8. God’s Will, Life, and Blessedness (SCG 1,72–102)
God’s Will, Life, and Blessedness (SCG 1,72–102)
AQUINAS ROUNDS OFF SCG 1 with discussions of God’s will, life, and blessedness. You will not be surprised to find him arguing that there is will in God, that God is alive, and that God is blessed. Yet what does Aquinas mean by “will,” “life,” and “blessed”? In this chapter I shall first try to answer that question. Then I shall explain Aquinas’s reasons for ascribing will, life, and blessedness to God. As you will see, Aquinas’s procedure in SCG 1,72–102 is similar to what we found in his treatment of divine knowledge. He argues that will, life, and blessedness can be positively ascribed to God, but then he proceeds to explain how he thinks that they must exist in God in different ways from the ways in which they exist in what is not divine.