Is God a body, or made of matter and form? Aquinas's arguments, second-figure syllogisms, scriptural metaphors, and 'divina substantia forma est'

Orientation #

He opens “So we’re up to Article One here now,” and refers back to what “has been shown above” in the previous question (the five ways) and to the article in the first question on Scripture’s use of metaphor (prev. lecture). He looks forward to Thomas’s later argument that there is no composition at all in God. The prior class introduced Question 3 and its eight articles; the next takes up Articles 3 and 4.

The class, in order #

1. The five objections and the sed contra of Article 1 (“God is a body, right?”) #

He reads the objections: (1) Scripture (Job) gives God three dimensions—higher than heaven, deeper than hell, longer than the earth, wider than the sea; he remarks the objector thinks of God as infinite “in the quantitative sense”; (2) figure is a quality about quantity (“the fourth species of quality”), and man is made to God’s image (Gen 1:26), image being a figure (Hebrews, “the figure of his substance”); (3) Scripture gives God an arm, eyes, a right hand; (4) posture—“I saw the Lord sitting,” “the Lord stood up to judge” (Isaiah, Psalm); (5) only a body is a local term from which or to which one goes, but we “approach him” and “recede from him” (Psalms). “So you’re all convinced?” Aside: this is why the first question needed the article on Scripture’s metaphors.

• Sed contra, John 4:24: God is a spirit. The word “spirit” was first placed on air, then carried over to an immaterial substance—so it is an equivocal word taking on a new meaning, not a metaphor.

2. The three arguments that God is not a body (“absolutely, without question, that God is not a body”) #

Point: Thomas shows it “in three ways.”

1. No body moves without being moved (clear inductively through the kinds of motion); God is the first immobile mover (shown above); so God is not a body.
2. The first being must be in act and in no way in ability (passive potency). Reason: though in one and the same thing ability precedes act in time, simply speaking act is before ability, because what is in potency is reduced to act only through a being in act. God is the first being; so no potency in him. But every body is in potency because it is continuous, and the continuous as such is divisible forever (Physics VI). So God is not a body.
   • Aside on prima causa vs primum ens: the first cause and first being are the same thing, but the phrases are not synonymous; act and ability name two ways of being, not cause, so what is first by act/ability is naturally called primum ens. One might object “I thought you showed God is the first cause”; he answers that the third way (possible/necessary, necessary through another/through itself) and the fourth (more and less, most of all, said of truth and being) are closer to showing a first being.
   • Note: Thomas is here effectively showing God is pure act, in the middle of the second argument. In the Summa Contra Gentiles this gets its own chapter (after immutability, no potency in God, using the Metaphysics IX argument that act is simply before ability), which is “better in one sense,” since God’s being pure act is used through all these articles.
   • Student: Aristotle held the heavenly bodies indivisible by nature—doesn’t that remove the potency of divisibility? Reply: Physics VI considers the continuous by itself, in abstraction; something else (nature) may prevent actual division, as Aristotle says matter can’t be divided infinitely; but the continuous always has part outside part, no part is actually the whole, so parts are to whole as matter to form, ability to act, and an intellectual division remains possible.
3. God is the most noble of beings (cf. the fourth way). No body can be most noble: a living body is nobler than a non-living one, but a body does not live insofar as body (else every body would live); it lives through another, as our body through the soul; that is nobler than the body.

• “Three is enough”—the “famous statement” of Physics I.

3. The logical form: second-figure syllogisms and conversion (“what kind of syllogisms are these”) #

Point: each argument’s main syllogism is in the second figure, and Aristotle had to prove such syllogisms valid.

