God and His Attributes
1. Sacred Doctrine
1. Man's most urgent need is to know truths about God. Some of these truths can be known by philosophy, that is, by thinking them out. Other truths about God are made known to man by divine revelation. And indeed divine revelation is required for the proper understanding of all truths about God, even those which philosophy teaches. For without revelation man could not know quickly and accurately the naturally knowable truths about God so as to make these truths the rule and guide for his responsible life right from the start. Therefore, philosophy is not enough for man; divine revelation is required.
2. Truths about God manifested by divine revelation constitute sacred doctrine or supernatural theology. Sacred doctrine is a true science. For a science is a body of truths established with certitude, and sacred doctrine is a body of truths imparted on God's own authority, and hence established with absolute certitude.1
3. Sacred doctrine is a single science rather than a group of related sciences, for it brings all its truths into the one precise focus of what is divinely revealed.
4. Sciences are speculative or practical. A speculative science contemplates truth; it fixes on what is so. A practical science considers what is to be done in consequence of the truths it contemplates; it fixes on what to do. Sacred doctrine is both speculative and practical, but it is primarily a speculative science, for its chief effort is to teach men truths about God.
5. Under either aspect, speculative or practical, sacred doctrine is the most noble of sciences. On the speculative side, it treats of the noblest object, that is, God himself, and it affords the most nobly satisfying certitude because it speaks with God's own authority. On the practical side, sacred doctrine is the noblest of sciences because it guides man to the noblest goal-God and everlasting happiness.
6. Sacred doctrine is wisdom. Wisdom involves deep knowledge of a valuable end to be attained together with a suitable and pleasing plan for attaining it. Sacred doctrine gives man the deepest knowledge of his infinitely valuable end, and stirs and directs him to attain it.
7. The object of sacred doctrine, that is, its subject matter and also its special focus of attention, is God. All truths manifested by sacred doctrine are either truths about God or truths about creatures in reference to God.
8. The principles, that is, the basic truths, of sacred doctrine are the articles of faith. Sacred doctrine does not argue about these principles, as philosophy does, to show that they are in accord with reason; sacred doctrine presents these truths on God's authority and proceeds to draw other truths from them by study and reasoning.
9. Holy Scripture is a source of divine revelation, and hence a source of sacred doctrine. Scripture sometimes imparts a truth by figurative language, but not in such wise as to confuse us. This is right, for truth is often taught most effectively by making comparison with material and familiar things, that is, by using a figure of speech such as a simile or metaphor.
10. Sometimes scripture uses a term with an extension of meaning or a spiritual implication, as when St. Paul (Heb. 10:1) calls the Old Law a figure of the New Law. Here the term "the Old Law" receives the added meaning of a forecast or promise. It is suitable that scripture should thus manifest its richness by conveying in literally true words an abundance of implied meanings or suggestions.
2. The Existence of God
1. It is sometimes said that the truth of God's existence is self-evident, and hence neither needs a proof nor admits one. Now, a truth may be self-evident in two ways: (a) in itself and to the human mind; or (b) in itself, but not to the human mind. If you know the meaning of the words circle and roundness, you need no proof for the statement, "A circle is round." Indeed, no proof is possible, for a proof is to make a thing more evident, and nothing can make this statement more evident than the words in which it is expressed. Knowing what a circle is, you know that roundness belongs to it; when you say "circle" you are already saying "round." Here, then, is a truth that is self-evident both in itself and also self-evident to your mind. But if you did not clearly know the meaning of the words circle and roundness, the statement, "A circle is round" would not be self-evident to your mind, although it would still be, in itself, a self-evident truth. Now, the truth of the statement "God exists" is self-evident in itself; for God is necessarily existent; existence is as truly identified with God as roundness is identified with a circle. If the ideas God and existence, with their implications, were as quickly and perfectly available to the human mind as are the ideas circle and roundness, we should not need, and could not have, a reasoned proof for the existence of God. But, as a fact, we have not this prompt and perfect knowledge of God and existence. Thus, while the truth that God exists is self-evident in itself, it is not self-evident to the human mind. For man, this truth needs to be evidenced or proved.
2. Can we prove that God exists? Yes, we can. We can reason out this truth. There are two ways of reasoning a thing out. First, we may so perfectly know a cause that we can reason out what its effect must be; this is a priori reasoning. Secondly, we may know an effect better than we know its cause, and by studying the effect we can work back to know the cause that produced it; this is a posteriori reasoning. In proving the existence of God we use a posteriori reasoning.
3. There are five notable ways of reasoning out the truth that God exists. The first way is by considering motion in the world. Where there is motion, there is a mover, and ultimately a first mover, itself unmoved. This is God. The second way is by considering the chains of effecting causes that exist in the world. Things here are produced by their causes; these causes in turn were produced by their causes, and so on. Ultimately, there must be a first cause which is itself uncaused. This is God. The third way is by considering the contingency of things in the world. Contingent things do not have to exist; they are non-necessary; they come into existence, and undergo change, and pass away. Now, contingent things demand as their ultimate explanation a noncontingent being, a necessary being. This is God. The fourth way is by considering the scale of perfection manifest in the world. Things are more or less good, more or less noble, and so on. Now, where there is good and better and still better, there must at last be a best which is the source and measure of goodness all along the line. And where there is noble and nobler and still more noble, there must ultimately be a noblest which is the standard by which all lesser degrees of nobleness can be known and given their rating. In a word, where there are degrees of perfection, there must ultimately be absolute perfection. This is God. The fifth way is by considering the order and government seen in this world. Things act in a definite way and were manifestly designed to act so; through their nature (that is, their active or operating essence) they are governed in their activities. Thus there are design and government in the world. Hence there are ultimately a first designer and first governor. And since both design and government involve intelligence, there must be governor and designer who is the first and absolute intelligence. This is God.
