't be his substance.
[1] Hilary® says that Existence isn't incidental to God but his subsistent truth. But what subsists is a thing's substance. So God's existence is his substance.
Moreover, [2] Moses Maimonides' says that God is existent not by way of some essence, living not by way of some life, powerful not by way of some power, wise not by way of some wisdom. So God's essence is not other than his existence.
Moreover, [3] the name that properly designates a thing derives from its quiddity: for Aristotle® tells us that names properly signify substance and quiddity. Now God's most proper name, as Exodus [3: 14] makes clear, is He who is.
This name, however, derives from his existence, so it seems God's existence is his substance.
God's existing doesn't differ from his substance. To be clear about this, note that when several causes producing different effects have also, besides those differing effects, one effect in common, then they must produce that common effect in virtue of some higher cause to which it properly belongs. For the effect properly belonging to a cause is determined by the cause's own proper nature and form; so that effects properly belonging to causes of diverse nature and form must differ, and any effect produced in common must properly belong not to any one of them but to a higher cause in virtue of God in Himself which they act. Thus since pepper, ginger, and other differently structured spices with their own specific effects are all hot, this common effect must properly belong to some prior cause, in this case elemental fire. In the movements of the heavens, too, each planetary sphere has its own proper movement, and the movement which they all share must properly belong to some higher containing sphere rotating them all daily." Now all created causes, distinguished by the effects that properly belong to each of them, have also one effect in common, namely, existence: heat, for example, causes things to be—or exist as—hot, and builders cause there to be—or exist—houses.'° So they agree in causing things to exist, but differ in this: that heat causes heat and builders houses. So there must be some cause higher than all of them in virtue of which they all cause existence, a cause of which existence is the proper effect. And this cause is God.
Now the proper effect of any cause issues from it by reproducing its nature. So existing must be God's substance or nature. And that is why the book of Causes'! says that intelligence gives existence only if it is divine, and that the first of all effects is existence, and nothing created precedes that.
Hence: to 1: According to Aristotle'? we use the verb 'to be' in two ways: sometimes to signify the essence of a thing, its act of existing, sometimes to signify the truth of a proposition, even where there is lack of existence, as when we say that blindness exists since it is true that some men are blind.
When Damascene says it is clear that God exists he uses 'exist' in the second way and not the first. Used in the first way God's existing is his substance and as unknown to us as his substance is. But used in the second way we know that God exists, since that is a proposition we can conceive in our mind through his effects. And that makes clear the answers to 2 and to 3. to 4: God's existing—his substance—is not the existing common to other things, but an existing distinct from all other existing. So by his very own existing God differs from all other beings.
God is his Own Existence to 5: As we read in the book of Causes,'? God's existing is individually distinguished from all other existing by the very fact that it is an existing subsistent in itself, and not one supervening on a nature other than existing itself. All other existing, as non-subsistent, must be individually distinguished by some nature or substance that subsists with that existence.
And of such things it is true that this thing's existing differs from that thing's existing by belonging to a different nature.
Just as if heat existed alone of itself without matter or subject, that very fact would distinguish it from all other heat; though all instances of heat existing in subjects would have to be distinguished [from each other] by way of those subjects. to 6: The being everything has in common is being (period!), though not in the sense that additions can't be made to it.
But God's existing is being (period!) in the sense that no addition can be made to it. So God's existing is not the existing everything has in common. Just as the genus animal neither includes the addition rational in its definition, nor yet excludes it; for that defines irrational animals, a species of animal. to 7: The way words we use express things is determined by the way we understand the things, for, as Aristotle'* says, words express mental conceptions. Now our mind understands existing in the way we see it on earth where our knowledge starts, and there existing is not subsistent but attaches to things. Our reasons, however, discover that there is a subsistent existing, and so—although our word for existing is a non-abstract term—our mind in attributing it to God goes beyond the way it expresses, attributing to God what the word expresses but not in the way it expresses it. to 8: We must understand Boethius to be talking of things that share in existence rather than exist by essence; for what exists by its essence, if we give due weight to the words we use, should not be said to be something existent, but rather to be existence itself. to 9: What I am calling esse [being in being] is of all things the most perfect. Clearly this is so, since actualizing potentiality perfects it, and no form whatever can be understood
God in Himself actualized except by thinking of it as in being. Human-being or fire-iness can be thought of as existing'' potentially in some material, or virtually in some cause, or even in mind, but only by being in being is it made actually existent. So clearly what I am calling esse is the actualization of all actuality, and consequently the perfection of all perfections.
Nor should we think anything is ever added to what I am calling esse in the way forms are added [to matter], or actualization to potentiality: for anything added in that way is different in essence from that to which it is added, but nothing outside existence can be added to it, since nothing exists outside existence except the non-existent, and that can't be either form or matter. So existing is determined by other things not as potentiality by actualization, but rather as actualization by potentiality, in the way we include in definitions of forms their appropriate matter to differentiate them, saying, for example, that the soul is the actualization of a natural organic body; it is in this way that we distinguish this existence from that existence, as existence in this or that sort of nature. And this is why pseudo-Dionysius'® says that though living things are more excellent than existent things, existence is more excellent than life: for living things don't only have life but, together with life, have existence. to 10: Goals are ordered in the way agents are, the ultimate goal being that of the first agent, and the other goals belonging proportionately in an ordered way to the other agents. For think of the city-ruler, his army-commander, anda private soldier: clearly the city-ruler is the first agent sending the army-commander off to war, and the armycommander sets the private soldiers under him to do the actual fighting. The soldier's goal is to lay low the enemy, a goal which is subordinate to the army-commander's goal, the victory of his army, which in turn is subordinate to the ruler or king's goal, the good state of the city or kingdom.
Existence then, the proper effect and goal of the first agent's activity, must be the ultimate goal. Now goals, though intended first, are implemented last, and thus are effects of later causes. So that caused existence, the proper effect corresponding to the first agent, is caused through secondary causes, whereas the first [agent's] existence is a causing existence, first and uncaused. to 11: A proposition self-evident in itself need not be so to this or that person: to someone, for example, unaware that its predicate forms part of its subject's definition. Thus the proposition that every whole is bigger than its part isn't selfevident to someone who doesn't know what a whole is, for, as Aristotle'? says, we know such propositions by knowing their terms. Now the proposition that God exists is selfevident in itself since its subject and predicate are identical, but it isn't self-evident to us because we don't know what
God is: so it needs to be made evident to us, but not to those who can see God's essence.
Passage 22 Eternity and Time Source: Summa Theologiae, la.10.1, 4. Text from Summa Theologiae (Opera Omnia, Leonine edn., vol. iv).
Date: 1266-8, Italy, aged 42.
Type of passage and how to read: Modified disputed question (see Introduction).
Notes on translation: 'The aeon' translates aevum, originally another word for eternity, but here used to distinguish the 'duration' of heavenly creatures from time, on the one hand, and the Creator's eternity, on the other.
[Question 10] We next consider Eternity, and that divides into six:
What is eternity? ...
Does eternity differ from the aeon and time?...
[Article 1] The first question [What is eternity?] we approach as follows:
It seems that Boethius'! definition of eternity won't do:
For [1] he defined eternity as the simultaneously whole and complete possession of endless life. Now endless is a negative
God in Himself term such as belongs only in the definition of defective things; eternity, however, is no defect. So the word endless is out of place in a definition of eternity.
Moreover, [2] eternity names a sort of duration, and duration measures existence rather than life. So the word existence should be used in the definition in place of life.
Moreover, [3] the word whole describes something having parts. Now eternity is simple and has no parts. So whole won't do.
Moreover, [4] several days or times can't be simultaneous.
But in speaking of eternity we talk of days and times in the plural. For Micah 5 [2] says his going forth is from the beginning, from the days of eternity, and St Paul in Romans
16 [25] talks of the revealing of the mystery kept secret through times eternal. Eternity then is not simultaneously whole.
Moreover, [5] wholeness and completion are the same. Given then that eternity is whole it is redundant to add that it is complete.
Moreover, [6] possession has nothing to do with duration, and eternity is a sort of duration. So eternity is not a possession.
