God Present by Essence, Presence and Power; God Alone Everywhere; the Unchangeable God (q.8 a.3–4, q.9 a.1)

Orientation #

He begins directly with “the third article” of q. 8, referring back to what was “saw before” (God is not in things as part of their nature) and to the order of attributes already treated: simple, perfect and good, infinite. He announces that immutability is “the fourth attribute” and that eternity will follow it as time follows on the changeable. The previous class treated q. 8 aa. 1–2 (God in all things, God everywhere); the next continues q. 9 aa. 1–2.

The class, in order #

1. Objections and Gregory’s text (“through essence, presence, and what power”) #

Point: the four objections to the three “ways” and the authority behind them.

• Obj. 1: to be in something “by essence” seems to mean being of its essence, “the soul of the world”; but God is not part of any nature (seen before).
• Obj. 2: “present” means not lacking or absent; that is what “by essence” means; so essence and presence are the same, and the list is superfluous.
• Obj. 3: God is beginning of things by knowledge and will as much as by power; we don’t say He is in things by knowledge and will; so not by power either.
• Obj. 4: grace is one perfection added to substance among many; so every perfection would give a special way of God being in things.
• Sed contra: Gregory (he assumes Gregory the Great) on the Canticle of Canticles: God is in all things commonly by presence, power, substantia, and familiarly in some by grace. He notes the verbal difference: Gregory says substantia, the article says essentia; “somewhat the same thing,” but different words. He suspects obj. 4 arises from Gregory’s mention of grace.

2. Body: two ways God is in things (“through the manner of a agent cause”) #

Point: an “interesting distinction” — God in things as agent, and God in things as object.

1. As agent cause: in everything He creates, because the agent is together with what it acts on (“how can you act upon something without being in contact with that thing?”).
2. As object of operation in the one operating, “proper” to operations of the soul: the known in the knower, the desired in the one desiring. So God is especially in the rational creature that knows and loves Him, actually or habitually; since this is through grace, He is in the saints by grace (“you’re the temple of the Holy Spirit… through grace”).

Then the three names, led “by the hand” from human affairs:

• King in his whole kingdom by power, though not everywhere present; things in someone’s sight are present to him, as everything in a house is present to one who is not by substance in each part; a thing is in the place where its substance is. He remarks Thomas is here explaining Gregory’s words.
• Three errors, one per name: Manichaeans (bodily things under a contrary principle, “matter is evil”; God’s power doesn’t reach “this sublunar world”) — hence by power; those who admit divine power but deny providence reaches lower bodies (Job 22: he walks around the cardinal points of the heavens and doesn’t consider our things) — hence by presence; those who say God created only the first creatures and these the rest — hence by essence.
• Summary: by power as all things subject to His power; by presence as all naked and open to His eyes (“no closed doors to God”); by essence as cause of their being. He notes “a little overlap” between power and essence, but essence points to giving existence; power then acts on or changes what exists; presence is “something quite different,” His knowledge.
• Aside: De Koninck disliked the word “essence” because in French it means gasoline; but essentia is obviously related to esse.
• Aside on Thomas using the common words of his time: in teaching love and friendship he prefers to translate amor concupiscentiae / amor amicitiae as “love of wanting” / “love of wishing well,” since friendship is mutual wishing well, and in pleasant and useful friendships (jokes, a good meal, useful dealings) neither party really wishes the other well. Break.

3. The four replies (“through His essence, right, His substance is present”) #

• Ad 1: not as being of their essence, but because through His essence (substance) He is present to all as cause of their being. He admits the phrase is “awkward” and “could be easily misunderstood”; its appropriateness is that God’s essence is being, and all else partakes of it.
• Ad 2: a thing is present to what is subject to its sight though distant in substance; so two ways are needed — everywhere by knowledge, everywhere by giving existence.
• Ad 3: knowledge and will put the known and willed in the knower/willer, so by these things are more in God than God in things; power is a beginning of acting in another, so by power the agent is in another. His comment: power taken of God’s knowing and willing is not really distinct (no act/ability difference in God), but power compared to exterior things has really distinct terms; that is why “power” rather than “will” or “reason.”
• Ad 4: no added perfection but grace makes God in something as object known and loved; another singular mode is by union — the Incarnation, “Emmanuel” (Matthew, Isaiah), treated in its place, the Third Part.

4. Article 4, objections (“to be everywhere is not private to God”) #

Point: six things that seem to be everywhere besides God. (He renders proprium as “private to God.”)

1. The universal is everywhere and always (the Philosopher); first matter is in all bodies.
2. Number is in the numbered; the universe is constituted in number (Wisdom 11); so some number is everywhere. (“You wonder” where he gets these objections.)
3. The universe is a perfect whole body (De Caelo I) and outside it there is no place.
4. An infinite body would have no place outside it.
5. Augustine, De Trinitate VI: the soul is whole in the whole body and whole in each part (Thomas often takes off from Augustine here, since Aristotle is not explicit); if only one animal existed its soul would be everywhere.
6. Augustine, Epistle to Volusianus: where the soul sees it senses, where it senses it lives, where it lives it is; it sees the whole heavens.