3. The Simplicity of God
1. When we speak of God's simplicity we speak of the fact that God is not composed of parts, or compounded of elements. In God there is no composition or compounding of any kind. First of all, in God there is no material composition, for God is not material or bodily. A body is subject to motion and change, but God is the unmoved First Mover, and the changeless necessary being. Further, a body is always in the state of potentiality, that is, capable of being acted on by causes, and God is in no wise capable of being affected by any causes. For God is the First Cause; there is no cause prior to God or independent of him that could act upon him. In God there is no passive potentiality at all; God is pure actuality. Therefore, in God there is no material composition, and no composition of potentiality and actuality.
2. Since God is not a body, he is not composed as all bodies are of primal matter (the element common to all bodies; the element by which a body is bodily) and substantial form (the substantial determinant in each body which makes it an existing body of its essential kind). In God there is no composition of matter and form.
3. Since God is not a body, he is not composed, as a body always is, of an essence or nature concreted in an individual subject. A body has its nature or working essence; we cannot say that a body is its nature. But God does not have anything; if he did, he would be in potentiality towards having it, and he would receive it from some prior being. But there is no being prior to the First Being. God is pure actuality. God is his own essence, his own nature, his own life, his own Godhead, and whatever else may be thus predicated of him. Therefore, in God there is no compounding of a nature with the individual subject which has that nature.
4. And God is his own existence. Creatures, bodily or spiritual, are composed of essence (which receives existence) and existence (which is received by essence to make an existing creature). But since God is the First Being, there is nothing prior to him from which his essence could receive existence. God does not receive anything of his being. God is necessary being; it is God's essence to exist. In God, essence and existence are absolutely one and the same. Therefore, God is not a compound of essence and existence.
5. We understand and define a creature by knowing the general essential class of things to which it belongs (its genus) and adding to that class the special difference by which it is essentially distinguished from other members of its class (its specific difference). Thus we understand an organism as belonging to the general class of body, and as marked off from body-as-such by the fact that it has life. Hence we say that an organism is compounded or composed of bodiliness and life as of genus and specific difference. Now, God is not a member of a class of things from which he is marked off by specific difference. God is absolute and unique. In God, therefore, there is no composition or compounding of genus and difference.
6. Nor is God composed of substance and accidentals. A substance is a reality that is naturally suited to exist as itself, and not as the mark or determinant of some other thing. An accidental (or, in older language, an accident) is a reality that is suited to exist as of something other than itself. An apple is a substance. The size, color, weight, position, temperature, flavor, etc., of the apple are existing realities, but they are not "on their own" so to speak; they exist as of the apple, not as themselves. Accidentals are said to inhere in the substance which they mark or qualify; hence a creatural substance is said to be composed of substance and inhering accidentals. Now, a creatural substance has accidentals; it stands in potentiality to receive them, and to undergo a change in them. But God is not in potentiality to receive or undergo anything in his substantial being. God is pure actuality. Therefore, there are in God no accidentals at all. All that God has, God is. Hence in God there is no compounding or composition of substance and accidentals.
7. Thus it is manifest that God is not composed of parts or elements of any kind. In other words, God is absolutely simple. We might know this truth at once from the fact that whatever is compounded or composed is subsequent to its elements or parts, and also subsequent to the action of the cause which brings the parts together. But God is the First Being; God is not subsequent to anything. Nor is God subject to the action of any cause. It follows, therefore, that God is absolutely simple and uncomposed. God is pure actuality, God is also absolute simplicity.
8. The absolutely simple God cannot be the part or element of anything else. For God is the First Cause, acting primarily and essentially. But what is an element or part of a compound cannot act primarily and essentially; only the completed compound can act so. Therefore God is not a part or element of anything else. Hence it is absurd to think of God as a "world soul" or even as primal matter. {-As we shall see later, Gods absolute simplicity in being and essence in no wise conflicts with the subsistence of the simple divine essence in the three distinct Persons of the Blessed Trinity.-}
4. The Perfections of God
1. The first being must be self-existent, for it is first; there is nothing prior to it from which existence could be received. Now, self-existent being, or pure actuality, exists by its unbounded excellence or perfection. Pure actuality means absolute perfection. Therefore, God is absolute perfection. Consider the point in another way. There are perfections in creatures-being, life, knowledge, etc. All these perfections have been conferred on creatures and, in the first instance, these perfections were conferred by one who had them to confer; that is, the First Cause. These perfections must be in the First Cause in a manner suited to its pure actuality; that is, the perfections must exist in God absolutely, as identified with his divine essence. Therefore, God is pure or absolute perfection.
2. For the perfections of creatures cannot be in God as accidentals; as we have seen, God has no accidentals. They cannot be in God as parts, for God is pure simplicity and has no parts. These perfections can be in God only as identified with his essence. This is what theologians mean when they say that creatural perfections are in God eminently.
3. Creatures are like to God by analogy, inasmuch as creatures have perfections in a limited way, while these perfections are in God unlimitedly and eminently as identified with his very essence, being, and substance.
5. Goodness
1. A thing has goodness in so far as it can be the goal of a desire or tendency. That is called good which answers an appetite or appetency. Now, a thing can be the goal of a tendency by the fact that it is a thing at all, that it has being. Hence goodness and being are really the same thing. But logically, that is, in the way of human understanding, there is a distinction between goodness and being; for we can think of being without noticing that it is desirable or good. Therefore, between goodness and being, there is not a real distinction (as between thing and thing), but there is a logical distinction (as between distinct mental approaches to the same thing).
2. Hence it is evident that our idea of being is prior to our idea of goodness; for we are aware of a being as such before we are aware that it is necessarily good.
3. A thing is good in so far as it has positive being; positive being is perfection or actuality. For perfection is desirable, and desirability defines goodness.
4. Goodness has the character of a final cause, for it is an end-in-view; it invites or attracts, and thus far causes the action which seeks to attain it.
5. Positive being (and hence perfection or actuality) is found in the essence of a thing, in its mode of being, in its specific kind, and in its tendency to its end. Therefore we discern goodness in a reality, in its mode, in its species, and in its direction to its end, goal, or purpose.
6. Good may be classified as the seemly or virtuous, the pleasing, and the useful.
6. The Goodness of God
1. God is the cause of all creatural being, and therefore he is the cause of all goodness in creatures. Finite things, each in its way and measure, manifest the goodness of God. God is absolute goodness. As such, he is the first producing (or effecting) cause, and the ultimate final cause (or goal) of all created goodness, that is, of all creatures.
