Summa I, Q.4 aa.1–2: God Is Perfect and Holds Every Perfection, Despite His Simplicity

Orientation #

He opens by saying they are “up to question four,” on the perfection of God, having finished simplicity (he later recalls that simplicity showed God is not in any genus, and refers back to “the fourth article” of the previous question for God as ipsum esse) (prev. lecture). He does not say what comes next, though he notes that a.3 (likeness of creatures to God) is still ahead. Verified sources: q. 4, a. 1 and a. 2 are matched against the text; the matcher also flags q. 93 for about ten minutes, but the transcript only shows a passing remark on “image and likeness.” The previous class finished q. 3, a. 8 and reviewed the prologue to q. 3; the next completes a. 2’s replies and moves into a. 3 and the transcendentals.

The class, in order #

1. Prologue to q. 4: perfection, then goodness (“after the consideration of the divine simplicity”) #

Point: Thomas attaches two questions on goodness to the one on perfection, “because each thing, according as it is perfect, is said to be good.”

• Parallels he draws: eternity is attached to unchangeableness; being everywhere to infinity. Nothing is attached to simplicity or to unity — though something could have been, since being a measure is a property of the one (said first of the one that begins number, then carried over to the one in other genera; Aristotle in the “tenth book of wisdom”; Plato in the Laws: not man but God is the measure of all things). Thomas simply does not give a consideration of God as measure. Aside: the Latin immensis for God’s infinity means unmeasurable.
• The three articles: (1) is God perfect; (2) is he universally perfect, having the perfections of all things; (3) can creatures be said to be like him. Both first answers are yes. Homer is a perfect poet, Mozart a perfect musician, but each lacks many perfections; God lacks no kind’s perfection.
• Why a.3 belongs here: the distance is so great that likeness is a problem. Scripture says both “Who is like the Lord?” and that we are made to God’s image and likeness. He recalls a Muslim student objecting to Shakespeare calling reason “godlike” (and, in the Merchant of Venice, friendship and enmity); and a council text (he thinks the “fourth Lateran council”, [ed.: Fourth Lateran is the usual reference]; he recalls Paul VI quoting it) that no likeness of creature to God can be noted without a greater unlikeness — so one can both affirm and deny the likeness, which matters for the names transferred from creatures to God.

2. A.1, the three objections (“that from which the word is taken”) #

Point: three reasons to deny “perfect” of God, each of which he glosses.

• Obj. 1 (the word): perfectum = “totally made” (factum); God is not made — the creed says genitum non factum of the Word. He stresses this makes you stop and think about the word, and draws the distinction it turns on: id a quo nomen imponitur vs. ad quem — the etymology vs. the meaning. Examples: Thomas’s (maybe false) etymology of stone from “what hurts the foot”; “geometry” = measuring the earth, though geometry is an abstract science of sphere and cube; “philosophy” — people say it means love of wisdom, but for Plato and Aristotle the word names the knowledge the lover of wisdom pursues; his own name Bergquist = mountain branch, which he is not. Etymology can be a manuductio to the meaning, but can also mislead; here it leads away, since God is not made.
• Obj. 2 (beginnings): God is the first beginning, but beginnings seem imperfect — the seed is not yet the animal or tree. Only in some senses of beginning is the beginning imperfect. He recalls from “the ninth book of wisdom” that with the truth all things harmonize: God is both first cause and best thing, whereas for those who make matter the first cause, the first cause is not the best.
• Obj. 3 (being): God’s essence is to be, but ipsum esse seems most imperfect, being most common and receiving additions. Genus is taken from matter, difference from form; as matter is formed variously, so the genus is determined by differences, and the more common is the more indistinct, “the least formed.” Anecdote: a friend at the American Catholic Philosophical Association told that “the philosopher” does not distinguish nature from art because at the level of being there is no distinction — “that’s the being that Hegel says passes over into non-being.” Saying “it’s a being” says practically nothing. The objection confuses the being said of all things with the being that is God.
• Sed contra: Matthew 5, “Be perfect, even as your heavenly Father is perfect” — “pretty good authority.”

3. A.1, corpus: first agent is most in act (“the ancient philosophers considered only the material principle”) #

Point: God is perfect because he is first beginning in the genus of efficient cause, and the agent as such is in act.