Just as we derive our knowledge of simple things from composite ones so we derive our knowledge of eternity from time, which is the measure of before and after in change. For in all change there is successiveness, one part coming after another, and from our numbering antecedent and consequent parts of change there arises the notion of time, which is simply the numberedness of before and after in change. Now something that lacks change and never varies its mode of existence will not display a before and after. So just as numbering before and after in change produces the notion of time, so awareness of invariability in something altogether free from change produces the notion of eternity. A further point: time is said by Aristotle? to measure things that begin and end in time, and that is because you can always find a beginning and an end in changing things. But things altogether unchangeable can no more have a beginning than show successiveness.
Two things then characterize eternity: firstly, things existing in eternity are endless, lacking both beginning and end (for both may be called ends); and secondly, eternity itself exists as a simultaneous whole, lacking successiveness.
Hence: to 1: We often use negations to define simple things, saying points have no parts, for example. This is not because they are negative in substance but because our minds first grasp composite things and only come to know simple things by denying compositeness of them. to 2: That which exists in eternity is, in fact, also alive.
Moreover, life covers activity too, which existence doesn't, and the flow of duration is more apparent in activity than in existence: time, for example, measures changes. to 3: Eternity is called whole not because it has parts but because it has nothing lacking to it. to 4: Just as scripture described God metaphorically in bodily terms though he is not a body, so it describes eternity in temporal and successive terms though it exists simultaneously. to 5: Note two things about time: time itself is actualized successively, in a present instant which is never complete. So to deny that eternity is time Boethius calls it simultaneously whole, and to deny that it is temporal instantaneity he calls it complete. to 6: To possess something is to hold it firmly and unmovingly. So to signify eternity's unchangeableness and constancy Boethius used the word possession .. .
[Article 4] The fourth question [Does eternity differ from the aeon and time?] we approach as follows:
Eternity doesn't seem to differ from time:
For [1] two measures of duration can only exist simultaneously if one is part of the other: thus two days or hours can't occur simultaneously, but an hour and a day can, since
God in Himself an hour is part of a day. Now eternity and time, both of which signify some sort of measure of duration, exist simultaneously. So since eternity is not a part of time but exceeds and contains it, time must seemingly be a part of eternity and not differ from it.
Moreover, [2] according to Aristotle? the present moment of time persists unchanged throughout time. But the nature of eternity seems to consist precisely in remaining unbrokenly the same throughout the whole course of time. Eternity then must be the present moment of time. But the present moment of time is in substance identical with time itself. So eternity must be in substance identical with time.
Moreover, [3] Aristotle* says the measure of the most fundamental change measures all other changes. In the same way it seems that the measure of the most fundamental existence should measure all other existences. But eternity measures
God's existence, which is the most fundamental existence; so it should measure all existence. Now the existence of perishable things is measured by time. So time is either eternity or part of eternity.
Eternity is simultaneously whole, while in time there is before and after. So time and eternity differ.
Time clearly differs from eternity. But some people say the reason for the difference is that time began and will end, whereas eternity doesn't begin or end. Now this is an accidental difference, not an intrinsic one, for even if time had always existed and will always exist—as those hold who think the heavens will go on revolving for ever—there would still be the difference Boethius pointed out between time and eternity: that eternity is simultaneously whole, while time is not, eternity measuring abiding existence and time measuring change.
If, however, the suggested difference is applied to the things being measured rather than to the measures themselves, then it has some justification, for, as Aristotle' says, time measures only those things that begin and end in time.
So, even if the heavens did rotate for ever, time would measure not the whole duration of the movement—since the infinite is immeasurable—but each revolution separately as it began and ended in time.
Or we could justify-applying the difference to the measures themselves if we talked of potential beginnings and ends. For even if time lasted for ever it would always be possible to mark off beginnings and ends in it by dividing it into parts, in the way we talk of days and years beginning and ending; and this would not apply to eternity.
However, these differences are secondary. The primary intrinsic difference of time from eternity is that eternity exists as a simultaneous whole and time doesn't.
Hence: to 1: This would be a valid argument if time and eternity were measures of the same kind, but when one considers the different things they measure, they clearly aren't. to 2: The present moment persistently underlies time, altering state continuously; just as time corresponds to movement [of the heavens], the present corresponds to what moves, which remains in substance the same throughout time though it alters its position, first here and then there, and, by altering its position, moves. Time consists in the passing of the present moment as it alters state. Eternity, however, remains unchanged both in substance and in state, and thus differs from the present of time. to 3: Just as eternity is the proper measure of existence as such, so time is the proper measure of change. In so far then as some existence falls short of permanence in its existing and is subject to change, so will it fall short of eternity and be subject to time. So the existence of perishable things, being changeable, is measured by time and not by eternity.
For time measures not only the actually changing but also the potentially changeable. It measures, therefore, not only movement but also rest, the state of the movable when not moving.
God in Himself Passage 23 Do we Have Words for God?
Source: Summa Theologiae, 1a.13.1-6, 12. Text from Summa Theologiae (Opera Omnia, Leonine edn., vol. iv).
Date: 1266-8, Italy, aged 42.
Type of passage and how to read: Modified disputed question (see Introduction).
Notes on translation: 'Names', 'nouns', and 'words' all translate nomina. Clearly Thomas does have names and nouns particularly in mind in some of the arguments that follow, but mostly he is talking of words in the sense given by the English question 'Is there a word for that?? The use of the Latin word nomina is determined by the history of this discussion, the origins of which lie in a fifthor sixth-century work of pseudo-Dionysius quoted frequently here by Thomas, the De Divinis Nominibus. This work, too, though often called in English 'The Divine Names', would perhaps better be called 'Words for God'. 'Express' and 'mean' translate the verb significare.
(Question 13] Next we consider the words we use for God, and this divides into twelve:
Can we use words for God?
Do any of the words we use for God express what he essentially is?
Do some of the words we use for God apply to him literally, or are they all metaphorical?
Are these words used for God synonymous?
Are words used of God and creatures univocally or equivocally?
If we say they are used analogically, do they apply primarily to God or to creatures? ...
Can we make affirmative statements about God?
[Article 1] The first question [Can we use words for God?] we approach as follows:
It seems we have no words for God.
Do we Have Words for God?
For [1] pseudo-Dionysius! says: of him there is neither name nor opinion. And Proverbs 30 [4] asks: What is his name or his son's name? Do you know?
Moreover, [2] nouns are either abstract or concrete. Neither are appropriate to God: concrete nouns because he is simple, abstract nouns because they don't express complete subsistent things. So no nouns apply to God.
Moreover, [3] nouns express sorts of things, verbs and participles are tensed, pronouns are either demonstrative or relative. None of this is appropriate to God, who is without qualities or incidental properties, exists out of time, can't be ostensively demonstrated to our senses, nor referred to by any pronoun referring back to a noun or participle or demonstrative pronoun. So no sort of word can apply to him.
We read in Exodus 15 [3]: The Lord is a great warrior:
Almighty is his name.
Aristotle? says words express thoughts and thoughts represent things; so clearly words refer mediately to things by way of our mental conceptions: we talk about things in the way we know them. Now we have already seen that in this life we cannot see God's substance but know him only from creatures: as their non-creaturely and transcendent cause. So this is where our words for God come from: from creatures.
Such words, however, will not express the substance of God as he is in himself, in the way words like human being express the substance of what human beings are in themselves, expressing what defines human beings and declaring what makes them human beings; for the meaning of a word is the definition of some thing.
Hence: to 1: God is said to have no name or be beyond naming because his substance lies outside what we understand of him or can express in words. to 2: Because our knowledge and our words for God come
God in Himself from creatures, the words we use for him express him in ways more appropriate to the kind of creatures we know naturally, and these, as we have said, are material creatures.
In such creatures subsistent wholes are composed [of formed material], the form not being a subsistent whole itself but determining what subsists. So all our words for expressing subsistent wholes are concrete terms, appropriate to composite things; whereas to express the non-composite forms we use words that don't express them as subsistent but as determining what subsists: as whiteness, for example, names what makes things white. Now God is both non-composite and subsistent, so we use abstract terms to express his lack of composition and concrete terms to express his subsistence and wholeness. But neither way of talking fully measures up to his way of existing, for in this life we do not know him as he is in himself. to 3: To express something as a sort of thing is to express it as a subject subsisting under a determinate nature or form.
