Aquinas on the Names of God, Part 1: Can God Be Named, and Do Names Signify His Substance? (Summa I, Q.13, Aa.1–2)

Orientation #

He refers back to “the previous question” (q. 12): God is not known in this life through His essence, so how we know Him is presupposed to how we name Him; and to questions 3–4 on simplicity and perfection. He ends by announcing a break, then “the third article of the question”. The previous class finished q. 12 a. 13 and introduced the twelve articles of q. 13; the next continues with aa. 2–4.

The class, in order #

1. Opening: why so many articles on names (“Hallowed be Thy name”) #

Point: naming God matters. Who but Thomas would have twelve articles on the names of God? Augustine (on the Our Father) says the order of the petitions is the order in which we should desire things, and the first is “Hallowed be Thy name”: whatever you make of it, His name comes first.

2. Article 1, objections and sed contra (“either said in abstract or in the concrete”) #

Point: three reasons no name seems to belong to God.

• Obj. 1 (authority): Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 1, there is neither a name of Him nor opinion about Him; Proverbs 30:4, “what is his name, and what is the name of his son?”
• Obj. 2 (reason): every name is concrete or abstract. Why? Because reason’s own object is what-it-is of something sensed or imagined, and these are composed of matter and form: the concrete thing has the form, the form is that by which it is such. Example: “healthy” signifies what has health; “health” signifies that by which the healthy is healthy. Concrete names make God composed (but q. 3: altogether simple); abstract names (“goodness”) make Him that by which things are good but not good Himself (“health is not healthy”). So either name has a defect. He flags this: Thomas will grant “a certain amount of truth” here; we can never transcend the defect in this life.
  • Aside: Latin nomen / Greek onoma mean both “name” and “noun”, unlike English; compare homo (common to vir and femina) vs. English “man”. Ammonius Hermiae, the commentator on the Peri Hermeneias whom Thomas follows, must constantly explain whether Aristotle’s onoma is opposed to rhema or common to both. Don’t try to fix the language (“humankind” is clumsy); deal with it.
• Obj. 3 (grammar): nouns signify substance with quality, verbs and participles with time, pronouns with pointing out (hoc aliquid) or relation. God has no quality, no time, cannot be sensed and pointed out. So no statement about God either, since statements need a verb: “before Abraham was, I am” seems a grammatical difficulty.
• Sed contra: Exodus 15:3, the Lord is a warrior, “omnipotent is His name”.

3. Article 1, body (“vocal sounds are signs of things understood”) #

Point: as God is known by us, so He can be named.

• Digression on “the Philosopher”: antonomasia. Examples: “Bible” (= the book), “Gospel” (= the good news), Christ (= the Anointed), Aristotle “the Philosopher”, Averroes “the Commentator” (commented on almost all Aristotle), Paul “the Apostle” (John Paul II called Peter and Paul the princes of the apostles). Plato in the Symposium explains “lover” (the romantic lover, not the philosopher who loves wisdom) and “poet” (poiein, to make; Homer’s making was greater than any other). Poets had authority because thought inspired by the gods or writing with a divine gift.
• Argument:
  1. Vocal sounds are signs of things understood; understandings are likenesses of things (Aristotle, Peri Hermeneias and elsewhere). So words refer to things through the medium of concepts. General principle; the Greek commentators read the Categories as about names signifying things through thoughts.
  2. So as a thing can be known by us, so it can be named.
  3. God in this life is not known through His essence (previous question) but from creatures, in three ways: by the relation of beginning/cause (secundum habitudinem principii; “beginning” near-synonym of “cause”; first cause, alpha and omega), by excellence (per modum excellentiae; summum bonum, “my thoughts are above your thoughts”), by negation (remotio; incorporeal, simple = not composed).
  4. Conclusion: He can be named from creatures, but not so that the name expresses the divine essence as it is, as “homo” expresses the essence of man because it signifies his definition, the thought the name signifies (Aristotle).
• Aside on “as He is” (1 John 3:2): three New Testament ways of speaking of the future knowledge, from most sensible to most exact: Luke, eating and drinking at His table (metaphorical, cf. “food for thought”); Paul and the Psalms, face to face; John, “we shall see him as he is”.
• His summary: distinguish. We cannot name God as He is because we do not know Him as He is; we can name Him from creatures, and knowing Him from creatures is an article of faith. The relation of cause is really in us, not in God.

4. Reply to obj. 1 (“above being named”) #

God is said to have no name, or to be above naming, because His essence is above what we understand of Him and signify by a vocal sound.