1. “The philosopher” (Aristotle, by antonomasia, as Homer is “the poet”) reports in Metaphysics XII that the Pythagoreans and Speusippus (Plato’s “ne’er-do-well nephew”; aside on Aristotle leaving the Academy because Athenian law kept the property in the family, then founding the Lyceum) did not attribute the best to the first beginning — still more so, he adds, the materialists.
2. Reason: they considered only the material principle, and the first material principle is most imperfect, being pure ability — hence “most stupidly” David of Dinant made God prime matter.
3. God is first beginning not as matter but as mover and maker; and as matter as such is ability (passive), the agent as such is act. Examples: I cannot give you anything through my passive ability; the cookie press gives the dough the shape it already has; Michelangelo gives shape to the marble. What is given is given as act; insofar as you are act you give, insofar as ability you receive.
4. Hence the first active beginning (opposed to a primum principium passivum) is most of all act, since act is simply before ability (Metaphysics IX: what goes from ability to act is ability first, but goes to act through something already in act); act is more perfect than ability; so God is most perfect. Conclusion: “pure act” is “a little term” for saying God is perfect; perfect is that to which nothing is lacking according to the way of its perfection.

4. A.1, replies (“when we speak about God, we stutter”) #

• Ad 1: Gregory the Great (pope and one of the four Western doctors, with Jerome, Augustine, Ambrose): balbutiendo — babbling, stuttering — we echo the high things of God. He admires the phrase: like “word” carried from spoken to written to mental word, stuttering is carried to the mind that cannot quite say what it means. What is not made cannot properly be called perfect by the word’s origin; but because in things that come to be, a thing is called perfect once led from ability into act, the name is transumptive (sumitur, taken; trans, carried over) to signify whatever lacks nothing of being in act, whether by way of being made or not. We name as we know: first material and artificial things, perfect after being made; then drop “made” and keep “actual.” Thomas does not bring in the etymology/meaning distinction explicitly, but could have. Aside: the Greek teleios relates to “end”; something perfect has reached its end; God need not reach his end but is the end of all things — perfect in a somewhat different sense.
• Ad 2: the material beginning we know is imperfect but not simply first; something perfect precedes it. The seed is cut off from a prior animal or plant. Ability is reduced to act only through something already in act (Metaphysics IX). Student: chicken or egg? He: the ninth book settles it — in some way egg before chicken, simply chicken (or something more perfect) before egg; “that answer is deep wisdom.”
  • Aside: the Laval dinner for De Koninck and de Monléon — “you should have praised Thomas”; “you should have praised Aristotle.” Two forms of pride: claiming an excellence you lack, or claiming from yourself one you had from another. Cajetan: Thomas so reverenced the fathers that he inherited the mind of all; similarly Aristotle with Plato and his predecessors, but not their errors.
• Ad 3: ipsum esse is the most perfect of all, compared to all things as act; nothing has actuality except insofar as it is; to be is the actuality even of forms, so it is not compared to others as receiver to received but as received to receiver, as act to ability. “The to-be of man, of the horse” — the to be is formal and received, not that to which being belongs. God, “I am who am,” is the most actual of all. “It’s a subtle thing.” Being is not a genus contracted by differences into kinds of being; rather different natures partake of being more or less fully.

5. A.2, objections and sed contra (“the woman has more capacity to love”) #

Point: three objections against all perfections being in God.

• Obj. 1: God is simple; the perfections of things are many, diverse, other — “a good objection.”
• Obj. 2: opposites cannot be in the same thing; each species is perfected by its own difference, and differences dividing a genus are opposed. His example: the perfection of a man and of a woman. Francis de Sales (quoted with approval by Paul VI when making Teresa of Avila a doctor) says woman has more capacity to love; the great theologians of faith seeking understanding — Augustine, Thomas — are men. Knowing draws the thing into your head, loving puts your heart into the thing: they “work almost in contrary ways.” How can a simple God have both?
• Obj. 3: living is more perfect than being, being wise than living; God’s essence is to be; so life and wisdom are not in him. Aside: De Koninck’s essay “the boredom of being” — just being does not seem interesting.
• Sed contra: Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 5: God in something one praehabet all existing things. He adds the Scripture “I will show you every good” (to Moses, and he thinks Abraham), which Thomas reads as “that is myself.”

6. A.2, corpus: universally perfect, the “simply vs. in a way” distinction (“he’s not perfect simply, without qualification”) #

Point: in God are the perfections of all things; he is universally perfect, lacking no nobility found in any genus — and God is in no genus, so his perfection is not tied to one kind.

