Summa Theologiae I, Q.6, aa.1–3: God Is Good, the Highest Good, and Good by His Essence

Orientation #

He refers back to “an article on that subject in a previous question” (mode, species, order) (prev. lecture), to the question on God’s perfection (“the fourth question I guess”), on simplicity, and to the second question on God’s existence. He ends by announcing a break “before going to the fourth article.” The previous class treated goodness in mode, species and order and the division of good into noble, useful and pleasant; the next continues with q. 6 a. 4 and q. 7 on infinity.

The class, in order #

1. Question 6 opened: the four articles (“about this, four things are asked”) #

He reads the plan: (1) whether to be good belongs to God, (2) whether God is the summum bonum, (3) whether he alone is good through his essence, (4) whether all things are good by the divine goodness. It is easy to see why “good” precedes “highest good,” and why article 4 comes last; but he notes that in the Summa Contra Gentiles Thomas shows God is ipsa bonitas before showing he is the summum bonum, so “the order is different” here, though ipsa bonitas and article 3 are “very similar,” not exactly the same.

2. Article 1, objections and sed contra (“God is immensus which means what”) #

• Obj. 1: good consists in mode, species and order; God is immensus (not measurable, or “infinite”) and ordered to nothing; so not good.
• Obj. 2: the good is what all want (the first definition of good); not all want God, because not all know him, and nothing is wanted unless known.
• Sed contra: Lamentations, God is good to those hoping in him, to the soul seeking him.

3. Article 1, body: the agent is desirable (“every agent makes or does what is like itself”) #

Point: Thomas proves God good not directly from perfection but “a little kind of roundabout way” through causality.

1. Something is good as desirable; each thing desires its own perfection.
2. The perfection and form of the effect is a likeness of the agent, since every agent makes what is like itself. Shown inductively: two dogs make a dog, not a cat; two cats make a cat, not an elephant; two numbers added or divided give a number; two statements syllogized give a statement. Objection: the carpenter makes a chair, not a man; reply: by art, not nature, he makes what is like the idea of the chair in his art, so “in a more subtle way” still like himself. Deeper reason: by ability (in the passive sense) one receives, by act one gives; act is “giveable” (cookie press gives its shape to the dough). “More divine to give than to receive”: God is pure act, able only to give.
3. Hence the agent itself is desirable, having the aspect of the good: what is desired is to partake of its likeness.
4. God is the first efficient cause of all things (q. 2), so the notion of good and desirable belongs to him. He notes Thomas cites Dionysius, Divine Names, calling God good as that from which all things subsist — “the pernicious influence of Dionysius again,” meaning Thomas thinks here the way that treatise thinks. Illustrations of “partaking of the likeness”: Shakespeare’s exhortation to use reason gives two reasons in comparison to God — he gave us “godlike reason” not “to fust in us unused” (obeying God’s plan) and reason is godlike (becoming like him); the connection is that God’s plan is that we become like him. St John: “we shall be like Him, for we shall see him as he is.” God makes everything for himself not to get anything but to make everything like himself. Why the roundabout route? Because “want” almost means lack, so it makes more sense to say the creature wants the good than that God does. Plato’s Symposium: Socrates reasons that if you love you want, if you want you lack, so love lacks the good and beautiful; but “God is love” (St John), so the premise “if you love, you want” is only probable — if you already have what you love, you have joy or delight, not wanting. English “want” carries both senses (“you’re sadly wanting” = lacking). Thomas: in God only love and joy, no wanting or hoping. He suspects the reason for the route will appear in article 2 (“I’ll talk to him when I get up there”).