2. God is the supreme good. Creatural goodness is always imparted, and by that fact is limited goodness. Creatural goodness cannot approach to the unlimited goodness of God.
3. Only God is essentially good, for God alone is necessary being and necessary goodness. Creatures have goodness. God is goodness.
4. Since God's goodness is the cause of goodness in things, creatures are properly called good by reason of the divine goodness.
7. The Infinity of God
1. When we call God infinite, we mean that God is not limited in any way whatever. All creatures are finite or limited. For creatures receive their being and their perfections, and whatever is received is measured and limited by the giver or by the capacity of the receiver. Now, God's being is not received; God is self-existent being. There is nothing prior to God from which he could receive anything. Hence nothing can mark or limit God; nothing can set boundaries to God's self-existing perfection; nothing can diminish that perfection, nothing can add to it. A perfection that can neither be diminished nor increased is necessarily boundless or infinite. Hence, God is infinite in perfection. As God is absolute being, God is absolute infinity.
2. God alone is infinite. Creatures have what is called potential infinity inasmuch as there is no fixed limit to the possibility of succession and variation in them. A lump of wax is a finite thing with a finite shape, but there is no limit to the number or variety of shapes that may be given to it. At any moment, the number of shapes it has received is a finite number; potential infinity attaches only to the shapes not yet received. Again, an abstract number may be multiplied or divided without limit, although at any instant in the process of multiplying or dividing, the number is a finite number. This type of infinity is actual infinity. Actual infinity is absolute. It excludes all potentiality. It can neither be increased nor diminished. Actual infinity is pure actuality. God alone is pure actuality; hence God alone is actual infinity.
3. No bodily thing can be infinite. For bodily infinity would be infinity in size, and size is always measurable; that is, size is always finite. Even a mathematical body must be thought of as contained within its lines and surfaces.
4. There cannot be an actually infinite number. A number has potential infinity, for it can be endlessly multiplied or divided. But actual infinity is incapable of being multiplied or divided. What is actually infinite cannot be increased or diminished, but a number can always be added to or lessened.
8. The Existence of God in Things
1. God is present to things as an agent (that is, doer, performer, effecting cause) is present to and in the action and the effect which it produces. God is the source of all actuality in creatures; He must, then, be in creatures to produce and preserve this actuality; for creatural actuality is not self-producing or self-preserving. Creatures depend essentially on God both for production and preservation. God is in all things in the most perfect manner, not limited by the things nor identified with them.
2. God is in all places, actual and possible, for God is infinite. If any possible place could exclude God, it would impose a limit on the illimitable; it would impose a finiteness on the infinite. Since this is impossible, it follows that God is everywhere. God is not limited by the place in which he is, for God is not contained in a place as a body is. God's presence in a place does not block out a creature from occupying that place.
3. The mode or manner by which God is in places and things is threefold: (a) God is in all things by his power, as exercising absolute rule there; (b) God is in all things by his presence, as perfectly knowing the things and disposing them by his providence; (c) God is in all things by his essence as creator and preserver.
4. Only God can be everywhere, for only God is infinite and absolute. God is in all things and all places by the whole of his undivided being, not part here and part there, for God is not made of parts. Thus God is present everywhere absolutely, and such presence belongs to the absolute being alone.
9. The Immutability of God
1. Immutability means changelessness. That God is changeless follows upon his infinity and his absolute actuality. What is changeable is, to that extent, perfectible, and God is absolutely perfect. What is changeable is finite, for change means loss or gain, increase or diminishment, and God is infinite. What is changeable is in the state of potentiality (the state of "can be") and in God there is no potentiality at all; God is not in the state of "can be"; God is. Therefore God is immutable or changeless. This does not mean that God is in a kind of frozen fixity. Changelessness in God is sheer perfection. It means that God is without any lack which a change could fill up, and that God is pure actuality which can suffer no loss by change.
2. God alone is immutable, for only God is infinite and absolutely actual. Every creature is in some way changeable, for a creature is finite or limited, and what is limited can conceivably have its limits extended or contracted. All things other than God are thus marked by potentiality. God who is pure actuality is absolutely changeless.
10. The Eternity of God
1. Eternity is the complete possession of boundless perfection, all at once, without beginning, succession, or end, and therefore without any before and after.
2. Since God is immutable, he is not subject to time which consists of continuous change. And since God is infinite, he is not limited by the terminations called beginning and ending.
3. Only God is eternal, for only God is immutable and infinite. Some creatures are called eternal in the meaning that they will never end; such are spiritual beings. And even bodily things are called eternal in the sense that they are not quickly or visibly affected by time; thus we speak of "the eternal hills." But strictly speaking, eternity belongs to God alone, and is identified with the essence of God.
4. Eternity, as duration, differs essentially from time. Time is a matter of before and after, of past and future, but eternity is an all-perfect changeless present. Eternity is an immutable, everlasting now. Thus eternity involves infinity, and so is identified with the pure actuality of God. We can know what eternity means, but we cannot picture it in imagination. Every attempt to envision eternity in imagination results merely in a lengthened view of imaginary time. And time, as we have just noticed, is essentially different from eternity, and even opposite to it.
5. Time is a continuous succession of events or movements (therefore, of changes) which can be numbered, and considered with reference to before and after. But eternity is without succession or movement, and involves no aspects of before and after. Besides time and eternity there is a duration called eviternity that we ascribe to spiritual creatures (souls, angels) which have had a beginning but which have no substantial change and no ending.
6. People often speak of one time as different from another. They use expressions such as "our own times," "the golden age of literature," "grandfather's day," "the twentieth century." But these are only accidental divisions of time; time in itself is really one thing. Similarly, eviternity is one in itself, although it may be accidentally multiplied by referring it to this, and then to that eviternal being.