• “The commentator” on Metaphysics V is Averroes, who commented on almost everything (though Thomas, who understands Aristotle better, has more title to the name; in On the Unity of the Intellect against the Averroists Thomas refutes their arguments and their appeal to Aristotle’s text, ending quam leviter errant). Averroes sees in Aristotle’s chapter on the perfect that God is perfect in a different way from creatures — credit to Aristotle for seeing it.
• Student asked what kind of distinction that is: simply vs. in a certain way. He stresses that people often miss it. It is the crux of Metaphysics IX: in definition, goodness and perfection act is before ability; in time ability is before act in one way, but simply act is before ability. The commonest mistake about the first cause — that it is prime matter — is a mistake of simply and not-simply. The same mistake: at the start of philosophy about the “natural road” (more known to us is not more known simply), in the Meno about the road of logic, and in Descartes’ “private roads,” proceeding everywhere geometrically because that is the best way simply, not for natural philosophy; and Aristotle’s Politics — the best government is not the best for this people. So Mozart lacks nothing a human musician should have, Homer the perfect poet, Aristotle the perfect philosopher — perfect in a way, not “perfect. Period.” Perhaps why Christ says “God alone is good”: without qualification, since good follows on perfect.
• Aristotle’s wise man “knows all things” — in some way, because he knows what is said of all things (being, one); only God knows all things simply. Like knowing every man by knowing what a man is; the “wise kid” who tells his dad he now knows everything. “It takes a long time before you really get a hold of that kind of distinction,” but then it recurs all through philosophy.
• Aside on Euclid: “Proposition One” is misleading — it is a proposal (protasis, not prothesis [ed.: his Greek is uncertain here]), what he proposes to prove; likewise Thomas states the conclusion first and then shows it.

7. A.2, corpus: the two ways of showing it (“whatever perfection is found in the effect”) #

First way (from the existence of God, q. 2: first efficient cause):

1. Whatever perfection is in the effect is in the efficient cause, either in the same ratio if the agent is univocal (dog generates dog, man generates man) or more eminently if equivocal (the old example: the sun is a likeness of all things generated by its power).
2. The effect pre-exists in the power (virtus) of the agent, and this is not to pre-exist more imperfectly — that would be to pre-exist in matter, whose ability is imperfect — but more perfectly, since the agent as such is perfect.
3. God is first efficient cause; so the perfections of all things pre-exist in him more eminently. Dionysius ch. 5: God is not this and not that, but all things, not as composed of them but as their simple cause. Second way (from simplicity, q. 3 a. 4: God is subsisting esse itself). Aside: in both Summas and the Compendium simplicity precedes perfection, one reason being that this argument needs God’s being ipsum esse.
4. If something hot lacks the whole perfection of heat, it is because heat is partaken not according to its perfect notion; if heat subsisted by itself, nothing of the power of heat could be lacking to it (heat is that by which the hot is hot).
5. So God, to be itself subsisting, lacks nothing of the perfection of being. Student: “God is being all that being can possibly be.” He: yes.
6. The perfections of all things pertain to the perfection of being, since things are perfect insofar as they in some way have to be (you are not perfect through wisdom unless through wisdom you are said to be wise).
7. So no perfection is lacking to God, who contains simply what others have by partial, contracted being. Dionysius ch. 5: God is not existing in some way but simpliciter (Greek haplos) and incircumscripte, uncircled to any genus, holding all uniformly, and is to-be to all subsisting things.

• Aside on Dionysius: Thomas said he falls far short of him; the medievals took him for the Areopagite converted by Paul (“from the horse’s mouth”); he thinks Gregory the Great brought the works from Constantinople; he may not be that Dionysius.

8. A.2, reply to obj. 1, and how simple can be perfect (“without any detriment to His simplicity”) #

Ad 1: Dionysius ch. 5 — the sun, being one and shining uniformly, holds beforehand the many different qualities and substances of sensible things; much more in the cause of all do all things pre-exist by natural union; so things other and opposed in themselves pre-exist as one in God without detriment to his simplicity. “That’s hard for us to understand.” Hints toward it:

• Aristotle’s three friendships (utility — nations, France or Germany useful to England depending on the war; pleasure; virtue). The virtuous friend is more useful and more pleasant, since two cowards or two fools are alike in something not naturally pleasing, two courageous or wise men in what is naturally pleasing; so true friendship (Cicero’s term) contains the lower ones in a simpler, fuller way.
• The square: more area for less perimeter; tragedy more perfect than epic yet simpler (Poetics).
• We understand simplicity and perfection negatively, not as God is; in material things they seem opposites, which is why Thomas puts them together, to make us transcend that experience; “that’s why we want to see God as He is.”
• Teresa of Avila: God is altogether simple, and the closer one gets to God the simpler one gets — and the more perfect. Saints are simple (Mother Teresa, via an Albanian student); the bad are complicated (Machiavelli’s prince; a biography of Mao, which George Bush was reading). Martha “concerned about many things” vs. Mary’s better and simpler part; his father’s business with a hundred employees vs. his three philosopher sons’ simpler life. Thomas (a saying he cannot locate) that the wise man is a man of one book; a Dominican told De Koninck to memorize the Summa; John Paul II’s letter from the Angelicum marvelling that Thomas is so simple and so profound, unlike the complication he had met; Thomas simpler and wiser than Hegel or Kant; De Koninck on getting back to the simple understanding of Aristotle and Thomas, past layers of commentary; a German paper on Benedict XVI at Cologne: “finally a scholar we can understand”; the wise men he has known (De Koninck, Dionne) simpler than most academics. Closes with Shakespeare’s sonnet complaining of “simple truth miscalled simplicity.” The class ends here; replies to obj. 2 and 3 of a.2 are not reached.

