Chapter 5. Talking about God (SCG 1,28–36)
CHAPTER 5. TALKING ABOUT GOD (SCG 1,28–36)
1. ND, 1, 150 [1].
2. ND, 1, 138 [2].
3. Note that one can say that something is literally F without being committed to the view that it is, therefore, literally like some other thing that can be said to be literally F. That X and Y are both F does not entail the conclusion that they are literally like each other. A large flea and a large elephant are both literally large, but very unlike each other. I refer to this example below when following out what Aquinas has to say on “God is good.”
4. In SCG 1,22 and in Summa Theologiae 1a,13,11 Aquinas says that “Qui est” (“He Who Is”) is the appropriate name for God. He does so while appealing to Exodus 3:13, in which God, in the Latin version of the Bible that Aquinas was using (the Vulgate), tells Moses to say that his true name is Qui est. And, Qui est in Latin, like “He Who Is” in English, is an unusual phrase. Still, both of these phrases employ words that exist in Latin and English independently of talk about God.
5. ND, 1, 140 [3].
6. One could properly render Aquinas’s word “nomen” as “term” instead of “name.” We think of a name as chiefly being a proper name, like “Fred,” but Aquinas does not.
7. ND, 1, 143 [1].
8. ND, 1, 145 [1].
9. ND, 1, 147.
10. ND, 1, 135 [2].
11. ND, 1, 135 [2].
12. ND, 1, 135 [2].
13. ND, 1, 138 [1].
14. ND, 1, 138 [2].
15. ND, 1, 140 [2].
16. ND, 1, 140 [2].
17. ND, 1, 140 [3].
18. ND, 1, 141 [3].
19. See Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, translated by G. E. M. Anscombe, P. M. S. Hacker, and Joachim Schulte, rev. 4th ed. (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 167e and 177e.
20. I do not want to press the comparison between Wittgenstein on surface and depth grammar and Aquinas on signifying imperfectly. But there is a helpful comparison to be made here, one that contemporary students of philosophy might find useful.
21. Volume 3 of the Blackfriars edition of the Summa Theologiae (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode; New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964), 104.
22. ND, 1, 141 [1].
23. ND, 1, 143 [4].
24. ND, 1, 143.
25. ND, 1, 144 [3].
26. ND, 1, 145 [7].
27. ND, 1, 146 [5].
28. ND, 1, 146–147 [6].
29. ND, 1, 147 [1].
30. ND, 1, 148 [6].
31. ND, 1, 149 [1].
32. ND, 1, 150 [2].
33. ND, 1, 150 [1].
34. Volume 3 of the Blackfriars edition of the Summa Theologiae, 106.
35. For a defense of this conclusion, see Richard Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism, rev. ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), chapter 5. In this chapter Swinburne suggests that Aquinas really thinks that terms used of God and creatures can be understood univocally.