4. Article 1, replies and digression on likeness to God (“pertains to the notion of caused good”) #

• Reply 1: mode, species and order pertain to caused good; good is in God as in a cause, whence he imposes these on others (Scripture: he made all things…); they are in him as in a cause. Augustine’s triad, then, is about created good, not good “period” — which “I don’t know if that was clear” from the earlier article. Plato in his last work: God, not man (Protagoras), is the measure of all things, and God himself is not measured. Aside: Julius Caesar, “the elements were so mixed in him” — that is modus, nothing excessive (too much fire, choleric; too much water, phlegmatic).
• Reply 2: all, in desiring their own perfections, desire God, since every perfection is a likeness of the divine being (through every form one is a certain being, like “I am who am”). Cf. Natural Hearing I: Aristotle and Plato agree form is godlike, good and desirable — form is a kind of act, matter a more distant likeness because ability, not act. Three ways of desiring God: some know him in himself (rational creature, us and angels); some know partakings of his goodness (extends to sensible knowledge); some have natural desire without knowledge, inclined by a superior knower. Thomas has more in the Summa Contra Gentiles and in commenting on the opening of the Nicomachean Ethics: “the good is what all want” can be taken of good in general or of God himself.
• Even the sinner seeks to be like God in a perverse way (the passage taken of the devil, “I will ascend…”). Cassirer, Essay on Man, makes “know thyself” the end of philosophy; it is really the beginning (know what you are, what is good for you, what you know and don’t know); making it the end is perverse but still an imitation of God, who knows all by knowing himself. Marx: man transforms the world to see himself in it, as a kind of God. Question: are we more like God knowing ourselves (a proportional likeness) or knowing God (knowing the very thing he knows)? Revealed theology imitates God’s way of knowing — God first, then other things in relation to him — unlike philosophy, where God comes at the last part of first philosophy.
• Feuerbach’s syllogism: the infinite is God, the human mind is infinite, therefore… Two senses of “infinite,” as in Natural Hearing I, where Melissus goes from no beginning or end in time (not generated) to infinite in size. Nineteenth-century thought returns to the “crude thinking” of the first philosophers; our mind is “infinite” only in that we can always learn more, not in lacking limits — and “a little bit of pride” to base a life on such arguments.

5. Article 2, objections and sed contra (“God is not the highest good”) #

• Obj. 1: summum adds something to good, else it belongs to every good; what has something by addition is composed; God is simple. He shows the same form against “first cause”: first adds to cause, so the first cause is composed — “you can have a lot of fun arguing these ways.”
• Obj. 2: good is what all want (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics opening); only God is wanted by all; so nothing else is good; Matthew 19:17, “no one is good but God alone” (Christ, called good in his humanity, deflects it). But “highest” is said in comparison, as the hottest to other hot things; you cannot be hottest if nothing else is hot.
• Obj. 3: highest implies comparison; things not in one genus cannot be compared (sweetness, a quality, is not more or less than a line); God is in no genus.
• Sed contra: Augustine, De Trinitate I, the Trinity is the summum bonum discerned by the most purged minds. Purgation vs purification: removing the bad vs making pure, “two sides of the same coin,” as in the catharsis of the emotions.

6. Article 2, body: highest good simpliciter (“not from a univocal agent”) #

Point: God is summum bonum simpliciter, without qualification, not in some genus — Aristotle is summus philosophus, Homer or Shakespeare highest poet, but not summum simpliciter.

1. Good is attributed to God as that from which all desired perfections flow as from a first cause (a. 1).
2. Not as from a univocal agent (dog produces dog: cause and effect same in kind) but an equivocal cause agreeing with effects neither in species nor even genus (contrast: horse and ass produce a mule — different species, same genus).
3. In a univocal cause the likeness is found uniformly; in an equivocal cause, more excellently — as heat in the sun more excellently than in fire (old science). He thinks this still holds: Aristotle rejected Anaxagoras’s stone on fire (“it would have burned out”); a sphere of 93 million miles radius, we occupy practically nothing of it, yet all warmth and energy come from it; Weizsäcker (Heisenberg’s pupil) explained the sun in the twentieth century.
4. Therefore good is in God in the most excellent way; hence summum bonum. He now sees why article 1 argued through efficient cause: the first article “prepares the way” so one argument is “a stepping stone” to the next. Same in the Summa Contra Gentiles, where the first argument of a chapter takes off from the previous conclusion — a way of writing “for the learner,” like geometry’s “continuous syllogisms,” the conclusion of one the premise of the next.