So just as we have said concrete nouns are used to express God's subsistent wholeness, so too are words that express him as a sort of thing. In the same way, tensed verbs and participles are used to express God's eternity (which includes all time); for just as we can only grasp and express noncomposite subsistent things in the way we do composite things, so we can understand and express in words the simpleness of eternity only in terms of things in time: the reason being our mind's kinship with composite temporal things. We use demonstrative pronouns of God in the way we use them of certain other things, pointing them out not to our senses but to our minds, for the way in which we point out things depends on the way we know them. And so because there are ways in which nouns and participles and demonstrative pronouns apply to God, there are ways in which relative nouns and pronouns can express him.
[Article 2] The second question [Do any of the words we use for God express what he essentially is?] we approach as follows:
° Do we Have Words for God?
It seems that no word used of God can express what he essentially is:
For [1] John Damascene® says: Of necessity each word said of God expresses not what he essentially is but what he is not, or some relationship he has, or something following from his nature or activity.
Moreover, [2] pseudo-Dionysius* says: You will find that the utterances of all God's holy teachers articulate the names of God, in praise and revelation, in accordance with blessed outpourings of his divinity. And what he means is that the words the holy teachers use in praise of God differ according to what issues from God. But words expressing what issue from something don't express anything of its substance. So the words we use of God don't express what he essentially is.
Moreover, [3] we talk of things in the way we understand them. But we don't understand God's substance in this life, so no words we use can express God's substance.
Augustine' says: The being strong of God is his being, and the being wise, and whatever other phrase we use to express the very substance of that simple being. So all such names express God's substance.
Clearly negative names for God and names relating him to creatures don't in any way express his substance; rather they express an absence of something in him, or a relationship he has to other things (or better, that other things have).
Opinions have differed, however, about non-relative affirmative terms like good and wise.
Some have said that all such names, though ascribed affirmatively to God, are actually designed to exclude something from God rather than to ascribe something positive to him. So, according to them, when we say God is alive we mean that God is not like inanimate things, and other propositions are to be understood in the same way. And this
God in Himself was Moses Maimonides' view. Others say that such names are used to express God's relationship to creatures, so that when we say God is good we mean that God causes goodness in things, and so on for other propositions.
Both views seem unacceptable, for three reasons. In the first place, neither view explains why some words are used of God rather than others. God causes bodies just as he causes goodness, so if all that we are expressing by saying God is good is that God causes goodness, why don't we say God is a body because he causes bodies? Or we could say God is a body in order to exclude his being merely unformed potentiality like ultimate matter. In the second place, all words used of God would apply to him only secondarily, in the way the word healthy applies secondarily to medicine, where it means only that medicine causes bodies to be healthy, that being the primary meaning of the word. In the third place, it isn't what people talking of God want to say. When we talk of the living God, we want to say something else than that he causes life in us or differs from non-living bodies.
So we must rather say that such words do express God's substance and say something of what God essentially is, but represent him inadequately. And we explain this as follows.
We can only talk of God as we know him, and since we know him through creatures, we only know him as creatures represent him. But we have said above that all creaturely perfections pre-exist in God in one simple all-embracing perfection. So creatures having any perfection represent and resemble him, but not as things of one type or kind represent each other, but as effects partially resemble a cause of a higher kind though falling short of reproducing its form: the way earthly bodily forms, for example, reproduce the power of the sun. We explained all this earlier when talking of God's perfection. So the sort of words we are considering express God's substance, but do it imperfectly just as creatures represent him imperfectly.
So when we say God is good we mean neither God causes goodness nor God is not bad, but What in creatures we call goodness pre-exists in a higher way in God. Thus God is not good because he causes goodness; rather because he is
Do we Have Words for God? good, goodness spreads through things. As Augustine® says, because he is good, we exist.
Hence: to 1: The reason John Damascene says such words don't express what God is'is that none of them perfectly express what he is; but each expresses him imperfectly in the imperfect way creatures represent him. to 2: Why a word gets used to mean something differs sometimes from what it is used to mean: the Latin word lapis derives from laedens pedem—hurting the feet, but it doesn't mean any and every kind of thing that hurts our feet, but the particular kind of body we call a rock. And so we answer that why certain words get used of God depends on the outpourings of his divinity: for just as creatures represent him, however imperfectly, according to differing outpourings of perfection, so our minds know and name God in accordance with each outpouring. Nevertheless, these words don't mean those outpourings: God is alive doesn't mean life pours out from him, but expresses the fact that life pre-exists in him as the source of all things, though in a way surpassing anything we can understand or express. to 3: We can't know God's substance in this life for what it is in itself, but we can know it as represented by creaturely perfections, and that is how our words for him express it.
[Article 3] The third question [Do some of the words we use for God apply to him literally, or are they all metaphorical?] we approach as follows:
It seems that no words apply literally to God:
For [1], as we have said, all words used of God come from creatures. But to apply names of creatures to God—calling him a rock or a lion, for example—is to use metaphor. So the words we use of God apply to him metaphorically.
Moreover, [2] no word applies literally to something of which it is more truly denied than asserted. But all words like good and wise, pseudo-Dionysius' says, are more truly
God in Himself denied of God than asserted. So none of these names apply to him literally.
Moreover, [3] words for bodies can only apply to an incorporeal God metaphorically. But all the words we are considering carry with them features characteristic of bodies: tense, for example, or concreteness, or other bodily conditions. So all these words apply to God metaphorically.
Ambrose® says There are certain words which reveal clearly what is proper to divinity, and some which express the evident truth of divine majesty; but others are used of him by simile and metaphor. So not all words are used metaphorically of God; some apply literally.
As we have said, we know God from the perfections that are poured out from him into creatures, and exist in him in a way surpassing the way they exist in creatures. Now our minds apprehend those perfections in the way they exist in creatures, and give them names suiting the way we apprehend them. So in using such words of God we must consider on the one hand the perfections they express— goodness, life, and the like—and on the other their manner of expressing them. In regard to what they express, these words apply literally to God, and indeed more properly to him than to creatures, and so primarily to him. But as regards their manner of expressing it, they don't apply literally to God; for their manner of expression is appropriate only to creatures.
Hence: to 1: Some words so express the perfections issuing from God into created things that the imperfect way in which the creature shares God's perfection is included in what the word means, as materiality is included in the meaning of rock.
Such words can apply to God only metaphorically. But other words express the perfections without including in what the word means any particular way of sharing those perfections:
Do we Have Words for God? words like existent and good and living, for example. And such words apply to God literally. to 2: The reason pseudo-Dionysius says we should deny such words of God is that what they express doesn't belong to him in the way they express it but in a surpassing way. Thus in the same place he says that God exists beyond all substance and life. to 3: Words applying literally to God carry with them features characteristic of bodies not in what they express but in the way they express it; whereas words that apply metaphorically to him carry some bodily feature as part of what they mean.
[Article 4] The fourth question [Are these words used for God synonymous?] we approach as follows:
It seems that the words we use about God are all synonymous:
For [1] synonyms are words meaning exactly the same thing.
Now the words we use about God mean exactly the same thing: for his goodness is his substance, and his wisdom is his substance, and so on. So these words are completely synonymous.
Moreover, if it's said that the words refer to one reality but express different notions, then against that: [2] notions not corresponding to reality are empty. So if reality is one and the notions many, it seems the notions are empty.
Moreover, [3] what is really and notionally one is more one than what is really one but notionally complex. Now God is supremely one. So it seems he isn't really one and notionally complex. So the words used of him don't express different notions, and so are synonymous.
All joining of synonyms results in tautological triviality, as when one says a clothing garment. So if every word used of God was synonymous it wouldn't be acceptable to talk of the ~
God in Himself good God and so on. Yet scripture says: Most powerful, great, and mighty one, Lord of hosts is your name!
The words we use of God are not synonymous. It wouldn't be difficult to see this if such words were designed to exclude something from God or signify some causal relationship he has to creatures: for they would then differ in meaning according to the different things denied or the different effects referred to. But what we have said about these words expressing, however imperfectly, God's substance, will also make clear, if we recall it, that they express different notions.