5. Reply to obj. 2: abstract and concrete names both needed (“both simple and subsisting”) #

• Aside first: he hates “in a relationship”, an abstraction of an abstraction. Aristotle’s category is pros ti, translated ad aliquid, “toward something”; “relation” is already more abstract. Not a thing in the air between us: I am something toward you (teacher), you toward me (student). John 1: “the word was pros ton theon”, toward God, poorly rendered by “with” or apud.
• Argument:
  1. We know God from creatures and name Him from them, so names signify as they belong to material creatures, whose knowledge is connatural to us (De Anima III: reason’s object is what-it-is of the sensible or imaginable, dog, triangle).
  2. In such creatures the perfect and subsisting things are composed; the form is not complete and subsisting but that by which something is.
  3. Hence all names imposed to signify something complete subsisting signify concretely; those imposed for simple forms signify that-by-which (“whiteness”: not what is white but that by which it is white).
  4. God is both simple and subsisting/perfect. So we attribute abstract names to signify His simplicity and concrete names to signify His subsistence and perfection; both fall short, since we do not know Him as He is in this life.
• Order of qq. 3–4 explained: simplicity then perfection, taken together because in God they coincide, while in material things the simpler is less perfect (stone, plant, animal: stones are for the flowers, not flowers for stones). Human hints of the divine coincidence: Aristotle, Poetics, tragedy greater than epic because it produces the same effect with fewer words; a square contains more area with less perimeter; Shakespeare’s exhortation to use reason says more in forty-nine words than most books.
• A prophet Thomas quotes: in that day there will be one name for God (no abstract/concrete pair).
• Wise/wisdom: what perfection would a man have through wisdom unless he were wise by it? So we must say God is wisdom itself (simplicity) and also that He is wise (perfection); both true reasons, both names inadequate. Hence separate chapters in the Summa and Summa Contra Gentiles: God is good; God is goodness itself.

6. Reply to obj. 3: nouns, verbs, pronouns (“signify with time”) #

• Substance with quality = suppositum with nature or determined form; compares to concrete names.
• Verbs signify with time (Peri Hermeneias: statement = noun + verb; noun signifies without time, verb with time). Grade-school definitions are false: “action word” fails, since “action” signifies action but is a noun, and “walking is good exercise” uses “walking” as a noun; the difference is with/without time.
• De sensu: we understand nothing without the continuous in time, because we always imagine while thinking. Verbs are said of God because eternity includes all time; as we grasp simple subsisting things only in the manner of composed things, so eternity only in the manner of temporal things.
• Demonstrative pronouns point to what is understood, not sensed. “Cookie” to a child is pointed out; God must be pointed out to the mind. Hence children are taught Jesus in His human nature first: his son thought Monsignor Dionne was Jesus; Brother Bernard, bearded Franciscan at a zoo, asked “Are you Jesus?”, answered “No, but I work for him.” The Eucharist bridges this gulf. Relative pronouns follow from the demonstrative use.

7. Article 1 summed up (“never affirm, seldom deny, always distinguish”) #

A Dominican-trained student’s rule of thumb; here the fundamental distinction: not as He is, but from creatures, three ways. Added point (not in Thomas’s reply here): the same name can be affirmed and denied of God for different reasons: “good” affirmed for His perfection, denied for its composed way of signifying; “goodness” affirmed for simplicity, denied as not signifying subsistence.

8. Article 2, objections and sed contra (“no name is said of God substantially”) #

Point: the article puzzles at first (doesn’t naming substantially require knowing Him as He is, already excluded?). Obj. 1: every name of God shows what He is not, or a relation (habitudo), or what follows on the nature or operation, not the substance. Obj. 2: Dionysius, ch. 1, every hymn of the holy theologians praises names divided according to the processions of God; what signifies a proceeding signifies nothing of the essence. Obj. 3 (clearest): we name as we understand, and God is not understood according to His substance in this life. Sed contra: Augustine, De Trinitate VI, for God to be is to be strong or wise; qq. 3–11 (simplicity, perfection, goodness, infinity, immobility, unity) are the treatise on the substance of God, before the treatise on His operations.

9. Article 2, body: two rejected opinions (“Rabbi Moses”) #

• Negative and relative names plainly signify no substance but a removal or a relation of things to Him. The question is the absolute (i.e. non-relative; don’t over-abstract “absolute”) affirmative names: good, wise.
• Opinion 1, Rabbi Moses (Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed, reference in his text): they remove rather than posit; “God is living” = not like inanimate things. Opinion 2: they signify relation to creatures; “God is good” = cause of goodness.
• Test: when I say God is wise, do I mean He is not stupid like us (“like the voters”), or that He causes our wisdom?
• Three arguments against both:
  1. No reason why some names are said of God rather than others: He causes bodies as He causes good things, so He could be called a body; or “body” removes being in potency only like first matter. Digression: first matter is pure ability for substance, known through substantial change (man coming to be); as clay is to sphere and cube (accidents), so first matter to man and dog (substances), able to be either but not both at once. So Thomas says David [ed.: of Dinant] “most stupidly” said God is first matter: pure act vs. pure ability; “he’s a rock” would make more sense.
  2. All names would be said of God afterwards, as “healthy” is said first of the animal and afterwards of medicine that causes it. But goodness is not found first in creatures: “why do you call me good?”
  3. Against the intention of speakers: they mean more by “God is living” than cause of life or difference from inanimate things.