• Recap: every body is a moved mover, God is not a moved mover, so God is not a body (premise 1 from natural philosophy, premise 2 from the previous question). Second: every body is in (passive) potency, God is not. Third: God is most noble, no body is most noble. In the second figure the middle is predicate in both premises, and one premise must be affirmative, one negative.
• Comparison: Socrates in the Phaedo showing the soul is not the harmony of the body—the soul resists the body’s inclinations, the harmony does not (“the soul has a harmony, but the harmony doesn’t have a harmony”).
• Student: is “God is pure act” one of the premises? No: it backs up the premise “God is not in potency.” Method: find the main syllogism (whose conclusion is the article’s conclusion), then what backs a premise—the prosyllogism or “backup syllogism”; analysis goes in the opposite direction from the argument.
• Student asks about the third argument, whose order is switched. He writes the two second-figure forms: (a) no A is B, every C is B; (b) every A is B, no C is B; both yield no C is A. Aristotle calls second and third figure syllogisms imperfect, not altogether clear as stated; to make them clear you convert the universal negative and reduce to the first figure. Form (a) needs one conversion; form (b) two (convert no C is B to no B is C, get no A is C, convert again)—“I would put this one on the final exam.” So it makes no difference whether the God-premise is affirmative or negative.
• Singulars convert too: no woman is Socrates / Socrates is not a woman; God is a singular.
• “It’s kind of an amazing thing… it shows about the human mind”: there are infinitely many true universal negatives (no dog is a cat, no square is a circle, no elephant is a tiger); how know each converts? Aristotle’s proof: suppose no A is B true and no B is A false; by the square of opposition some B is A is true; call that B “x”; x is both B and A; then some A (x) is B, contradicting no A is B. So the impossible follows.
• Student: where is the square of opposition? In the Peri Hermeneias; conversion is taught in the Prior Analytics, since needed to reduce imperfect syllogisms.
• Universal affirmative does not convert (every dog is an animal; not every animal a dog—one counterexample suffices), though it yields some B is A. Hence the second figure gives only negative conclusions. Only one mood proves a universal affirmative (Barbara, first figure); one first-figure and two second-figure moods prove a universal negative—“those four are the most important”; so there are more ways to prove a universal negative.
• Aside: sometimes the if-then or either-or syllogism is used, e.g. later when Thomas, having eliminated every kind of composition, concludes there is no composition in God.

4. Replies to the five objections (“under the likenesses of bodily things”) #

1. Scripture treats spiritual things under likenesses of bodily things (first question); three dimensions designate God’s virtual quantity: depth = power to know hidden things (cf. a “deep mind” vs a shallow one—“a lot of shallow minds in news these days”); altitude = excellence of his power; longitude = duration of his being; latitude = affection of his love for all (as Christ on the cross embracing the world). Another reading from Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 9: profundity = incomprehensibility of his essence; length = procession of his power penetrating all (“the long arm of the law”); latitude = extension over all, all contained under his perfection. Aside: Thomas divides Dionysius’s works into names said properly, metaphorically, and Trinitarian names.
   • Student: what is the sense of the letter with a metaphor—false? No: in a metaphor the sense of the letter is what the speaker intends, not what the words signify (“the Lord is a rock” = he supports me). Thomas on Paul’s irony: in figurative speech the speaker’s meaning is the sense of the letter. And as Augustine and Thomas hold, even the literal sense can be more than one.
2. Man is to God’s image not by body but by what excels other animals—reason and understanding, which are incorporeal (“that he may rule over the fish of the sea” follows in Gen 1:26); he adds: perhaps the will too.
3. Bodily parts are attributed by reason of their acts, a likeness: the eye signifies his power of seeing in an understandable, not sensible, way. Gregory the Great, Moralia: “anger disturbs the eye of the soul,” i.e. reason. “See” has genuinely been carried over to understanding, but “eye” does not become a meaning of reason—it remains a metaphor.
4. Posture (situm: position or posture?): sitting for immobility and authority (the bishop’s chair, the judge’s chair passing sentence); standing for helping/fighting (“you stand up” for a fight in the bar). Kasurik’s quote from Thomas, “Homo sedens fit sapiens”—the sitting man becomes wise.
5. One approaches God not by bodily steps (he is everywhere, inside us) but by affections of the mind; access and recess signify spiritual affection.