• Sed contra, Ambrose on the Holy Spirit: who would dare call a creature Him who is in all things, everywhere and always — proper to divinity.

5. Body: everywhere first and per se (“as a whole, is everywhere”) #

1. “First”: what belongs to a thing by its parts does not belong to it first — man white by his teeth is not white first; so a thing everywhere by diverse parts in diverse places is not everywhere first.
2. “Per se”: not by some supposition happening — a grain (or apple) would be everywhere if it were the only body.
3. Everywhere per se belongs to that which, whatever positions are granted, even an infinity of places, must be in them all; this is God, because nothing can be except through Him, and by Himself, not by a part.

6. Replies to the six (“but not according to the same what? Being”) #

• Universal and first matter: everywhere, but not by the same existence — matter has a different existence under each form; the universal is said of many each with its own existence (Socrates’s and Plato’s existence not the same); so everywhere by the existence of the singulars, not first.
• Number: an accident, in place only by happening; not whole in each numbered thing but by part (“four in me and four in you”).
• Universe: everywhere but not first (whole not in each place, part here, part there) nor per se (if other places were laid down it would not be in them; God would).
• Infinite body: everywhere by parts.
• One animal: its soul would be everywhere first, but by happening (“if this one dog is the only thing”); what without which other things cannot be is not everywhere by happening.
• Soul sees “somewhere”: if the adverb determines seeing on the side of the object, it sees and senses in the heavens but does not live or exist there, since living and being do not pass to an exterior object; if it determines the act as going forth from the seer, then where it sees it is — but then not everywhere. “Kind of strange objection.”

7. Transition: the order of the attributes (“the what? Fourth attribute of God”) #

Simple; perfect and therefore good; infinite and consequently everywhere; now unchangeable, with eternity following on it as time follows on the changeable. In the philosophy of nature course, after motion and time, he makes an aside to God’s immutability and eternity as their negation. Two questions: whether God is altogether unchangeable; whether that is proper to God.

• Aside: Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar compares himself to the North Star, everything revolving around him.

8. Q. 9 a. 1 objections (“God is not altogether unchangeable”) #

1. Augustine, Genesis “to the letter” (Jerome complaining of not sticking to the text), book VIII: the Creator Spirit moves itself, though not by time or place.
2. Wisdom 7: wisdom is more mobile than all mobile things; God is Wisdom (reminds him of Heraclitus’s fragment about wisdom moving through all things).
3. Approach and withdraw signify motion; Scripture says approach God and He will approach you.

• Sed contra: Malachi 3:6, “I am God, and I do not change”; he also recalls the James text (“not the shadow of change”), to quote later.

9. The three arguments of the body (“God is pure act, right?”) #

1. From pure act: the first being is pure act with no potency; potency is simply after act (Metaphysics IX); whatever changes is in some way in potency; so God cannot change. He adds the definition of motion: act of what is able to be insofar as it is able to be. “This idea that God is pure act is a middle term for almost all these attributes.”
2. From simplicity: what moves partly remains, partly passes (moved from whiteness to blackness, substance remains), so is composed; God has no composition. Philosophy-of-nature backing: “the hard becomes soft” seems contradictory (hard would be soft); it is the butter, not hardness, that becomes soft, so butter and hardness are really distinct — what changes is composed. Then the theology premise “God is not composed” and a second-figure syllogism (affirm of one, deny of the other): as Socrates against Simmias, the soul resists the body’s inclinations, harmony would not, so the soul is not a harmony; a mother is a woman, Socrates is not, so not a mother. His own version: if this becomes that, there must be something in this able to be that, and something whereby this is not that — hence composition.
3. From infinity: what moves acquires what it did not have; God, comprehending all fullness of being, can acquire nothing. Example: what do you give the guy who has everything? God says “I will show you every good” — Thomas: that is myself. This explains treating infinity and simplicity before immutability. Three arguments are enough, as Aristotle says; the Summa Contra Gentiles gives ten or more, so the Summa “is more for beginners.”

10. Ad 1: Plato calls every operation a motion (“call any operation a motion”) #

• Metaphysics IX begins with act as motion (Shakespeare: “things in motion sooner catch the eye than what not stirs”), then extends “act” by proportion to form (as body able to move before moving, so matter able to be formed; wood before the carpenter shapes it; ability to see vs. actually seeing). In English “act”, “activity”, “action” suggest motion, never form.
• Motion vs. operation (no good English name): motion an imperfect act, operation a perfect act. Walking home — have you walked home? no; building — have you built? no; but seeing you, I have seen; understanding a triangle, I have understood; loving, I have loved. Motion is complete only when it no longer exists.
• Is understanding “doing something”? Yes, with hesitation, since doing suggests motion (aside: when asked what he’ll do in retirement, “think about God”).
• Reply: Augustine speaks Plato’s way — the unmoved mover moves itself, every operation, even understanding and willing, being called a motion; Aristotle occasionally does so too (De Anima III, understanding “a kind of motion”). So God understanding and loving Himself “moves Himself,” but not in the strict sense of motion as of something in ability.