For the meaning of a word is our mental conception of the thing meant. Now, because the mind knows God from creatures, the conceptions it forms in order to understand
God correspond to the perfections that issue from God into creatures. In creatures these shared perfections are many and various, but in God they pre-exist in a simple unity. So just as the various perfections of creatures correspond to one simple source, which they represent in many and various ways by their different perfections, so too to our many and various mental conceptions there corresponds something altogether one and simple, understood imperfectly by way of these conceptions. And so the words we use of God, though all expressing one thing, do so by way of many and various conceptions, and so are not synonymous.
Hence: to 1: The answer to this is now clear. Synonyms signify the same thing under the same notion. Words that express the same thing with different notions don't have one meaning in the primary and simple sense of that expression, since words mean things only by way of our mental conceptions of them, as we said earlier. to 2: The many notions expressed by these words are not useless or empty, for there corresponds to them all one simple reality that they all represent in various imperfect ways."
' to 3: The very fact that God contains in one simple unity what other things share in many different ways shows the Do we Have Words for God? perfection of God's unity. And it is this that makes him really one and notionally complex, since our minds apprehend him in the many different ways creatures represent him.
[Article 5] The fifth question [Are words used of God and creatures univocally or equivocally?] we approach as follows:
It seems that words used of God and creatures are used univocally [i.e. in exactly the same sense] of both:
For [1] the equivocal presupposes the univocal, as manyness presupposes unity (the equivocal use of the word dog, for example, to signify things that bark anda type of fish must presuppose its univocal use to signify all things that bark); otherwise we would go on for ever. Now there are univocal agents that share with their effects a single name and definition (human beings, for instance, reproducing human beings), and equivocal agents (the sun, for example, causing heat, though it itself is hot only in an equivocal sense). Seemingly then the first of agents, to which all agency is traced back, will be a univocal agent; and so the words used of God and creatures must be univocal.
Moreover, [2] there is no likeness between things equivocally the same. Since, however, creatures are like God in some respect—Let us make the human to our own image and likeness, God says in Genesis 1 [26]—it seems that something is said univocally of God and creatures.
Moreover, [3] Aristotle? says that a measure must be generically one with what it measures. Now God is the first measure of everything, and therefore generically one with creatures; so something can be said univocally of God and creatures.
[1] When the same word is used but with different meanings it is used equivocally. But no word means the same used of God as it does used of creatures: in creatures, for example, wisdom is a property, but not in God, and such a change in genus alters the meaning, since a thing's genus is part of its definition. The same applies to all other words, so whatever word we use of God and creatures is used equivocally.
God in Himself Moreover, [2] God is much further from creatures than any creatures are from one another. But some creatures are so far from one another that nothing can be said univocally of them: things not in the same genus, for example. Much less, then, can anything be said univocally of God and creatures, but everything must be said equivocally.
Nothing can be said univocally of God and creatures. For effects that don't measure up to the power of their cause resemble it inadequately, not reproducing its nature, so that what exists in simple unity in the cause exists in many various forms in the effects: the uniform energy of the sun, for example, produces manifold and varied forms of effect on earth. And in the same way, as we have said, all the many and various perfections existing in creatures pre-exist in God in simple unity.
In this way then words expressing creaturely perfections express them as distinct from one another: wise, for example, used of a human being expresses a perfection distinct from his nature, his powers, his existence, and so on; but when we use it of God we don't want to express anything distinct from his substance, powers, and existence. So the word wise used of human beings somehow contains and delimits what is meant; when used of God, however, it doesn't, but leaves what it means uncontained and going beyond what the word can express. Clearly then the word wise isn't used in the same sense of God and man, and the same is true of all the other words. No word, then, is said of God and creatures univocally.
But neither are they said purely equivocally, as some people have held. For that would mean nothing could be known or proved about God from creatures, but all such argument would commit the logical fallacy of equivocation.
And that contradicts both the philosophers who have demonstrated many truths about God, and St Paul, who said in Romans 1 [20] that the hidden things of God can be clearly understood from the things that he has made.
Our answer then is that these words apply to God and Do we Have Words for God? creatures by analogy or proportion. There are two ways in which this happens with words.
It happens when two or more things are 'proportioned' to another one: the word healthy, for example, is applied both to medicines and to urine because both are related or 'proportioned' to the health of some organism, the one as its cause and the other as its symptom. It also happens when one thing is 'proportioned' directly to another: the word healthy applies to the medicine and to the organism itself, since the medicine is cause of health in the organism. And it is in this way that words are used analogically of God and creatures, not purely equivocally and not purely univocally; for our only words for God come from creatures, as we have said, and so whatever we say of God and creatures is said in virtue of the relationship creatures bear to God as to the source and cause in which all their creaturely perfections pre-exist in a more excellent way.
And this way of sharing a word lies somewhere between pure equivocation and straightforward univocalness. For analogical use doesn't presuppose one and the same sense as univocalness does, nor totally different senses as. equivocation does, but a word said in senses that differ by expressing different proportions to one and the same thing, as healthy said of urine means it is a symptom of the organism's health, and said of medicine means it is a cause of the same health.
Hence: to 1: In our use of words the equivocal presupposes the univocal, but in activity univocal agents necessarily presuppose a non-univocal agency. Non-univocal causes are general causes of entire species, in the way the sun has been the cause of the whole human race. But univocal causes can't be general causes of entire species—if that were so they would cause themselves as members of the species—but they are particular causes of this or that individual becoming a member of the species. So the general causes of entire species can't be univocal causes. Now the particular causes of individuals presuppose a general cause of the species. Such general causes, though not univocal, are not wholly equivocal
God in Himself either, since they are expressing themselves in their effects; but we can call them analogical causes, paralleling the way our use of univocal terms presupposes the one first nonunivocal but analogical term, namely, being. to 2: The likeness of creatures to God is imperfect, since they don't even represent him generically, as we have said. to 3: God is not a measure proportionate to what is measured, and so God and creatures don't have to be generically one.
As to the arguments against:
They prove that such words are not used univocally of God and creatures, but not that they are used equivocally.
[Article 6] The sixth question [If we say they are used analogically, do they apply primarily to God or to creatures?] we approach as follows:
It seems our words apply primarily to creatures, not God:
For [1] we talk about things as we know them: words express thoughts, as Aristotle'! says. But we know creatures before we know God. So the words we use apply first to creatures and then to God.
Moreover, [2] pseudo-Dionysius'? says that we name God from creatures. But names like lion and rock transferred to God from creatures apply first to the creatures and then to God. So all names used of God and creatures apply first to creatures and then to God.
Moreover, [3] words used in common of God and creatures apply to God as cause of creatures, says pseudo-Dionysius.
Now words said of something as cause of something else apply to it secondarily: healthy is first said of organisms, and only secondarily of the medicines that cause the organisms' health. So such words apply first to creatures, and then to God.
We read in Ephesians 3 [14-15]: I bow my knee to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom all fatherhood Do we Have Words for God? in heaven and earth is named; and why should other words used of God and creatures be any different? Such words then apply first to God, and then to creatures.
Whenever words are used analogically of several things, it is because they are all related to some one thing; so that one thing must help define the others. And because, as Aristotle!* says, the meanings of words are definitions, the word must apply first to what helps define the others and only after that to the others in the order of their approximation to the first thing: thus healthy as it applies to organisms helps define healthy as used of medicines (called healthy because they cause health in organisms) and of urine (called healthy because it is symptomatic of health in organisms). In the same way then all words used metaphorically of God apply first to creatures and then to God, since said of God they only express some likeness to creatures. Just as talking of a smiling meadow expresses a proportion: that flowers adorn a meadow like a smile on a man's face, so talking of God as a lion expresses this proportion: that God is powerful in his doings like lions in theirs. And so clearly we can't define what such words mean when used of God unless we refer to what they mean used of creatures.
And this would also be the case with words used of God non-metaphorically, if all they expressed was God's causality, as some have supposed. For then saying God is good would mean simply God causes the goodness of creatures, and then the goodness of creatures would be helping to define what was meant by the word good said of God. So good would apply first to creatures and then to God. But, as we have seen, such names don't simply express
God's causality but his substance, for calling God good or wise doesn't only mean that he causes wisdom or goodness, but that these perfections pre-exist in him in a more excellent way. So taking this into account we say rather that as expressing these perfections such words apply first to God and | then to creatures (since the perfections flow into creatures from God); but as applied by us we apply them first to God in Himself creatures, which we know first. And that is why the way in which they express the perfections is appropriate to creatures, as we already mentioned.