11. The Unity of God
1. Unity means oneness, and oneness is the same as being. For every being is that one thing. A being cannot be multiplied or divided into a plurality of itself. To divide a thing into parts is to destroy its unity and also to destroy its being as that one thing. And yet each part is that one part, that one thing; still the truth holds that being and the one are really the same, although there is a logical distinction between them.
2. The one and the many are contrasted as opposites. The many (that is, plurality, multitude, more-than-one) is countable or measurable by the unit, that is by the one. And multitude (that is, two or more) when measured by the unit is called number. Thus number is contrasted with the unit which measures and determines it.
3. When we speak of the unity of God, we speak of the fact that there is one God and cannot be more than one God. God is infinite, and a plurality of infinities cannot be. If, by an impossible supposition, there were two infinite beings, "X" and "Y," then: either (a) "X" and "Y" would have identical perfections, and thus would actually be one being and not two; or (b) "X" would have its own perfections which "Y" would lack, and "Y" would have its own perfections which "X" would lack; thus neither being would be infinite, for what lacks any perfection is, by that fact, finite or imperfect. Thus it is inconceivable that there should be more than one infinite being. That is to say, it is inconceivable that there should be more than one God.
4. Since being and oneness are really the same, it follows that the more perfect being is the more perfect unity. God is absolute being; therefore God is absolute unity. {- The unity of God's being does not conflict in any way with the trinity of Persons in God. This fact will be discussed later. -}
12. How We Can Know God
1. A thing is knowable in so far as it is actual. Since God is supremely actual, God is supremely knowable. God indeed is not well known by every mind, although a normal mind cannot come to maturity without at least some vague knowledge of God as a universal power or world-control. Those who say that man cannot truly know God are mistaken. Their teaching conflicts with the natural drive of the mind to grasp truth and to know the causes of things, including the First Cause. Besides, we know by faith that the blessed in heaven actually behold God's essence.
2. To see God in heaven, the created intellect requires a special added power which elevates and strengthens it.
3. The bodily eye cannot behold the nonbodily essence of God. Nor can the inner sense of imagination form an image of God; the infinite is not shown in a finite sense-image. Only the mind, the intellect, can behold God.
4. And the intellect needs more than its own natural power if it is to behold the divine essence itself. God must somehow elevate and join the intellect to himself that it may behold him: "In thy light we shall see light" (Ps. 35:10).
5. This union of God and intellect is effected in heaven by a supernatural gift or grace called the lumen gloriae, that is, the light of glory.
6. The more perfect a soul is in charity, that is, in the grace, love, and friendship of God, the more perfectly it beholds God in heaven. The degree of charity in the blessed soul determines the measure of the light of glory imparted to it.
7. By aid of the light of glory the soul in heaven sees God himself clearly and truly. This, to be sure, is no exhaustive viewing; the soul cannot understand all that is understandable in God; God is infinitely understandable, and the soul is finite.
8. Therefore the soul in heaven, seeing God by the light of glory, does not behold all that God does and can do; this would mean the actual encompassing of the infinite by a finite mind, a manifest contradiction and an impossibility.
9. By the light of glory the soul in heaven beholds God himself and not merely a likeness or image of God. The soul beholds the divine essence directly, intuitively.
10. The knowledge of God enjoyed by the blessed soul in heaven is not piecemeal but complete and simultaneous. It is not a succession of viewings. The soul beholds God clearly and truly, and all that it beholds is seen at once.
11. The essence of God as seen in the light of glory constitutes the beatific vision. This is the essential reward of the blessed in heaven. Man cannot have the beatific vision here on earth. Here, although we can truly know God, we cannot have a direct and intuitive view of his very essence.
12. In the present fife we use our natural power of reasoning, that is, the power of the thinking mind, to acquire true knowledge of the existence, nature, and attributes of God. This is essential knowledge of God, but it is not the direct beholding of the divine essence itself.
13. The knowledge of God which we can acquire by natural reasoning is richly enhanced by the faith and by divine revelation. Thus in the present earthly life we can know God by reason, by faith, by revelation.
13. The Names of God
1. We can justifiably name anything in so far as we know it. Now, we can know God naturally by reason, and supernaturally by faith and revelation. Therefore we can name God. And indeed we have many names for God; they are justified by the fact that we know what we are naming.
2. The names we apply to God express God himself so far as we know him. Even though our natural knowledge of God's perfection is acquired by considering the perfections of creatures, it justifies our names for God. We realize that creatural perfections are all in God, for it is God who bestows perfections on creatures, and he must have them in himself to bestow. Hence when we use a name expressing a perfection as a name for God, we apply this name to God himself, in his essence and substance.
3. Therefore our real names for God are not figurative or metaphorical; they are literal. The perfections these names express are actually in God and of God. Of course, these names do not perfectly express the mode of eminence by which the perfections named are identified with God's essence.
4. The names we give to God apply to the undivided divine essence. Yet they are not all synonyms. These names are distinct from one another by a logical distinction. They express various aspects of what is not varied in itself. When we call God "the divine goodness," we express one true aspect of God; when we call him "the infinite." we express another; when we call God "the Almighty," we express still another. We do not thus imply that there are divisions in God; we only make various approaches to the one undivided divine essence.
5. Consider our use of names or terms, (a) When we apply a name or term to two or more things in exactly the same meaning, the term is, in that use, a univocal term. Thus the term being as applied to man, woman, and child, is a univocal term, (b) When, in the same context, we apply a term or name to two or more things in totally different meanings, the term is, in that use, an equivocal term. Thus the term bank used in the same context to indicate the side of a stream and also to indicate an institution for the care of money, is an equivocal term, (c) When, in the same context, we apply a term to two or more things in a different but related meaning, "a meaning partly the same, and partly different," the term is, in that use, an analogous term (or an analogical term, or a term used by analogy). Thus the term "healthy" applied to a man and also to his complexion is an analogical term. It means that the man has health, and that his color shows health. In each use the term refers to health, and this is its sameness; in one use, it means possession of health, and, in the other use, it means manifestation of health, and this is its difference. Now, when we apply to God and also to creatures a name which means a perfection, we use the name or term by analogy. For example we call God wise, and we also speak of wise men. What we mean is that God is wisdom as identified with his essence, and that men have wisdom as a quality, an accidental not identified with the human essence. Therefore, when in the same context (expressed or understood) a term or name is applied to God and to creatures, commonly, to express perfection, that term is an analogous term.
