Chapter 4. God as Eternal and Simple (SCG 1,14–27)
CHAPTER 4. GOD AS ETERNAL AND SIMPLE (SCG 1,14–27)
1. ND, 1, 96 [1] (though I translate Aquinas’s word conditio as “nature” rather than “properties”).
2. ND, 1, 96 [2].
3. ND, 1, 98 [3].
4. ND, 1, 98 [4]. By “being everlastingly” Aquinas does not mean “existing in time without beginning to exist or ceasing to exist.” He means existing eternally, without beginning or end.
5. This argument bears a resemblance to the third way of arguing for God’s existence provided by Aquinas in Summa Theologiae 1a,2,3.
6. Once again, Aquinas is not offering a causal argument reaching into the past for a chronologically first cause. Toward the end of SCG 1,15 he clearly accepts the possibility of time and motion lacking a beginning. But he does add that if motion had a beginning, then there will have been a moving cause having no beginning.
7. ND, 1, 99 [5].
8. ND, 1, 99 [5].
9. ND, 1, 100 [3].
10. Aquinas acknowledges the existence of material things that do not pass away. He takes the heavenly bodies to be such things. But for present purposes I do not need to elaborate on that fact. For a detailed analysis of Aquinas on the material world, see Jeffrey E. Brower, Aquinas’s Ontology of the Material World: Change, Hylomorphism, and Material Objects (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).
11. For some discussion of matter by Aquinas, see the early sections of his De Principiis Naturae. Indeed, this text as a whole throws light on a number of terms that Aquinas employs in the SCG. For an English translation of the whole of De Principiis Naturae, see Thomas Aquinas: Selected Philosophical Writings, translated by Timothy McDermott (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 67–80. Notice also that in the SCG Aquinas distinguishes between the question “Is there matter in God?” and “Is God a body?” He does not try to deal with the second question here until SCG 1,20. Also note that Aquinas has a sense of “matter” in terms of which it makes sense to say that matter is measurable in terms of dimensions, as when a tailor measures people’s waists so as to make up pants that will fit them. But this sense of “matter” is not, I think, at work in SCG 1,17. In that chapter, the key idea is “Whatever matter is, it is in potency” (ND, 1, 101 [2]).
12. ND, 1, 103 [2].
13. ND, 1, 105.
14. “Quod igitur est in fine nobilitatis omnium entium, oportet esse in fine simplicitatis.” See ND, 1, 104 [6].
15. Indeed, the Summa Theologiae discussion of God’s simplicity is generally more clearly organized and more streamlined than is the discussion of God’s simplicity in the SCG, though the key moves in each of them are the same.
16. Note, however, that it has been very much in favor with various influential Christian authors. It can, for example, be found in the writings of St. Augustine of Hippo and St. Anselm of Canterbury. That God is simple was formally ratified by the Fourth Lateran Council and the First Vatican Council. For the conciliar texts, see Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, edited by Norman P. Tanner (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990), I:230 and II:805.
17. I am now focusing on five lines of criticism. Others have been offered that I have to pass over in silence for reasons of space. Still, the criticisms I focus on are fairly standard ones. For detailed discussion of objections to Aquinas on simplicity, see Peter Weigel, Aquinas on Simplicity (Peter Lang: Bern, 2008) and James E. Dolezal, God without Parts: Divine Simplicity and the Metaphysics of God’s Absoluteness (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2011).
18. Alvin Plantinga, Does God Have a Nature? (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1980), 47.
19. See Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, edited by Tom L. Beauchamp (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), 123.
20. Genesis 3:8.
21. Exodus 33:11.
22. See Genesis 3:8; Numbers 11:1; 1 Samuel 5:11; 2 Kings 19:16; Isaiah 52:10.
23. See Genesis 8:21; Psalm 2:4; Psalm 37:13; Isaiah 7:18.
24. See Genesis 6:6; Deuteronomy 16:22; Isaiah 61:8; Isaiah 62:5.
25. See Matthew 6:26, Matthew 18:12–14, Luke 6:35–36, Luke 12:32, John 16:27, Romans 8:15–16, and 1 John 3:1.
26. Exodus 33:20.
27. Isaiah 40:25–28.
28. For a discussion of anthropomorphic imagery in the Bible, see chapter 10 of G. B. Caird, The Language and Imagery of the Bible (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1980).
29. See Richard Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism, rev. ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 1: “By a theist, I understand a man who believes that there is a God. By a ‘God’ he understands something like a ‘person without a body (i.e. a spirit) who is eternal, free, able to do anything, knows everything, is perfectly good, is the proper object of human worship and obedience, the creator and sustainer of the universe.’ Christians, Jews, and Muslims are all in the above sense theists.” Again, see the quotation from Alvin Plantinga that I provide above.
30. See Philip Dixon, Nice and Hot Disputes: The Doctrine of the Trinity in the Seventeenth Century (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2003).
31. See SCG 1,35. Also see Summa Theologiae 1a,13,4.
32. See Summa Theologiae 1a,6 and 25.
33. See C. J. F. Williams, What Is Existence? (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981). Also see C. J. F. Williams, “Being,” in A Companion to the Philosophy of Religion, edited by Philip L. Quinn and Charles Talliaferro (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997). Again, see C. J. F. Williams, Being, Identity, and Truth (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992).
34. For Frege on existence, see The Foundations of Arithmetic, translated by J. L. Austin (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980), 58 and following.
35. See Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, translated by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), A592–602.
36. C. J. F. Williams, “Being.”
37. Williams develops this argument in What Is Existence? and Being, Identity, and Truth.
38. What Is Existence?, 79 and following.
39. For a defense of this conclusion, see, for example, Colin McGinn, Logical Properties (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), chapter 2.
40. Obviously, some people have problems urinating and breathing. But not by nature. Problems with urination and breathing arise as what humans are by nature is messed around with in some way. That is why the word “problem” is appropriate in this context.
41. Some would say that everything that Aquinas calls a creature actually has to exist. See Bede Rundle, Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004). In reply, Aquinas would appeal to his claim that we can distinguish between an individual’s essence and its existence so as to conclude that what something is does not guarantee that it is.
42. See Somme Contre les Gentils, bk. 1, edited by Cyrille Michon (Paris: Flammarion, 2000), 104. I find the expression “negative attributes” to be somewhat mystifying since I take an attribute to be something that an individual positively has and not something that it lacks or is somehow negative while also being an attribute. And I suspect that Aquinas would agree with me here given what he says in general about substances and accidents. The point to stress, however, is that in SCG 1,18–27 Aquinas is repeatedly saying that God is not this and not that.