7. Article 2, replies: relation of reason (“adds only a relation”) #

• Reply 1: summum adds not something absolute (Thomas always opposes absolute to relative, as quantity and quality to relation) but only a relation, and the relation by which God is said toward creatures is real in the creature, in God only by reason — Aristotle’s example: scibile is said relatively to science because science is referred to it, not conversely. So no composition, only that other things fall short of him. Same for “first cause.” Our minds cannot understand one thing really related to another without conceiving the other relative to it; Thomas’s most complete treatment of relations of reason is in the De Potentia. “Very hard for us to understand when you first hear that.” Examples of relations of reason: Socrates is the same as Socrates (two Socrates only in the mind); left and right pillar (real in us, not in the pillars). Real relation: he is really bigger than Tabitha the cat — “very important for my survival” (toy-soldier size; The Incredible Shrinking Man eaten by cats). Student: a teacher called this a “non-mutual relation” — real on our part, not on God’s.
• Reply 2: “good is what all desire” does not mean each good is desired by all, but that whatever is desired has the aspect of good; “no one is good but God” is understood of good through essence (next article) — not denying we partake of good.
• Reply 3: things in different genera cannot be compared, but God is not in another genus; he is outside every genus as its beginning, and so compared to all by excess, as an equivocal cause exceeds its effects. Not wiser than us “in the same line,” knowing more theorems; his knowledge is of a wholly different, non-generic kind.

8. Article 3, objections and sed contra (“proprium… private to God”) #

Translating proprium: often “unique to,” so “private” — bonum commune and bonum proprium = common good and private good; “proper” would make the common good “my improper good.”

• Obj. 1: one and good are both convertible with being (“among the most universals”); every being is one through its essence (Aristotle, “fourth book of wisdom,” Metaphysics IV); so every being is good through its essence. Digression: you cannot understand the less universal without the more universal (odd number needs number, not conversely); so without the most universal you understand nothing, and first philosophy is about the most universal; and if there were nothing most universal, an infinity would precede all understanding. “Transcendentals” transcend the ten genera. He notes one is closer to being than good (Aristotle: being and one the subject of first philosophy, good and true more like properties).
• Obj. 2: to be itself is desired by all, so each thing’s being is its good; each thing is being through its essence. “Pretty convincing.” Aside: Voltaire reportedly used Thomas’s objections on Catholics; some early fathers praised for holding faith despite unanswered objections; objections can “shake up” a student a long time.
• Obj. 3: everything is good by its goodness; if not by its essence, its goodness is a being that must be good by another goodness, and so forever, or else stop at a first goodness good by essence — so each thing is good by essence. Compare existence: must my existence exist, and its existence exist? Answer sketched: my existence exists through itself as that by which I exist, not as the thing that exists — this mix-up may be in the objection.
• Sed contra: Boethius, De Hebdomadibus (Thomas has a commentary), all things other than God are good by participation, partaking, so not through essence.

9. Article 3, body: threefold perfection (“the perfection of each thing is threefold”) #

Point: God alone is good through his essence, nature, substance; a thing is good as perfect — which is why he thinks the perfection route could have come first. Perfection is threefold: (1) constituted in its very being; (2) accidents added for perfect operation (he had to add geometry and justice to himself since his mother’s womb); (3) attaining something else as end. Fire (old science): being through substantial form; hotness, lightness, dryness; resting in its own place. No creature has this by essence, God alone: his essence is his existence; he has no accidents (question on simplicity), so what is accidental in others — powerful, wise — is essential in him (human nature has no judgment; geometry must be added to judge the theorem on the square of the hypotenuse); he is ordered to nothing else but is the last end of all. “That’s pretty definitive… I’m convinced.”