Hence: to 1: The objection here is talking of our application of the words. to 2: The case is different with words used metaphorically of God, as we have said. to 3: This objection would hold if such words expressed only
God's causality and not his substance, as healthy said of medicine...
[Article 12] The twelfth question [Can we make affirmative statements about God?] we approach as follows:
It seems we can't make affirmative statements about God:
For [1] pseudo-Dionysius'® says denials are true of God but affirmations disconnected.
Moreover, [2] Boethius'® says A simple form can't be a : subject. But as we have shown, God above all is simple form; so he can't be a subject. But whatever affirmative propositions are about is accounted its subject. So affirmative propositions can't be made about God.
Moreover, [3] all understanding of things in a way other than they are is false. Now God, as we have proved, is altogether free of compositeness. So since affirmative statements understand things as composite [connecting a subject with a predicate], it seems they can't truly be made about God.
Faith can't profess falsehood, yet it makes certain affirmations, as, for example, that God is three persons in one nature, and that he is almighty. So affirmative propositions can be made about God.
° We can make true affirmations about God.
Do we Have Words for God?
To make this clear note that in every true affirmative statement subject and predicate signify under different aspects what is in some way identical: and this whether the predicate expresses some incidental property of the subject or what it substantially is. For clearly [if we say The man is a white man,] man and white man refer to one subject under different aspects, the notion of man and the notion of white man being different. And similarly if I say bumans are animals it is precisely whatever is human that is truly animal—one and the same subject is called an animal because of its sense-nature and human because of its reasoning nature. So here too predicate and subject refer to one subject under different aspects. And this happens in a way even in propositions of identity, for there the mind treats the subjectterm as though it referred to some subject the form of which is expressed in the predicate-term, in accordance with the saying: predicates must be interpreted as forms and subjects as matter, To the different aspects then there corresponds the plurality of subject and predicate, and the mind expresses the underlying identity by connecting the two in one proposition. Now
God, altogether one and simple in himself, is nevertheless known to us by way of many different conceptions, since we can't see him as he is in himself. But all of these different conceptions we have of him correspond, as we know, to one and the same simple thing. So we represent this conceptual plurality by the plurality of subject and predicate, and God's unity by the mental connecting of subject and predicate.
Hence: to 1: Pseudo-Dionysius says affirmations about God are dis- * connected (or unfitting, as another translation has it) because no word used of God expresses him in an appropriate way, as we have said. to 2: Our minds can't comprehend the way subsistent simple forms exist in themselves, but understands them as though they were composite things, subjects existing under a form.
And so simple forms are understood as subjects, and then something is attributed to them.
God in Himself to 3: This proposition: All understanding of things in a way other than they are is false, is ambiguous, because the words in a way other than can describe the understanding in relation to the thing understood or in relation to the mind understanding. In relation to the thing understood the proposition says that any understanding of things which understands them to exist in a way other than they do is false; which is true but irrelevant, since our mind when it composes propositions about God doesn't assert that he is composite but that he is simple. But if the proposition is interpreted in relation to the mind understanding then it is false. For our way of understanding things is clearly different from the way things exist: our mind understands material things below its own level immaterially, not in the sense of thinking them immaterial, but in the sense that thinking them is an immaterial act; and in a similar way it understands simple things above its own level in the way natural to it, compositely, but not in the sense of thinking them composite. So our minds aren't false because their statements about God are composite.
Passage 24 How we Know One Simple God by Many Concepts Source: Thomas's commentary on book of Peter Lombard's Sentences, Distinction 2, 1.3. Text from Parma edn., vol. vi (1856)
(reprinted in American edn., vol. vi, New York, 1948).
Date: 1253-5, Paris, Thomas's first public theology lectures as bachelor, aged 28-9.
Type ofpassage and how to read: The commentary on the Sentences is of the same type as the commentary on Boethius' De Trinitate, but with the more complex division into queries described in the preliminary note to Passage 1 on How to read, and in the Introduction. The full structure can be seen in Passage 34. But our present passage is a single disputed question extracted from the commentary.
It is just possible that it was a later insertion by Thomas into his original commentary.
One Simple God Known by Many Concepts [Book 1, Distinction 2, Question 1] [Article 3]: The third question [Is the difference in meaning between God's attributes something that exists in God or only in our minds?] we approach as follows:
It seems that the difference in meaning doesn't exist in God, but only in the mind apprehending the meanings:
For [1] pseudo-Dionysius' says:
You will find that the utterances of all God's holy teachers articulate the names of God, in praise and revelation, in accordance with blessed outpourings of his divinity. And what he means is that the words the saints use in praise of God differ according to different outward manifestations of God that issue from his godhead. The difference then is not on God's side but on the side of these different effects by which our mind comes to know and name God in different ways.
Moreover, [2] pseudo-Dionysius? says: if someone sees God and understands what he.sees, it is not God he sees but something belonging to God. If then we understand what our different names for God mean, those meanings must correspond not to anything in God but to the things that belong to him, namely, creatures.
Moreover, [3] Ibn Rushd® says this about such names: the multiplicity they suggest exists in God only as he exists in our mind and not at all in fact. So it seems the multiplicity is purely in our minds.
Moreover, [4] whatever exists in God is God. So if what these different attributes mean exist in God they are God.
Now God is a single non-composite unity. So these meanings, if they exist in God, will not differ.
Moreover, [5] whatever is in every way one in itself cannot be the root of any multiplicity within itself. But God's substance is supremely one and therefore in every way one. So it cannot be the root of any multiplicity within itself. The multiplicity of meaning then isn't rooted in God's substance but purely in our minds.
God in Himself Moreover, [6] John Damascene* says that everything is one in God, save the non-begottenness [of the Father], the begottenness [of the Son], and the procession [of the Holy
Spirit]. So if attributes like wisdom and goodness exist in God they are all one in him. So the multiplicity of meanings expressed by these words exists not in God but only in our minds.
[1] Pseudo-Dionysius' says that God is perfect and allembracing, and Aristotle® and Ibn Rushd' say the same: God is called perfect because within him exist all the perfections of every class of thing. But the perfection God has is real, not purely in our minds. So the attributes that display this perfection are not purely in our minds, but there in the thing which is God...
Moreover, [3] we don't equivocate when we call both God and creatures wise. If we did, created wisdom wouldn't give us any clue to uncreated wisdom. And the same has to be said of power and goodness and so on. But attributes are equivocally ascribed to things if what they mean in each is quite different...So what wisdom means in God and in creatures must be one and the same: not univocally one but analogically; and the same applies to what other attributes mean. Now what wisdom means when ascribed to creatures differs from what goodness means and what power means.
So the meanings must be different as ascribed to God too...
Though wisdom, goodness, and the like differ in meaning, they name one and the same thing in God; and the differences in meaning are not just thought up by our minds: they respond to something real in God himself. To make this clear, and thoroughly open up the whole matter—since the understanding of practically everything said in this book depends on it—we must look into four points:
Firstly, when we say attributes differ in meaning, what do we mean by meaning?
One Simple God Known by Many Concepts Secondly, what does it mean to say a meaning exists or does not exist in a thing?
Thirdly, do the different meanings of God's attributes exist in God or not?
Fourthly, does the multiplicity of meaning arise from our own minds or iri some way from God himself?
As to the first point [the meaning of meaning], note that meaning here means what the mind takes the word to express; and for definable things that is the definition of the thing named, as Aristotle® said: the meaning expressed by a word is a definition. But some things have meaning in this sense though they are indefinable; like quantity and quality and other things which can't be defined since they constitute the most general categories of being that there are; and yet quality has a meaning expressed by the word quality, something that makes quality quality. So it is not relevant whether what has meaning can be defined or not. Clearly then the meaning of wisdom as said of God is what that word is conceived to express, even though God's wisdom itself can't be defined. Not that the word meaning expresses what is conceived, for that is expressed by the word wisdom or some other word applicable to things; the word meaning expresses the notion of conception, as second-level words like definition do.