10. Article 2, body: Thomas’s position (“signify the divine substance, but imperfectly”) #

• Names signify God as our understanding knows Him, from creatures, as creatures represent Him. God has beforehand all perfections of creatures, being simply and universally perfect.
• Senses of “perfect” (Aristotle, Book of Wisdom bk. 5): (a) having all its parts (both arms, legs, nose); (b) having all the power of its kind (Homer the perfect poet: plot, characters, and, as Hegel and Aristotle note, living language; Mozart the perfect musician); (c) having reached its end. Then a second distinction: perfect in its kind (lacking nothing of its kind, lacking much else) vs. God, lacking nothing at all, “perfect, period”; hence infinity follows perfection in the Summa.
• Every creature represents Him insofar as it has some perfection (“be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect”, Sermon on the Mount), not as of the same species or genus, but as of an altogether excellent principle whose effects fall short yet attain some likeness, as lower bodies represent the power of the sun. Every maker makes something like itself (dogs beget dogs; the carpenter’s chair like the one in his mind), but the effect need not equal the agent.
• So “God is good” means: what we call goodness in creatures pre-exists in God in a higher way. He is not good because He causes goodness; because He is good He pours goodness on things (Augustine, De Trinitate: insofar as He is good, we are). The teacher can teach because he already knows.
  • Jokes: his own oral exam, where the examiner asked “what’s the course about?” and he stumbled; St Joseph of Cupertino’s ordination exam, cancelled because the candidates before him were so brilliant.
• Applies to “Father”: God is first of all Father; “all fatherhood in heaven and earth” is named from Him (the Apostle).
• Three kinds of names (Summa Contra Gentiles): perfection without specifying the mode (“good”, “cause”, “act”: of creatures and God); with the mode private to God (“summum bonum”, “universally perfect”, “first cause”, “pure act”: added relation like summum/first or negation like pure, God only); with the mode private to the creature (“lion”: only metaphorically).
• Closing stress: theology would be unsatisfactory if “God is good” only taught that He causes what we call goodness, rather than that creaturely goodness is an imperfect sharing in the divine goodness. This is what “signifying the substance” means, as opposed to the two other ways, negation and eminence. Break before article 3.

His words #

• “vocal sounds” (voces): signs of things understood; understandings are likenesses of things.
• “beginning”: used almost as synonym of “cause” (habitudo principii) [ed.: principle].
• “excellence” (per modum excellentiae): God excels creatures.
• “negation” / “removal” (remotio).
• “the philosopher”: Aristotle by antonomasia; antonomasia = a common noun made proper (the Bible, the Gospel, the Apostle, the Commentator).
• “toward something” (pros ti, ad aliquid): his rendering of the category of relation; “relationship” rejected as abstraction of abstraction.
• “ability”: first matter is pure ability [ed.: potency]; God pure act.
• “that by which”: what an abstract name (health, whiteness) signifies.
• “substance with quality”: the suppositum (this something) with its nature.
• “absolute”: opposed to relative, not to be taken more abstractly.
• “simply and universally perfect”: lacking nothing at all vs. perfect in its kind.
• “signify substantially”: of God’s substance, as opposed to negation and eminence.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 13, a. 1 (objections, sed contra, body, three replies)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 13, a. 2 (objections, sed contra, body)

Mentioned

• Dionysius, Divine Names, ch. 1
• Proverbs 30:4; Exodus 15:3; 1 John 3:2; John 1 (pros ton theon); John (before Abraham was, I am); Luke (eat and drink at my table); Ephesians on all fatherhood (inferred, “the apostle”); Sermon on the Mount, “be perfect”
• Augustine, on the Our Father (the order of the petitions); De Trinitate VI
• Aristotle, Peri Hermeneias; Categories (per Greek commentators); De Anima III; De sensu; Poetics (tragedy vs. epic); Metaphysics V on “perfect” (inferred from “fifth book of wisdom”)
• Ammonius Hermiae, commentary on the Peri Hermeneias
• Plato, Symposium (lover, poet)
• Moses Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles (God good / goodness itself; three kinds of names)
• Hegel on Homer’s characters and language

His questions #

• Why do we have both “healthy” and “health”? Because our object is composed things: “healthy” names what has the form, “health” that by which it is healthy.
• What figure of speech is “the Philosopher”? Antonomasia, like Bible, Gospel, Christ, the Commentator, the Apostle.
• In what three ways is God known from creatures? By relation of cause or beginning, by excellence, by negation.
• Can we name God? Distinguish: not as He is, since we do not know Him as He is; yes, from creatures.
• Is God wise, or wisdom itself? Both must be said, for simplicity and for perfection, and both names fall short.
• Is “walking” in “walking is good exercise” a noun or a verb? A noun; noun and verb differ by signifying without or with time, not by thing vs. action.
• When I say God is wise, do I mean He is not stupid like us, or that He causes our wisdom? Neither: what we call wisdom pre-exists in God in a higher way.
• Why couldn’t God then be called a body? He could, on the causal or negative account; nobody, not even Maimonides, does, so those accounts fail.
• Does the teacher know because he teaches, or teach because he knows? He teaches because he already knows; so God is not good because He causes goodness but the reverse.