5. “Light from light”: metaphor vs new meaning (“light from light”) #

Student asks about the creed’s “light from light.” He says be careful: for one Father “light” may be a metaphor, for another (Paul: everything that manifests is light) it has taken on a new meaning and is no longer metaphor. Distinction: a word taking on a new meaning (“do you see what I mean?"—not metaphorical) vs a likeness exploited without new meaning (“eye of the soul,” the newspaper light bulb over a head—metaphor); sometimes hard to tell. Student notes light is on the immaterial extreme, unlike the “grosser” rock. He: fire as metaphor for the divine substance—light for divine understanding, warmth for divine love; or fire for the Trinity—substance the Father, light proceeding the Son, warmth the Holy Spirit; since the Son proceeds by way of God’s understanding himself, “the light by whom every man comes into this world.”

6. The rule of two and three in creeds and prayers (“the rule of two and three”) #

Point: articles of faith divide by three (Father, Son, Spirit—proper or appropriated) in the Apostles’ and Nicene-Constantinopolitan creeds, and by two (Christ’s divinity, humanity) in the Athanasian Creed (fourth century) and the creed of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215). Both divisions good. Mass: Gloria follows the three; Sanctus/Benedictus the two; Kyrie asks mercy of the Trinity, Agnus Dei of the incarnate Word; Te Deum follows the two. Theology uses the two: prima pars on the divinity, tertia pars on the humanity. Hail Mary: first part praises Mary in relation to God (“full of grace, the Lord is with thee,” said before the incarnation) then in relation to Christ’s humanity (“blessed is the fruit of thy womb,” Elizabeth’s words); “Holy Mary” toward God, “Mother of God” toward the incarnation (mother according to the human nature). Aside: Mozart’s masses put Sanctus/Benedictus in a separate slot; the music turns gentler at the incarnation in the creed.

7. Article 2: God is not composed of matter and form (“impossible for God to be matter”) #

Objections: (1) what has a soul is composed of matter and form; Hebrews 10:38 gives God a soul (“will not please my soul”)—“not very often that God is called soul”; (2) anger, joy are passions of the composite (De Anima I: anger a desire for revenge with a curdling of blood about the heart), attributed to God; (3) matter is the principle of individuation and God is an individual, not universal. Sed contra: everything composed of matter and form is a body, since dimensive quantity first inheres in matter. Three arguments:

1. Matter is in (passive) potency; God is pure act, “not having something of potentiality.” He again reads it as second figure: “matter is in ability, God is not in ability, so God is not matter,” with pure act as backup—“you can see how important that thing was that Aristotle did in the ninth book.”
2. Everything composed of matter and form is perfect and good through its form, hence good by partaking (matter partakes of form); the first and best good is not good by participation, since what is good per se is before what is good by partaking. Illustration: is love reasonable? (Shakespeare: love and reason keep little company)—not essentially, but it can partake of reason; Christ’s anger at the Pharisees is reasonable by partaking; moral virtues are reason impressed on emotions; hence something reasonable essentially—reason itself—must be before. Aristotle divides human virtues into those of reason (foresight, art, wisdom, knowledge, understanding) and those of what partakes of reason (will, emotions): prudence in reason, justice in will, fortitude in irascible, temperance in concupiscible.
   • Kasurik: the problem in reasoning is rarely the form (few forms, “once gotten down, you’re set for life”) but the matter, which gives trouble again and again.
3. Each agent acts through its form (through form it is in act and has something to give; through matter it receives); God is the first and per se agent, first mover and maker (shown); so he is first and per se form, not composed. If composed he would act through his form and not be the very first mover. Boethius: divina substantia forma est. Physics I (Natural Hearing, “called physics by the rude multitude”): Aristotle and Plato share the thought that form is godlike; form is act, opposed to matter, and good, lack of form bad, matter good only as desiring form. Asides: “you don’t want an unformed mind”; charity is the form of the virtues.