6. Terms or names which express perfections, such as life, knowledge, wise, good, apply primarily to God, and secondarily to creatures. But in our human use of such terms, they refer primarily to creatures. For our knowledge of perfection, and indeed all our knowledge, begins with knowledge of creatures. We rise from the knowledge of creatural perfections to the knowledge of infinite perfection.
7. Some names of God, such as Creator, Preserver, Provider, involve a relation between creatures and God. On the part of creatures, this is a real relation, for creatures depend essentially upon God. But God in no way whatever depends on creatures. Hence, on God's part, no reality exists by reason of his relationship with creatures. God's relation to creatures is not a real, but a logical relation. If God did not create, preserve, and provide for creatures, they could not exist at all. But God would be God in complete and infinite perfection even if he never created anything to preserve and provide for; in which case, the names Creator, Preserver, and Provider would not actually apply to God. Therefore we say that the names or terms which express the relation of God to creatures do not apply to God eternally as indicating his essence, but temporally as expressing the time-marked dependence of creatures on God.
8. The name God means the supreme and infinite Being himself, in essence, substance, and nature.
9. Therefore, the name God is not accurately applied to any other being than God himself. It is an incommunicable name.
10. And when, as a fact, this name is used to indicate a creature, it is used by analogy only, inasmuch as creatures have limited perfection which is in God unlimitedly. As applied to an idol, the name God is simply misused.
11. The most perfect name for God is that which He applied to Himself. God said to Moses (Exod. 3:14), "Thus shalt thou say to the children of Israel: he who is hath sent me to you." The name he who is expresses the fact that it is God's very essence to exist, and it directly suggests God's infinity and eternity.
12. It has been said untruly that all our names for God are negative, and that we do not make affirmative statements about God. Some names for God are negative in form (such as infinite which is really nonfinite) but they negate negation, and are positive in meaning. Besides, we have many simply affirmative names for God, and we make true affirmative statements about him. Thus we say that God exists in unity and trinity; that God is all-good, all-knowing, all-wise, all-powerful, etc. We are careful to remember that various affirmative names for God, and various affirmative statements of truth about God, never indicate a division or a plurality of real elements in God, who is one undivided essence, one infinite and absolutely simple substance.
14. God's Knowledge
1. Knowledge is a perfection. It is a pure or unmixed perfection, for it involves in its concept no necessary limitation. Now, since God is infinitely perfect, all pure perfections exist in him formally or as such, and also eminently as identified with his undivided essence. Therefore in God there is infinite knowledge. More accurately, God is infinite knowledge.
2. God knows himself perfectly. This is only saying that God is himself. For God's knowledge is not something which God has; God's knowledge is what God is.
3. God's knowledge of himself is therefore comprehensive, that is, it perfectly embraces the complete knowability of the thing known. Thus, in our limited and imperfect mode of expression, we say that God knows himself to the infinite extent of his boundless know-ability.
4. God's intellect or understanding is another name for God's essence and substance. In God, intellect, object of intellect, intelligible species (that is, the representation by which an intellect is aware of reality), and the operation of understanding, are all identified with the undivided essence and substance of God.
5. God knows all things other than himself, that is, all creatures, actual and possible; for infinite knowledge lacks nothing that can be known. In knowing himself, God knows his infinite power to create, and therefore knows all things creatable. And God knows his own will to create, and therefore knows all creatures that have existed, now exist, or are to exist. Thus in knowing himself, God knows all things other than himself. Our human knowledge is gained by learning; we know things not by knowing ourselves, but by becoming aware of things in themselves. God knows things eternally; man knows things only after the things are there, and are brought into the range of his knowing powers. God's knowledge is creative; man's knowledge is receptive.
6. God knows all things with perfect clarity, distinctness, and in fullest detail, and not in a mere general way. For infinite knowledge is comprehensive; it is identified with God's essence, and therefore is most perfect in all respects.
7. God does not need to reason, that is, to think things out. God does not know things by inferring one from another. Nor does God know things successively, one after another. Since God's knowledge of things is one with his essence, it is necessarily eternal, infinite, complete, comprehensive, and simultaneous.
8. Since God's knowledge of creatures is one with his will to create them (for intellect and will are one in the divine simplicity) this knowledge is truly the cause of creatures. And, since God's knowledge of creatures can be seen as the approval of his will to create, this creative knowledge is called "the knowledge of approbation."
9. God knows all things actual and possible, God beholds in eternal (and hence, present) vision all things that have been, are now, and will be. This is called God's "knowledge of vision." God also knows all possible things that have never been, are not now, and never will be; this is God's "knowledge of simple intelligence."
10. God knows all things, all being. Therefore God knows all good. And God, by that fact, knows where good is lacking; therefore God knows evil. For evil is the lack or privation of good that should be present.
11. God's knowledge is most perfect because it is one with himself. There is in it no vagueness, no confusion; it is complete to the last detail of knowable reality. God knows all things in their being, their relations actual and possible, their classes, their individuality, their parts or elements. He knows all that things are, and all that they could be, and all that they would be in any circumstances and under any conditions.
12. By his knowledge of vision, God knows all the thoughts of men and angels which will go on unceasingly forever. In this sense, God knows "infinite things."
13. God knows by his knowledge of vision what are called future contingencies, that is, things that will exist or will happen in the future, dependently on the action of nonnecessitated causes. For instance, God knows what I shall say or do, or what persons I shall meet, at a given moment a year or ten years hence. These things are contingent (or dependent) upon the humanly unforeseeable action of free wills and upon fortuitous circumstances; they are future things, and they are contingent; hence they are rightly called future contingencies. These things are not merely what may happen; they are what will happen. Hence they are knowable as facts, and God knows them by his knowledge of vision.
14. God knows all the essences of things; therefore he knows all that can be truly said about all things. God knows all subjects and predicates that can be brought together in true statements or propositions about things, and he knows the propositions themselves.