And this explains the second point: how meanings can be said to be realized in things. For we don't mean that this very notion expressed by the word meaning is realized in things; or even that the conception to which the notion attaches is realized in something outside the mind, since it is precisely something that has mind as its subject; but the meaning is said to be realized in something outside the mind inasmuch as the mind's conception is matched by something there in the way expressions are matched by what they express. So note that the mind's conception can relate to a thing outside the mind in three different ways:
Sometimes what the mind conceives is a likeness of something existing outside the mind, as when we conceive what God in Himself the word human expresses; and such conceptions have an immediate basis in reality, inasmuch as the thing itself conforms to what we understand, and so makes our understanding true and the word expressing that understanding properly applicable to a thing.
Sometimes, however, what the word expresses is not a likeness of anything outside the mind, but something arising from the way we understand what exists outside the mind, a notion framed by the mind. Thus what is expressed by the word genus isn't a likeness of anything existing outside the mind, but a notion the mind attaches to animal [for example] when it understands there to be many species of animal. And though the immediate basis of such an idea is not in reality but in the mind, nevertheless the more remote basis is reality itself, so that the mind framing such ideas is not framing a fiction. And this is true of every other idea consequent upon our way of understanding things: for example, the abstract entities studied in mathematics and the like.
But sometimes what the word expresses has no basis in reality either immediate or remote, as the conception of a chimera. This is neither a likeness of anything outside the mind, nor something consequent on the way our minds understand something in nature; and so such a conception is fictitious.
So this explains our second point: for a meaning is said to be realized in something inasmuch as what the word expresses, and which we call its meaning, is realized in something; and this is properly the case when what the mind conceives is a likeness of that something.
As to the third point: whether the meanings of God's attributes are realized in God. Note that there are two opinions about this:
Some people like Ibn Sina? and Moses Maimonides!® say that God's very substance is existence subsistent and that in God nothing else exists but existence: and so they say that he is existence without nature, and that whatever else we say about God is true of him either because of what it denies of him or because of his causal activity. Denial works in two
One Simple God Known by Many Concepts ways: sometimes we are removing an opposed lack or defect, as saying God is wise removes from him lack of wisdom; sometimes we assert some consequence of a denial, as calling
God one, because it follows from his being undivided, or intelligent, because it follows from his being immaterial.
According to them then all these words are framed in order to remove something from God rather than to attribute something to him. Saying something of him as cause also works in two ways: sometimes it is something he produces in creatures, as calling God good, because he pours goodness into creatures, and so on; and sometimes because he behaves like a creature, as when he is said to be willing or holy, because he does things in the way a willing and holy creature might, and angry, because he behaves like an angry creature.
And according to this opinion everything we say of God and creatures is said equivocally, and calling creatures good or wise or the like expresses no likeness of creatures to their creator. Moses Maimonides says this explicitly. On this view what words for God's attributes are conceived to express is not to be referred to God as though some likeness of it existed in God. And so it follows that the meanings of such attributes are not realized in God in the sense of having any immediate basis in God; but they have a remote basis in him in the way that we maintain historically grounded relationships attributed to God do: for such relationships don't exist really in God but are what we called notions, consequent upon the way we understand him. On this view then the meanings of such attributes exist only in the mind and not in the reality of God himself; and the mind frames such attributes from a consideration of creatures by denial or by causal attribution, as has been said.
But other people like pseudo-Dionysius'? and Anselm'? say that whatever perfection exists in creatures eminently pre-exists in God, and that this eminence has three features: universality, collecting together in a unity all the perfections we find dispersed in creatures; fullness, because wisdom and all the other attributes are found here without any of the defects they suffer from in creatures; and unity, because attributes which differ in creatures are all here possessed,
God in Himself caused, known, and produced in an analogic likeness of itself by what is one and the same. On this view then what our mind conceives the names of the attributes to mean are true likenesses of the reality which God is, although imperfect and incomplete, as is the case with anything else that is like to God. So that such meanings don't exist only in the mind but have an immediate basis in the reality which God is, and whatever is implied by having wisdom as such can be truly and properly said of God.
These two views, though superficially different, are not opposed to one another, if one interprets what words say in the context of the reason for saying them. For the first group of people considered the actual created things upon which the attribute-words had been imposed: the word wisdom upon a certain quality, the word nature upon something which didn't subsist; and these things are far from God. So they said that God is existence without nature, and that wisdom as such does not exist in him. But the other people considered the modes of perfection from which those words arose, and because God in his one simple existence is perfect according to all the modes these words describe, they therefore said that these words positively applied to God. And so it is clear that neither view contradicts what the other wants to say, since the first people don't say God is lacking in any mode of perfection, and the second don't say that there are in God any qualities or non-subsistent things.
So this explains our third point: that the meanings of God's attributes are truly realized in God; for the meaning of a word is more truly that from which it arose, than it is that upon which it was imposed.
As to the fourth point: does the multiplicity of meaning arise only from our own minds or in some way from the thing itself [namely, God]? Note that the multiplicity of meaning arises from the fact that the reality which is God is above our minds. For our minds can't take in in one conception different modes of perfection: partly because they take in their knowledge from creatures in which' the different modes of perfection follow from different forms, and partly because what is
One Simple God Known by Many Concepts one simple thing in God becomes multiplied in our minds even when received immediately from God, just as the issuing of his goodness is multiplied in other creatures. So, since God contains in one and the same reality every mode of perfection, our minds cannot take in totally his perfection in one conception and so cannot give him a name; for that reason we have to have different conceptions of him, with different meanings, and must adopt different words to express these meanings. Such words, then, are not synonymous, for they express different meanings. If, however, our mind could see God in himself then it could give him one name, and since that will happen in heaven Zechariah 14 [9] tells us that in that day there will be one lord with one name. That one name, however, will not express goodness alone, or wisdom alone, or anything similar, but will include everything these words express. Nevertheless, if a mind seeing
God in his substance names what it sees by way of some conception it has of him, it would still have to give him many names, because the total perfection of God's substance cannot be represented in the conception of a created mind.
So it would form different conceptions corresponding to the one thing seen and give it different names, in the same way that Chrysostom?' says angels praise God, some as majesty, some as goodness, and so on for the others, indicating that they don't see him with a vision that comprehends him; for the one and only conception that perfectly represents him is the uncreated Word.
So this explains how our multiplicity of words for God arises from the fact that God himself is greater than our mind; and this depends partly on his fullness of perfection, and partly on our minds' inability to comprehend that.
Clearly, then, the multiplicity of meaning derives not only from our minds but also from God himself, inasmuch as his perfection is above every conception of our minds. So there corresponds to this multiplicity of meaning something in the reality that is God: not indeed a multiplicity in him but a fullness of perfection which allows all of these conceptions to be applied to him.
So people who say that this multiplicity derives only from God in Himself our minds, or from God's effects, say something true in one sense and false in another. For if they mean to indicate the cause of the multiplicity then there is a sense in which it is true to say that the cause is our minds and God's effects, inasmuch as our minds cannot conceive God's perfection in one conception but only in many, one reason for which is that it is accustomed to created things. But if they mean to indicate the way in which we must attribute the meanings to God, then they speak falsely, for he is not good because he makes or resembles things that are good, but he makes good things because he is good, and they, in sharing that goodness, resemble him. And even if he had never madea creature and never would make one, he in himself would have been such that the conceptions our minds apply to him now would have truly applied to him then.
So this explains our fourth point: that the multiplicity of these words for God derives not only from our mind framing different conceptions of God with different meanings, as we have said earlier, but from God himself, in whom something corresponds to all these conceptions, namely, his own full and all-embracing perfection. For it is this perfection which allows every word expressing one of these conceptions to be truly and properly asserted of God without such assertion attributing any real diversity or multiplicity to God is because of having these attributes.
Having looked into these four points, then, the objections can be easily answered.