11. Ad 2: mobile wisdom (“diffuses its likeness to the what last of things”) #

Wisdom is mobile by likeness: nothing exists that does not proceed from divine wisdom by imitation, as artefacts from the artist’s wisdom; the likeness descends step by step from what partakes more to what partakes less, as the sun “proceeds to the earth” by its ray. Dionysius, Celestial Hierarchy ch. 1: every going-forth of divine manifestation from the Father of lights, His “being moved.” His image: a rock dropped in water — the wave, a likeness, spreads; the descent gives out at prime matter, where there is no actuality. Not wisdom moving, but its effect.

12. Ad 3 and closing reflection (“said of God in scriptures metaphorically”) #

Approach and withdrawal are metaphors, as the sun enters or leaves a house by its ray; God approaches as we perceive the influence of His goodness, withdraws as we fall from it. Examples: the office prayer that the Lord “help me get here quickly”; “Come, Holy Spirit” and the missions of Son and Spirit — He does not move; we begin to experience the effect of His causality. People think an unchangeable God bored or “tied up,” which is why the metaphors help. But motion is “barely real”: no motion in the now, walking out the door his motion is mostly gone and to come; yet to us what moves seems most real (Aristotle: they’d say anything about the now-existent except that it moves). The beatific vision is “eternal life” — no before and after, a very different life. He ends with “a couple of platonic things” left over.

His words #

• “private to God” — his rendering of proprium; belongs to God alone [ed.: proper to].
• essentia / substantia — Gregory’s substantia vs the article’s essentia; “somewhat the same thing”; essentia related to esse.
• “love of wanting” / “love of wishing well” — his translations of amor concupiscentiae / amor amicitiae.
• “ability” — his term for potency [ed.: potency]; “no difference in act and ability in God.”
• “by happening” — per accidens, as opposed to per se.
• “ninth book of wisdom” — Metaphysics IX [ed.: Metaphysics].
• “Genesis to the letter” — De Genesi ad litteram.
• second figure of the syllogism — affirm of one thing, deny of another, so they are not the same.
• motion vs. operation — Thomas’s names for imperfect and perfect act.
• “doing” — English word covering both motion and operation, with hesitation.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 8, a. 3 (objections, sed contra, body, replies)
• Summa Theologiae I, q. 8, a. 4 (whole article)
• Summa Theologiae I, q. 9, prologue and a. 1 (whole article)

Mentioned

• Gregory (the Great, he assumes), commentary on the Canticle of Canticles (sed contra a. 3)
• Job 22; Wisdom 11; Wisdom 7; Malachi 3:6; James (no verse); Matthew and Isaiah on “Emmanuel”
• Augustine, De Trinitate VI; Epistle to Volusianus; De Genesi ad litteram VIII
• Ambrose, De Spiritu Sancto
• Aristotle, De Caelo I; Metaphysics IX; De Anima III; definition of motion (Physics, inferred)
• Dionysius, Celestial Hierarchy ch. 1
• Plato, Phaedo, Socrates vs. Simmias on the soul as harmony (inferred locus)
• Summa Contra Gentiles (many arguments per point); Summa Theologiae III (Incarnation)
• Shakespeare, Julius Caesar (North Star); a Shakespeare line on things in motion
• Heraclitus fragment on wisdom moving through all things
• Charles De Koninck on “essence”

His questions #

• How can you act upon something without being in contact with it? You can’t; the agent is together with what it acts on — that is how God is in all things as agent.
• What is the difference between God being in all things through essence and through presence? Presence is by knowledge (subject to His sight though distant in substance); essence is by giving existence.
• Why does Thomas say “power” and not knowledge or will? By knowledge and will things are in God; power is a beginning of acting in another, and its exterior terms are really distinct.
• If the hard becomes soft, would the hard be soft? No: it is the butter, not the hardness, that becomes soft; so what changes must be composed.
• Can Socrates be a mother, if mother is affirmed of woman and woman denied of Socrates? No — second figure; likewise what changes is composed, God is not composed, so God does not change.
• When you’re walking home, have you walked home yet? When I’m seeing you, have I seen you? No, and yes: motion is an imperfect act, seeing and understanding are perfect acts.
• Am I doing something when I’m understanding or thinking about God? Yes, though with hesitation, since “doing” first suggests motion.
• Does the Holy Spirit come to us when we pray “Come, Holy Spirit”? Not by motion; we begin to experience the effect of His causality — a metaphor.
• Is there any motion in the now? No; motion is mostly gone and to come, barely real, though it seems most real to us.