15. God's knowledge is invariable or changeless for it is one with his changeless essence. God does not learn, nor need to learn; God does not forget. In God there is neither accession of knowledge, nor loss of knowledge.
16. Knowledge is called speculative when it is the awareness of what is so. Knowledge is called practical when it is the awareness of what to do. God's knowledge of himself is speculative. God's knowledge of things other than himself is both speculative and practical. God's knowledge of evil is practical inasmuch as God knows how to prevent evil, or to permit it and direct it so that good may come of it.
15. Ideas in God
1. An idea or concept is the mind's grasp of an essence. It is the understanding of what a definition means. Thus the idea human being is the mind's grasp of human being as such. It is the mind's grasp in one act of understanding of an essence that may be found in many individuals, and indeed is found in every man, woman, and child. Thus an idea or concept represents in universal an essence that may exist really in individuals. The idea or concept is called the species (or, more completely, the expressed intelligible species) in which things are understood. Now, since God perfectly understands all essences, we say that the ideas of all things are in God.
2. Yet the ideas of all things in God are not separate species in him; they do not bring complexity into the absolute simplicity of God. God's knowledge is not manifold in itself, but only in the creatural objects known. In knowing himself, God knows all things knowable, and hence God's essence is the single species in which he knows all things. This is what we must ever keep in mind as we use the imperfect human expression, "In God are the ideas of all things."
3. In so far as the divine ideas are concepts of things that can be created, they are called exemplars. In so far as these ideas are concepts of things simply knowable rather than creatable, they are called types or archetypes. Thus we say: in God are the exemplar-ideas and archetypal-ideas of all things.
16. Truth
1. Truth is the agreement or conformity of reality and the mind's judgment on reality. It is "the equation of thought and thing." Truth resides formally, or as such, in the mind which rightly judges a thing to be what it really is. Thus, formally, truth is truth of thought. There is also what is called truth of things; this is called ontological truth. It consists in the necessary conformity of things with the divine mind. For God knows all things perfectly, and upon this knowledge things depend for existence, and even for possibility of existence.
2. Formal or logical truth is in the mind's true judgment on reality. If the creatural mind judges wrongly, it is in the state of logical falsity or error. Truth is not, strictly speaking, in the ideas or concepts of the mind, but in the judgment by which the mind pronounces on the agreement or disagreement of its ideas and the reality which these ideas represent.
3. A thing is knowable, and can be conceived and pronounced upon by the mind, in so far as it is a thing at all, that is, in so far as it has being. And whatever has being is infallibly known for what it is by the divine mind; hence being and the true are really the same. Between them there exists only a logical distinction, not a real one.
4. In the human mind, being is prior to the true, for man adverts to the fact that a thing is a being before he notices that it stands in necessary conformity with the divine mind, and is therefore necessarily true.
5. As we have seen, God knows all things perfectly in knowing himself. Here we have absolute conformity of knower and object known; indeed, this conformity is identity. Hence we do not merely say that there is truth in the divine mind, or that God has truth. We say that God is Truth. God is Truth, eternal, absolute, sovereign, infinite, substantially existing as one with the undivided divine nature and substance.
6. All truths are in the divine mind. Many truths can be in creatural minds. Many truths can be in the same mind, and their number can increase as the mind makes more and more true judgments.
7. Truth is eternal in God alone. Man can know things that are eternally true, and these things are said to be true in themselves. But these truths are true in themselves only because God eternally knows them to be true.
8. And truth is changeless only in the changeless God. Creatures know many a changeless truth, but their knowing it is in no way the cause of its changelessness. And creatural knowing is not a changeless achievement. Creatural minds may disregard certainly known truths; human minds may forget truths once known. And there is a kind of change in a mind that learns new facts which make a known truth better known, or which reveal it in wider application.
17. Falsity
1. There can be no falsity in things, for falsity is in judgment about things. Being and the true are really one. A thing is what it is, and is necessarily known as such by the infinite mind. Thus all things are true with real or ontological truth; there is no such thing as ontological falsity, that is, real falsity, falsity in things. Things, indeed, are often called false, but this is by reason of their use, or of their effect on the creatural mind. If one says, "Sentiment is a false basis for judgment," one is not saying that sentiment is not sentiment; the word false is loosely used in the statement, and means un-
safe or unsound, and not really false at all. And when a person speaks of false teeth or false whiskers, or says that a trunk has a false bottom, he merely means that these things resemble teeth or whiskers or the real bottom of the trunk; this resemblance in the things may lead a careless observer to judge that they are real teeth or whiskers or the real bottom of the trunk. Thus these things (which are what they are, and thus are true in themselves) may easily be the occasion for false judgment, that is for logical falsity, for falsity in a mistaken human mind. Thus the only falsity of what are called false things is falsity in judgment about the things, and not in the things themselves.
2. Is there falsity in our sense-knowledge? Do our senses ever deceive us? No, the senses themselves do not deceive us. Falsity in sensing may come from careless use of the senses, from disease or defect in a sense organ, from using a sense outside its normal and proper range of operation, or from using a sense in a medium or under conditions unsuitable for its functioning. If I glance at a drawing and judge that it is an eight-sided figure, whereas in fact it is nine-sided, I cannot justly say that my eyes have deceived me. The falsity is in my judgment which is made upon careless use of the eyes. Besides, the proper object of the sense of sight is light (that is, light diffused by refraction on a bodily surface, and thus appearing as color) and not the shape of what is seen. Falsity in sensing is always false judgment (of sense or mind) arising from misuse, defect, or unsuitable medium of operation. That is to say, falsity is not in the senses by their nature, but only as something accidental to their activity or use.
3. There can be no falsity in the divine mind, for God is truth, and God is all-knowing. But there can be falsity in human minds; we call such falsity mistake or error. The mind itself is never deceiving; there is nothing in the nature of the mind to cause false judgment about reality. Falsity of judgment comes from causes accidental to the use of the mind, such as hasty concluding without considering all the evidence; bias or prejudice or indifference which keeps the mind from looking at the evidence, and from other external factors in judging, such as disease or neuroses.