Hence: to 1: Pseudo-Dionysius wants to say that God is named, revealed, and praised according to various goodnesses that he has poured out on creatures. But he is not saying that the meanings of these goodnesses are truly ascribed to him because he has poured them out on creatures, but rather the reverse, as we have already said. For although the structure of effects can reveal the structure of their cause, they are not what gives the cause that structure, but rather the reverse. to 2: Our mind doesn't understand what it conceives of goodness and wisdom to exist in God in the way it conceives
One Simple God Known by Many Concepts them, since this would be to comprehend his wisdom and goodness. But it understands his goodness, to which what our mind conceives is somewhat alike, to be far above what it conceives of it. So we don't see God as he is in himself through such conceptions, but he is understood as beyond understanding. And that is what pseudo-Dionysius wants to say in this quotation. to 3: This multiplicity of attributes is not at all to be found in God as if he himself in reality was multiple; nevertheless, he in his own simple perfection matches the multiplicity of these attributes, so that they can be truly said of him. And this is what Ibn Rushd meant. to 4: Just as the conceived meaning of human being isn't a thing existing in human beings, but exists in the mind as its subject and in human beings as providing the basis of its truth; so the meaning of God's goodness exists in the mind as in its subject, and in God as in something corresponding by a certain likeness to this meaning, making it true. Clearly then this objection has misunderstood what we are saying. to 5: Saying A is based on or rooted in B is a metaphor for saying B gives A its firmness. Now meanings in our mind have two sorts of firmness: the firmness of existing in the mind, in the way all incidental forms exist in a subject; and the firmness of their truth, which comes to them from the thing to which they conform; for what we say and think gets its truth or falsity from whether things are so or not. The meanings of the attributes then are based on or rooted in mind as regards the firmness of their existence, since as we have said they exist in the mind as subject, but rooted in God's nature as regards the firmness of their truth; and that without in any way offending against God's simpleness. to 6:
Everything is really one in God, save the nonbegottenness, the begottenness, and the procession which constitute the persons of God as really distinct. But that doesn't mean that everything else we say of God has one and the same meaning. And we must understand Boethius'!* remark that relationship alone is multiple in the Trinity in the same way: namely, in reality multiple. For a thing is in God in Himself reality one yet in meaning multiple whenever one thing corresponds truly to many conceptions and words; as a single real [geometrical] point may truly correspond truly to several conceptions we frame of it: conceived of in itself, conceived of as a [circle's] centre, conceived of as the end ofa line.
All these conceptions are in the mind as subject, yet in the point itself as giving a basis to the truth of the conceptions.
Admittedly, the example is not altogether suitable, but then no example is when discussing God.
Passage 25 How God Knows Many Things by One Simple Idea Source: Summa contra Gentiles, 1.50, 53. Text from Summa contra Gentiles (Opera Omnia, Leonine edn., vol. xiii).
Date: 1259, first stay in Paris, aged 34.
Notes on translation: In the extract from Chapter 53, 'representation' translates species intelligibilis, 'likeness' similitudo, 'conception' intentio, 'idea' ratio.
[Chapter 50] ... The distinctions between things can't result from chance since they are stably ordered; so they must result from some causal tendency. But not that of a cause acting by necessity of its nature, for nature is determined to one course, and so nothing that acts by necessity of its nature can intend distinction of things as such. So their distinction must result from the intention of a knowing cause; the consideration of distinction seems to be intellect's prerogative, and Anaxagoras attributed distinction to intellect. But the universal distinction of things can't result from some secondary cause's intention, since all such causes are themselves part of the universe of distinct causes. So there must exist a first cause— as such distinguished from all others—intending the distinction of all things. God then knows everything distinctly.
Again, God knows everything he knows most perfectly, for, as we have already said, all perfections exist in him as in God Knows Many Things by One Simple Idea a thing perfect without complexity. But things known in general are not perfectly known, for then what is most important in a thing is ignored, namely, those ultimate perfections that perfect it in an existence peculiarly its own; so knowing in general is knowing things potentially rather than actually. If God then in knowing his own substance knows everything in general, he must also have particular proper knowledge of each thing...
(Chapter 53] The question raised [How can God understand more than one thing?] is easily answered by close examination of how things understood exist in understanding. We shall start with human understanding, and from there try, as far as that is possible, to come to know God's understanding. So, as a first step, note that nothing external that we understand exists in our understanding in its own proper nature, but its representation exists in our understanding and actualizes understanding so that, existing actually by that representation as by its own form, it understands the thing itself. But note that the act of understanding is not like an action that passes over into what is understood, as heating passes over into what is heated. The action of understanding stays in the person understanding, but relates to the thing understood, because the representation just mentioned, the form from which our activity of understanding starts, is a likeness of the thing.
Further, note that understanding, formed by the representation of the thing, forms within itself, in the act of understanding, a certain conception of the understood thing, and it is that idea of the thing which we express in its definition. Our understanding needs such a conception in order to be able to understand things equally, present or absent, and to this extent understanding resembles imagination. But understanding goes further, for it also understands things in abstraction from those material conditions without which they cannot exist in nature; and this is only possible because understanding forms such a conception for itself.
This understood conception in which the act of understanding ends up, so to speak, must be distinguished from the objectGod in Himself representation which is actualizing understanding and must therefore be thought of as beginning the act of understanding; though the conception, like the representation, is a likeness of the thing understood. For since the object-representation forming the understanding and beginning its act of understanding is a likeness of an external thing, understanding forms a conception which is also like that thing: what things do reflects what they are. And because the understood conception is like some external thing, understanding, in forming the conception, understands that thing.
Now, as we showed earlier, God's understanding understands by no other representation than his own substance; nevertheless, that substance is a likeness of all things. Consequently, the conception in God's understanding when he understands himself—his Word—is not only a likeness of the very God he is understanding but also of all those things of which God's substance is a likeness. And so it is that by one object-representation—God's substance—and by one understood conception—God's Word—God can understand many things.
Passage 26 God's Power Source: Thomas's public disputations on the Power of God, 1.3, 7.
Text from Quaestiones Disputatae de Potentia (Marietti edn., Turin, 1953), with corrections from the Leonine text in preparation.
Date: 1265-7, Italy, aged 40.
Type of passage and how to read: Disputed question (see Introduction, where the unique structure of Article 7 below is also referred to).
Notes on translation: The word potentia is here translated 'power', but also, both here and elsewhere, 'ability'. It is an abstract noun from the verb posse 'to be able'. Possibile, translated 'possible', derives from the same root, and means, literally, 'able to be able'.
{Question 1] The subject for debate is God's power in general.
..+ [Article 3] And in the third place we are asked: Can God do what nature can't?
For [1] there is a gloss on Romans 11 [24] which says that God, as author of nature, can't go against nature. But whatever nature can't do is against nature. So God can't do it either.
Moreover, [2] whatever in nature is necessary can be proved, and whatever in nature is impossible can be disproved. Now all conclusions of proofs involve their premisses, and among those premisses there is always the axiom that things cannot be simultaneously asserted and denied. So this premiss is involved in anything in nature impossible. Since, however, as the respondent said, God cannot make anything to be simultaneously and truly asserted and denied, he can't do anything impossible in nature...
Moreover, [9] what is essentially impossible is more impossible than what is incidentally impossible. But God can't do what is incidentally impossible, for example, cause the past not to have been. For, as Jerome! says, whatever God can do he can't make loss of virginity not to have happened; and Augustine," and Aristotle? say the same. So God cannot do what is naturally impossible in itself.
[1] [The angel in] Luke 1 [1] says: No word is impossible for God.
Moreover, [2] power is limited if it can do this but not that.
So if God can do what is possible in nature but not what is impossible, or do these but not those impossible things, it seems his power is limited, which contradicts what we have already proved.
Moreover, [3] nothing real can stand in the way of what nothing real limits. But nothing real limits God's power. So nothing can stand in his way. So neither the truth of the principle that nothing can be simultaneously asserted and denied, nor any similar thing, can stand in the way of God's action...
God in Himself Moreover, [8] to suppose that we could remove from a defined thing something belonging to its definition would imply that contraries could be true together: that a human being could be non-reasoning, for example. Now to be bounded by two points belongs in the definition of a straight line, so that if it were removed from some straight line, contraries would be true together. But God did this when he entered in on his disciples, the doors being closed; for then two bodies occupied the same place so that two lines used the same two points as boundaries, and they didn't each have two. God then can make assertions and denials true simultaneously and as « result can do every impossibility.
Aristotle* says the words possible and impossible are used in three different senses: firstly, relative to some ability to act or be acted on (as when we say our human locomotive powers make it possible for us to walk but impossible for us to fly); secondly, in an absolute sense, not relative to any ability (as when possible means anything the existence of which is not impossible, and impossible anything the non-existence of which is necessary); and thirdly, in mathematics the word possible is used relative to the sort of potentiality exemplified in geometry, wherea line is called potentially commensurable because its square is commensurable. This latter sense we shall leave aside, considering the two others.