His words #

• “wisdom”, “book of wisdom”: his name for Aristotle’s Metaphysics [ed.: Metaphysics], e.g. “ninth book of wisdom,” “twelfth book of wisdom.”
• “ability”: potentia [ed.: potency]; “passive ability” for matter as receiver.
• “beginning”: principium [ed.: principle].
• “id a quo nomen imponitur / ad quem”: that from which a name is taken vs. that to which it is applied; etymology vs. meaning.
• “manuductio”: leading by the hand from etymology to meaning.
• “genitum non factum”: begotten not made, from the creed.
• “balbutiendo” (Gregory): babbling, stuttering — he prefers “stuttering,” extended to the mental word.
• “transumptive” / “transumptio”: a name carried over (trans + sumitur, taken) to a wider sense.
• “teleios”: Greek for perfect, related to “end.”
• “the philosopher” / “the commentator”: Aristotle and Averroes by antonomasia; “the poet” for Homer.
• “praehabet”: Dionysius — God has beforehand all existing things.
• “simpliciter” / “haplos” / “incircumscripte”: simply, without qualification; not encircled by any genus.
• “univocal vs. equivocal agent”: same ratio (dog from dog) vs. more eminent (the sun).
• “proposal” for Euclid’s “proposition”: what he proposes to prove.
• “universally perfect”: lacking no perfection found in any genus.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 4, prologue; a. 1 (objections, sed contra, corpus, three replies); a. 2 (objections, sed contra, corpus, reply to obj. 1).
• Dionysius, De Divinis Nominibus, ch. 5 (as quoted in a. 2).
• Gregory the Great on stuttering about God (as quoted in a. 1 ad 1).
• Matthew 5, “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Metaphysics XII (Pythagoreans, Speusippus); IX (act before ability, chicken and egg); V, chapter on the perfect; X (the one as measure); Metaphysics I on the wise man knowing all things (inferred); Poetics (tragedy vs. epic); Politics (best government not best for this people); Nicomachean Ethics on the three friendships (inferred).
• Plato, Laws (God the measure); Meno.
• Thomas, De Unitate Intellectus contra Averroistas; Summa contra Gentiles and Compendium Theologiae (order of simplicity and perfection); q. 3 a. 4 (God is ipsum esse) and q. 2 (first efficient cause).
• Scripture: “Who is like the Lord?”; image and likeness; “I will show you every good”; “God alone is good”; Martha and Mary. The matcher flags Summa I q. 93 (image of God) for about ten minutes; the transcript shows only the passing “image and likeness” remark.
• Council text on greater unlikeness (he says “fourth”; Lateran IV inferred); Francis de Sales; Teresa of Avila; Cajetan; Cicero on true friendship; Shakespeare (Merchant of Venice; a sonnet on “simple truth miscalled simplicity”); John Paul II’s letters from the Angelicum; De Koninck, “the boredom of being.”

His questions #

• What does immensis mean? Unmeasurable, immeasurable.
• Does the etymology of “perfect” (totally made) fit God? No; that from which a word is taken is not necessarily that to which it is applied.
• Why did the ancients not attribute the best to the first beginning? They considered only the material principle, which is pure ability and most imperfect.
• One is an agent through what? Through act; through ability one receives.
• Who came first, the chicken or the egg? In some way the egg, but simply the chicken (or something more perfect) — see Metaphysics IX.
• How can God have both the woman’s perfection of loving and the man’s of knowing, being simple? Left open at the objection; answered in principle by ad 1 — opposites pre-exist as one in God without detriment to his simplicity, which “is hard for us to understand.”
• What kind of distinction is that between God’s perfection and Mozart’s or Homer’s? Simply vs. in a certain way; Mozart is a perfect musician, God is perfect without qualification.
• Does the wise man know all things simply? No; only in a qualified way, knowing what is said of all things; God alone knows all things simply.
• Why does Thomas treat simplicity before perfection? Because the second argument for universal perfection needs God’s being ipsum esse subsistens.
• Tragedy is more perfect than epic — and what else? Simpler; a hint that simpler and more perfect can go together.