• Again three arguments; Thomas often says “hoc sufficit,” fitting for beginners, whereas SCG gives more. He recaps from memory with the class: pure act (first), participation of goodness (second), first mover through form (third).

8. Replies of Article 2 (“the soul is attributed to God by likeness of act”) #

1. Soul by likeness of act: what we wish is from our soul, so what pleases God’s soul means what pleases his will. He: God is rarely called soul in Scripture—“the exception proves the rule”—lest one think God the soul of the world, as pagans did who sacrificed to parts of the world; nobody would worship a stone.
2. Anger by likeness of effect: it is proper to the angry one to punish, so anger signifies God’s justice.
3. Different in kind: the objector thought of material things. Forms receptible in matter are individuated by matter, the first subject that cannot be in another (the circle on the mug and the one in the mind are not the same circle); a form of itself can be received in many; a form not receptible in matter but subsisting through itself is individuated by that very fact—such is God (as the angels also have no matter). Paul’s “in the form of God” = the divine nature; “form” as species (forms of government) can include matter—a different sense.

His words #

• spirit: first said of air, carried over to immaterial substance; equivocal, not metaphor.
• ability: [ed.: potency], here in the passive sense (Metaphysics IX distinction of active/passive).
• prima causa / primum ens: same thing, non-synonymous phrases; act and ability name ways of being, not cause.
• pure act: God has no passive potency; the backup premise throughout.
• main syllogism / backup syllogism (prosyllogism): the syllogism whose conclusion is the main conclusion, and the one supporting a premise.
• imperfect syllogism: second and third figure; made clear by conversion to the first figure.
• virtual quantity: what three dimensions designate in God.
• sense of the letter: in figurative speech, what the speaker intends, not what the words signify.
• new meaning vs metaphor: “see” for understanding is a new meaning; “eye of the soul” a metaphor.
• rule of two and three: division of articles of faith by Trinity or by divinity/humanity.
• good by partaking / good per se: what is so essentially precedes what is so by participation.
• Natural Hearing [ed.: Physics].
• divina substantia forma est (Boethius): the divine substance is form.
• situm: position or posture.

Texts #

Read in class

• Summa Theologiae I, q. 3, a. 1 (objections, sed contra John 4:24, body, five replies)
• Summa Theologiae I, q. 3, a. 2 (objections, sed contra, body, three replies)
• Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 9 (as quoted in the reply to obj. 1) Mentioned
• Job; Genesis 1:26; Hebrews (“figure of his substance”); Hebrews 10:38; Psalms; Isaiah
• Summa Theologiae I, q. 93 (verified source; not named by him—on image of God, probably in the reply to obj. 2)
• Summa Contra Gentiles (chapter on God as pure act after immutability)
• Aristotle, Physics I (three is enough; form godlike), Physics VI, Metaphysics IX, Prior Analytics, Peri Hermeneias, De Anima I
• Plato, Phaedo; Gregory the Great, Moralia; Boethius; Thomas on Paul’s Epistles; Athanasian Creed; Fourth Lateran Council (1215)

His questions #

• Are “first cause” and “first being” synonymous? No—same thing, but act and ability name ways of being, not cause.
• What kind of syllogisms are the three main arguments? Second figure, middle predicate in both, one premise negative.
• Is “God is pure act” one of the premises? No; it backs up “God is not in potency.”
• How do you know every true universal negative converts, given there are infinitely many? Aristotle’s proof by the square of opposition: denying it yields “some A is B.”
• What is the sense of the letter in a metaphor—is it false? No; it is what the speaker intends.
• Is “light from light” a metaphor? Depends whether “light” has taken on a new meaning (manifesting); left partly open.
• Is anger reasonable essentially? No, by partaking of reason; so reason itself must be before.
• How does Thomas argue God is not composed of matter and form? From pure act, from goodness by participation, from the first agent acting through form.