4. Truth and falsity are opposed as contraries, not as contradictories. For falsity is not merely the negation or denial of truth; falsity is the affirming of something in place of truth.
18. The Life of God
1. Things have life when they have the perfection of self-movement. In the world around us, this perfection is manifested by plants, animals, and human beings. Other bodily things (called, in general, minerals) have not this perfection. Therefore, not all things are alive; some things have life, some lack it.
2. Life is primarily the substantial principle or source of self-movement. Secondarily, it is the operation of self-movement.
3. Plants have vegetal life with the operations of nutrition, growth and development, and reproduction. Animals have vegetal life and also sentient life with is operations of sensing, appetizing, and local movement. Human beings have vegetal and sentient life and also rational life with its operations of understanding and will. Rational life is far superior to the other forms of life. Yet in earthly man, rational life is bound up with bodiliness. Even in angels it seeks a goal outside itself. Pure and perfect rational life is self-sufficient; its movement is not change; it tends to no goal outside itself; its activity is identified with its essence. Such rational life is all-perfect life, absolute life. It is pure perfection. Now, all pure perfection belongs to God eminently. Therefore, God is life.
4. God is fife. God is knowledge. In the divine simplicity, the perfections of life and knowledge are one. Hence all things that are in God's knowledge are in God's life, and therefore we have the saying, "All things are life in God."
19. The Will of God
1. Where there is intellect there is will. Now, God is absolute intellect. Therefore God is absolute will.
2. God wills (or loves) himself, the infinite goodness. In willing himself, God wills things other than himself to which his infinite goodness freely extends; that is, God wills creatures. Creatures are partakers of the divine goodness; they tend to the infinite good as to their ultimate end or goal.
3. God wills himself of necessity. This is not saying that some force compels God to will or love himself. It is only saying that God is God; for God's will is identified with himself, and he himself is necessary being. God wills creatures freely, and not by necessity; for God has no need of creatures.
4. God's will is the cause of creatures. But nothing is the cause of God's will to create. It is a mistake to say that God's goodness moves God to create, for God's goodness is actually God himself.
5. We seek no cause for God's creating, for God is not subject to the action of causes. Nor does God first set up an end for creatures to attain, and then create means by which creatures may attain their end. If this were so the end would be a cause (final cause) for the creating of the means. End and means are all willed together in one eternal decree which is itself identified with God's essence.
6. God's will in creatures is unfailingly fulfilled. No creature can thwart it. A free creature can hurt himself, but cannot defeat the will of God. For God wills right order; thus he wills retribution due to responsible free conduct. A saint in heaven and a sinner in hell both fulfill this will.
7. God's will is changeless, for it is actually one with his essence. But a changeless will can changelessly decree changeable things. God's changelessness does not impose limitation on God, nor does it impose necessity on free creatures or on contingently operating causes. God changelessly decrees that free creatures shall exercise free activity, and that contingent causes shall operate contingently.
8. God alone is the primary cause. Creatures are true causes of their activity and its product, but they are all secondary causes. God wills that secondary causes should act according to their nature, some by necessity, some contingently.
9. Evil is the lack or privation of good. Evil is not a thing or essence or nature in itself; it is the hurtful absence of a thing; it is the lack of what should be present. Being is necessarily good, for being and the good are really the same. Evil is, in itself, nonbeing. Hence evil cannot be willed for its own sake; the will chooses being or good. Only when evil is masked with the appearance of good (rather, only when some good is bound up with deficiency, lack, privation of good), can it be chosen or willed. God never wills evil directly. God accidentally wills physical evil (such as pain or hardship) inasmuch as he wills a good with which such hardship is bound up, and which can be attained only by the enduring of such hardship. God never wills moral evil, or sin, in any way whatever, directly or indirectly. Moral evil is against God, and God is not against Himself.
10. As regards creatures, God's will is absolutely free. Freedom is a perfection and God is all-perfect.
11. God's will is made manifest to free creatures by their reason and by revelation. For instance, the Ten Commandments are an expression of God's will which is manifested by revelation; the same Commandments are manifested by reason, for a studious man could think them out.
12. The expression of God's will comes to free creatures in a variety of forms: precept, prohibition, counsel, permission, operation.
20. God's Love
1. Where there is will there is love, for love is the fundamental act of will. Since God is will, God is love.
2. God loves all existing things, that is, things that have positive being. For these things exist by God's will, that is, by his love. To love a thing is to will the thing and to will good to it. God wills the existence, essence, and perfections of existing things; hence he loves these things. God's love is not like human love which is attracted to things by the good it finds in them; God's love causes the good in things.
3. God loves some things more than others inasmuch as he confers more perfection on some things than on others. A plant has more perfection than a lifeless body; an animal has more perfection than a plant; a human being has more perfection than an animal. In each case, greater perfection means greater love of God for that reality.
4. God wills or loves the better things more than others inasmuch as these better things have more good from the divine will.
21. The Mercy and Justice of God
1. Justice is the virtue which gives to every being all that belongs to it. There is a type of justice called commutative, which is the justice of give-and-take; it is exampled in a trade in which neither party cheats the other. There can be no commutative justice in God, for there is no exchange of goods between him and creatures; all good in creatures comes from God. There is another type of justice, called distributive, which consists in the bestowal of good according to the needs of the receiver. This type of justice is in God "who gives to all existing things whatever is proper to the condition of each one."
2. Sometimes God's justice is called truth inasmuch as it meets the known needs of creatures; for truth belongs to knowing.
3. In bestowing good on creatures, God manifests his goodness. In meeting the needs of creatures, he manifests his justice. In bestowing all that is useful, God manifests his liberality. And in giving what counteracts miseries and defects, God shows his mercy.
4. In all the works of God, justice and mercy are manifest. Justice and mercy are pure perfections; they are in God eminently as identified with his essence. In creating, God removes the misery of nonexistence; this is mercy. In supplying all that his creatures require, God manifests justice. In making abundant supply of things required, God removes the misery of narrow circumstances; this again is mercy.