Note then that when we say something is impossible in itself, ie. not relative to any ability, we appeal to some incompatibility in terms, based on some opposition between the terms, all opposition being ultimately one of assertion versus denial, as Aristotle' proves. So everything impossible in this sense involves simultaneous assertion and denial.
Clearly this can't be the subject of any agent's action. For agents, to have power, must actually exist, and what they do will reflect what they are, so that the end-product of every agent's action is always existence of some sort. For even when action ends in loss of existence, as in decomposition, this is because something else's existence is incompatible with that existence. Hot and cold are incompatible, for | God's Power instance, so that heat, which principally intends to make things hot, incidentally destroys cold. What is simultaneously asserted and denied, however, can neither exist nor not exist—since existing excludes not existing and not existing existing—so that it can't be the end-product of any agent's action, either as principally intended or as a consequence.
As to the use of impossible relative to some ability, we can distinguish a first use referring to some intrinsic deficiency of the ability by which it falls short of that effect (for example, when an agent in nature can't transform certain material), anda second use referring to something external that prevents or stands in the way of the ability.
Altogether then there are three ways in which we say something can't be done: firstly, because of agent inability to transform material or do whatever else is needed; secondly, because of something resisting or standing in the way; thirdly, because the thing that we say can't be done can't be the end-product of any action.
Now things in nature impossible in the first two ways God can do, because his ability is unlimited, is subject to no deficiency, can transform any material at will, and cannot be resisted. But things impossible in the third way God cannot do, because, as the supremely actual source of being, the endproducts of his action can only be existence as principally intended and non-existence as a consequence. So he can't make an assertion and its denial simultaneously true, nor anything that would involve such impossibility. And he is said not to be able to do this, not because of some lack of ability in him, but because of some lack of possibility in what is to be done; which is why some say that God has the power to do it but it can't be done.
Hence: to 1: Augustine's words quoted in this gloss don't mean that God can't do other than nature does, since he often goes against the ordinary run of nature, but that, since he creates and directs nature, anything he does in nature is to be counted natural to things and not as going against nature.
For this is the way movements of lower-order things by God in Himself higher-order things in nature are judged natural, though they don't stem from the lower-order things' own nature. Thus, tidal movements caused by the moon in the sea are natural, as Ibn Rushd* points out, even though water's own natural movement is downwards. And in this sense what God does in any creature is so-to-speak natural to it, and we can distinguish a double potentiality in creatures: their natural potentiality to their own actions and movements, and their potentiality to obey whatever they acquire from God. to 2: Anything impossible, inasmuch as it is impossible, implies some simultaneous assertion and denial. But things like the blind regaining sight and so on, which are impossible because of some deficiency in the powers of nature, aren't impossible in themselves, and so don't in themselves imply that sort of impossibility, but only relative to the natural powers to which they are impossible: as if we said 'nature being able to make the blind see' implies this impossibility, because it attributes to a power something beyond its natural limits... to 9: For Socrates not to have run when he has run is called incidentally impossible, because Socrates running or not running is in itself something that could or could not be so, but something that is made impossible by the extra implication that the past might not have been; so it is called impossible incidentally, that is, by the incidence of something extra. This extra is impossible in itself, and plainly involves a contradiction: for saying that the past has not been is to say both that it was and wasn't, and those are contradictories.
As to the arguments against: to 1: Words are not only what mouths utter but what minds conceive, and mind, as Aristotle" proves, can't conceive of assertion and denial being true simultaneously or of anything that implies that (for, as Aristotle says, since contrary opinions are of contraries,® it would mean the same person simultaneously having contrary opinions). So saying God can't do that sort of impossible doesn't contradict what the angel says. to 2: The reason God's power can't do what is impossible in the sense we are discussing is because it lacks possibility; so we don't say God's power is limited by not being able to do it. to 3: As we have said, saying God can't do this doesn't mean something stands in his way, but that this cannot be the end-product of any active power's actions... to 8: When Christ entered through closed doors and two bodies occupied the same place nothing contrary to geometrical principles occurred: for there were two lines, not one, and where they ended the two lines ended at two points in two different bodies. For though mathematically conceived lines can only be distinguished by being positioned differently, so that one can't understand two such lines coinciding, two lines in nature can be distinguished by their subjects, so that when two bodies coincide, two lines will also coincide and two points and two surfaces...
[Article 7] And in the seventh place we ask: [Query 1] Why is God called omnipotent?
And it seems [Definition 1] that he is called omnipotent because he can do absolutely everything:
For [1] God is called omniscient in the same way as he's called omnipotent. But he's called omniscient because he knows absolutely everything; so he must be called omnipotent because he can do absolutely everything.
Moreover, [2] if he's not called omnipotent because he can do absolutely everything, then the implied quantification must be not absolute but accommodated, not universal but restricted in some way. So God's omnipotence will not be unlimited but have some sort of limit.
God, as we have said, can't make assertions and denials simultaneously true, nor can he sin or die. But these would be included in quantification taken absolutely. So it shouldn't be taken absolutely, and so God isn't called omnipotent because he can do absolutely everything.
God in Himself Again, it seems [Definition 2] that he is called omnipotent because he can do everything he wants:
For Augustine? says For there is no other reason to call him truly omnipotent except that he can do whatever he wills.
[1] Those in bliss can do whatever they want, for otherwise their wills wouldn't be fulfilled. But they're not called omnipotent. So it's not enough for God to be omnipotent that he can do whatever he wants.
Moreover, [2] the wise don't will the impossible, so that no one wise wills what he can't do. Yet the wise are not all omnipotent. The same conclusion then.
Again, it seems [Definition 3] that he is called omnipotent because he can do everything possible:
For he is called omniscient because he knows everything knowable, and so by the same token should be called omnipotent because he can do everything possible.
{1} If he is called omnipotent because he can do everything possible, either that means everything possible to him, or everything possible in nature.
If everything possible in nature, then his omnipotence doesn't transcend nature's power, which is absurd. If everything possible to him, then by the same token we are all omnipotent since we can all do what's possible to us.
Moreover, [2] the explanation would contain a rather disagreeable circularity.
Again we ask: [Query 2] Why, if God is called omnipotent and omniscient, is he not called omnivolent?
In reply [to Query 1]:
Some of those wanting to define omnipotence mentioned things belonging not to omnipatence itself but to its cause, or to power's perfection, or ways of possessing power. For some said God is omnipotent because he has unlimited God's Power power, which doesn't define omnipotence but says what causes it, just as soul doesn't define human beings but causes their existence. Others said he is omnipotent because he can't suffer or lack anything nor can others act on him: all things belonging to the perfection of his power. Still others said he is called omnipotent because he can do whatever he wills, and has that from himself and through himself, which all belongs to his way of possessing power. And all these definitions are insufficient because they omit any relationship to the objects implied by omnipotence. So we must adopt one of the three ways touched on in the objections, which express its relationship to objects.
We say then, as we have above, that God's power as such extends to all objects that don't imply a contradiction.
Things involving deficiencies or bodily changes are irrelevant, since ability to do such things is non-ability in God. But things which imply contradiction God can't do because they are impossible in themselves. So we conclude that God's power extends to anything possible in itself and not implying contradiction. Clearly then God is called omnipotent because he can do everything possible in itself.
Hence: to 1: God is called omniscient because he knows everything knowable; false things not knowable he does not know. And things impossible in themselves relate to power as false things to knowledge. to 2: This would be a valid argument if the quantification was less extensive than the realm of possibility, so that it didn't extend to everything possible.
As regards the second definition of omnipotence:
To be able to do everything one wants is not enough to define omnipotence, but it is a good enough sign of omnipotence, and Augustine must be so understood.
As regards the third definition of omnipotence:
God is called omnipotent because he can do everything absolutely possible, so objection [1] goes astray in talking of what is possible to God or to nature.
God in Himself In reply to Query 2 [Why isn't God called omnivolent?]:
The power and knowledge of voluntary agents is determined to action by will, as Aristotle! says, so that God's knowledge and power, as if non-determined, are declared universal by calling him omniscient or omnipotent. But will determines and so can't be of everything but only of the things to which it determines power and knowledge; so God can't be called omnivolent.