10. Article 3, replies (“one does not imply the notion of perfection”) #

• Reply 1: one implies not perfection but indivision only (the question on God’s unity will explain: undivided being — Thomas and Albert sometimes add “distinct from all others”). Simple essences are undivided in act and ability (a point has no parts); composed essences are undivided in act, divisible in ability. So each thing is one through its nature, not good, since good is being perfect. Thomas’s division of Metaphysics V (“fifth book of wisdom”): words of cause (beginning, cause, element, nature, with “necessary” as a condition), names of the subject (one, being, substance and their parts), then properties of being (perfect, whole, part). One goes with the subject; perfect is “not as close”: through his nature he is one, but he is a “very complicated person” whose perfection and end are not through his nature.
• Reply 2: each thing is good insofar as it has being, but a creature’s essence is not its existence; otherwise it would be cause of its own existence, “what does not exist the cause of what exists.” Nature, like form, is the beginning of existence, not its cause in the strict sense.
• Reply 3: the created thing’s goodness is not its nature but something added — its existence, an accidental perfection, or order to the end; this added goodness is called good as it is called being: because by it something is (is good), not because it is or is good by something further. It is good in the sense of that by which something is good. “A little thing to chew on.” Break before article 4.

His words #

• immensus; not measurable, or infinite.
• want; he stresses it carries both “desire” and “lack” (stronger than Latin desiderare).
• ability (passive sense); what receives, opposed to act, which gives [ed.: potency].
• Natural Hearing; Aristotle’s Physics.
• “fourth/fifth book of wisdom”; Metaphysics IV / V.
• univocal agent vs equivocal cause; same in kind as effect vs agreeing in neither species nor genus.
• simpliciter; without any qualification.
• absolute; opposed to relative (quantity, quality vs relation).
• scibile; the scientifically knowable, related to science only by reason.
• continuous syllogisms; conclusion of one is premise of the next.
• proprium; private, unique to (not “proper”).
• transcendentals; what transcends the ten genera.
• one; undivided being (indivision only, not perfection).
• purgation vs purification; removing the bad vs making pure.

Texts #

Read in class:

• Thomas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 6, a. 1 (whole article)
• Thomas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 6, a. 2 (whole article)
• Thomas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 6, a. 3 (whole article)

Mentioned:

• Thomas, Summa Contra Gentiles (God as ipsa bonitas before summum bonum; chapter-linking arguments)
• Thomas, De Potentia (relations of reason)
• Thomas, commentary on Nicomachean Ethics opening; on Metaphysics V
• Augustine, De Trinitate I; Dionysius, Divine Names; Boethius, De Hebdomadibus
• Aristotle, Physics I (form godlike; Melissus); Metaphysics IV (one and being), V; Nicomachean Ethics I
• Plato, Symposium; Plato’s “last work” (God the measure)
• Lamentations; Matthew 19:17; 1 John (“we shall be like Him”); Isaiah passage on the devil (inferred)
• Shakespeare, Hamlet speech on reason (inferred); Julius Caesar
• Cassirer, Essay on Man; Feuerbach; Marx; Anaxagoras; Weizsäcker

His questions #

• When two dogs get together, do they make a cat? No — every agent makes what is like itself.
• Does God want himself? No; in God only love and joy, since wanting implies lack.
• Are we more like God when we know ourselves or when we know God? Knowing God, since then we know the very thing he knows; self-knowledge is only a proportional likeness.
• Could you be the hottest thing if nothing else was hot? No; hottest means hotter than all the rest.
• What do you mean by univocal agent? Cause and effect the same in kind (dog produces dog); God is an equivocal cause.
• Is “first” or “highest” something real added to God? No; only a relation, and one of reason, real in the creature.
• Is proprium to be translated “proper” or “private”? Usually “private,” unique to.
• Am I good through my very nature? No; one through my nature, but not good, since my being, accidents and end are not my nature.