22. The Providence of God
1. God, the all-knowing and all-wise, thoroughly understands his creation and directs it with wisest purpose. Creatures are made to tend to God as to their last end, their ultimate goal. God's plan for creatures to attain that purpose is called his providence. God acts to carry out the plan of providence by his divine government.
2. Since all positive being is from God, everything has a place in God's providence. And this in no mere general way, but in particular, in individual, down to the last and least detail of being and activity.
3. In applying his providence, God is the primary cause of government. God uses creatures as means or secondary causes in governing. But providence itself involves no means or medium. Providence itself is in God and of God and one with his essence.
4. Providence disposes that secondary causes should act according to the nature or working essence God gives them: some act by necessity (as a fire necessarily acts to consume dry paper that is cast into it) and some contingently (as a seed, to produce a plant, is contingent or dependent upon sufficient and suitable soil, proper depth, sufficient light, heat, and moisture). And man's free acts are contingent upon man's choice. Providence does not impose necessity upon contingently operating causes, nor does it defeat or hamper the action of man's free will.
23. Predestination
1. Providence disposing the supernatural means by which a man gets to heaven is called predestination.
2. On a person who is going to get to heaven, predestination sets no mark or character. For predestination is one phase of providence, and providence is in God and not in the things provided for.
3. As long as a free creature has not attained his goal, he may perversely turn aside and fail to attain it. Man in this life is a wayfarer; he is on the road; his journey is not finished. Man, by his own fault, may reject direction, and fail to reach his true goal. And, since man's goal is supernatural, he cannot reach it by his natural powers alone. He requires supernatural aid. Such aid is offered him, but he may refuse it. Now, inasmuch as God's providence permits a person to reject grace and to commit grave sin (and such permission is essential if the wayfarer is to be free), and so to refuse heaven and choose hell, we have what is called reprobation.
4. God loves, chooses, and predestines all who will use his grace and reach heaven. Hence love, election, and predestination are all within the scope of providence.
5. The whole effect of predestination has its cause in God, for all grace comes from him to dispose a man for salvation (that is, getting to heaven) and to support his efforts to attain it.
6. For those predestined, predestination is certain, for providence does not fail. Yet here we must be careful to avoid confused thought. We must not be misled by the "before and after" view which distorts our grasp of God's dealings with his free creatures. We recall that Scripture tells us that God wills all men to be saved; yet this does not negate God's will that men be free. St. John Damascene says, "God does not will evil, nor does He compel virtue." Man must cooperate with the saving will of God if he is to come to heaven. There is nothing mechanical or fatalistic about predestination, nor does it conflict with the exercise of free will.
7. Only God knows the number of those who will reach heaven.
8. Here on earth we cannot know whether we shall be among the elect in heaven. But we can know that we shall get to heaven if we choose to do so and use the grace of God to make our choice effective. St. Peter tells us (II Pet. 1:10), "Strive ... by good works to make your calling and election sure."
24. The Book of Life
1. The Book of Life is a scriptural metaphor for predestination.
2. The life referred to in the phrase, Book of Life, is primarily the life of glory in heaven.
3. In one sense, however, anyone in the state of grace is in the Book of Life, inasmuch as he has, at the moment, a claim to be inscribed there. And a man who rejects the state of grace by committing mortal sin is, at least temporarily, "blotted from the Book of Life."
25. The Power of God
1. Power is an ability for doing. It is, in itself, a pure perfection; therefore it is in God formally, or as such, and eminently, as identified with the divine essence. The passive capacity to be acted upon (called potentiality) is an imperfection, and is not in God at all.
2. The power of God is one with his infinite essence, and is therefore infinite itself. God is infinite power.
3. That is to say, God is omnipotent or almighty. God can do all things. Sometimes it is foolishly asked whether God can do what is self-contradictory; for instance, it is asked whether God can make a square circle. Now, a contradictory thing is not a thing at all. It is a fiction in which two elements cancel each other and leave nothing. Thus a square circle is a circle that is not a circle; that is to say, it is nothing whatever. To ask whether God can make such a thing is to ask a meaningless question. To say that God cannot make a self-contradictory thing is not to limit God's power, but to declare his truth, for a self-contradictory thing is a self-annihilating lie. Similarly, to say that God cannot deceive is not to limit God's power, but to affirm his veracity.
4. Since there is no self-contradiction in God, and since objective self-contradiction is nothing at all, we see that God cannot make undone what is already done; that is, God cannot make the past not to have been.
5. God does all things with absolute freedom. God might make and do other things than those he actually makes and does. God's wisdom is manifest in all his works, but these works do not limit the divine wisdom itself, nor can their perfection exhaust the inexhaustible power of God. God's purpose in things could be achieved by some other plan and order of creation if God should so choose.
6. God might go on endlessly making better and better things, yet he is under no sort of compulsion to do so, for God is not subject to compulsion. What God makes is always admirably suited for the purpose it is meant to serve, and thus it is as worthy of infinite wisdom and power as a finite thing can be.
26. The Beatitude of God
1. Beatitude, or happiness, or blessedness, is the perfect good of an intellectual nature. It consists in the fact that an intellectual being (that is, being with understanding and free will) knows that it possesses its true good in sufficient measure, and that it is in control of its actions. Now, God is infinitely aware of himself as absolute good, and his perfect will is in absolute control. Hence God is infinitely happy. God is infinite beatitude.
2. In our human way of understanding, we attribute the divine happiness in a special way to the divine intellect. Yet we repeatedly remind ourselves that God's intellect is really God himself, for it is one with the divine essence.
3. Only God is infinitely happy; that is, only God is infinite beatitude. Rational creatures (men and angels) seek God as the object that will fulfill them, and make them perfectly happy: God is their objective happiness. And the possession of God in the beatific vision constitutes their subjective happiness, that is, the happiness which is in them as its possessors or subjects. Inasmuch as all the blessed in heaven have not all the same degree of charity and its resultant measure of the light of glory, there are in heaven different subjective beatitudes.
4. The infinite beatitude of God perfectly embraces all beatitudes.
--- Notes ---
[1] Other responsible life right from the start.