God: Rational Theology: 3rd Edition

It must follow, then, that God is pure actuality, and this in virtue of being the first cause ST Ia 3. So although this process denies God those traits that are contrary to what we know about him, those denials invariably yield a fairly substantive account of the divine life. Other truths necessarily follow from the idea that God is pure actuality.

For example, we know that God cannot be a body. For a characteristic feature of bodies is that they are subject to being moved by something other than themselves. And because God is not a body, he cannot be a composite of material parts ST Ia 3. Not only does Aquinas think that God is not a material composite, he also insists that God is not a metaphysical composite Vallencia, In other words, God is not an amalgam of attributes, nor is he a being whose nature or essence can be distinguished from his existence.

He is, rather, a simple being. The doctrine of divine simplicity is complicated and controversial—even among those who admire Aquinas' philosophical theology. But the following account should provide the reader with a rough sketch of what this doctrine involves. Consider the example human being. Of course, a human being is also material being. In virtue of materiality, she possesses numerous individuating accidents.

These would include various physical modifications such as her height or weight, her particular skin pigmentation, her set of bones, and so forth. According to Aquinas, none of these accidental traits are included in her humanity indeed, she could lose these traits, acquire others, and remain a human being. They do, however, constitute the particular human being she is. In other words, her individuating accidents do not make her human, but they do make her a particular exemplification of humanity. This is why it would be incorrect to say that this person is identical to her humanity; instead, the individuating accidents she has make her one of many instances thereof.

But what about substances that are not composed of matter? Such things cannot have multiple instantiations since there is no matter to individuate them into discrete instances of a specific nature or essence. An immaterial substance then will not instantiate its nature.

Rational Theology

Instead, the substance will be identical to its nature. This is why Aquinas insists that there can be no distinction between 1 God and 2 that by which he is God. For example, we often say that God is supremely good. But it would be a mistake on Aquinas' view to think that goodness is a property that God has , as if goodness is a property independent of God himself.

What he is God is indistinguishable from that by which he is his divine essence. Presumably other immaterial beings would be simple in precisely this way in virtue of their immateriality. Consider, for example, the notion of angels. That there is no matter with which to individuate angelic beings implies that there will not be multiple instantiations of an angelic nature. Like Aquinas' notion of God, each angelic being will be identical to its specific essence or nature ST Ia 3.

But God is obviously unlike angelic beings in an important way. In order to see what this means, consider the conclusions from section 2. There, we noted that the constituent members of the causal order cannot be the cause of their own existence and activity. Thus the constituent members of the causal order must exist in virtue of some other , exterior principle of causality.

We are now in a position to see why, according to Aquinas, God and the principle by which he exists must be the same. Unlike the constituent members of the causal order, all of whom receive their existence from some exterior principle, God is an uncaused cause. If it was, then God and the principle by which he exists would be different. Yet the idea that God is the first efficient cause who does not acquire existence from something else implies that God is his own existence Ibid.

Brain Davies explains this implication of the causal argument in the following way:. The conclusion Aquinas draws [from the five ways] is that God is his own existence. He is Ipsum Esse Subsitens. But with God this is not so. He is his own existence and is the reason other things have it Davies, So far, this article has shown how and to what extent human reason can lead to knowledge about God and his nature.

Aquinas clearly thinks that our demonstrative efforts can tell us quite a bit about the divine life. Yet he also insists that it was necessary for God to reveal to us other truths by means of sacred teaching. Unlike the knowledge we acquire by our own natural aptitudes, Aquinas contends that revealed knowledge gives us a desire for goods and rewards that exceed this present life SCG I.

Also, revealed knowledge may tell us more about God than what our demonstrative efforts actually show. Although our investigative efforts may confirm that God exists, they are unable to prove for example that God is fully present in three divine persons, or that it is the Christian God in whom we find complete happiness ST Ia 1. Revealed knowledge also curbs the presumptuous tendency to think that our cognitive aptitudes are sufficient when trying to determine more generally what is true SCG I. Moreover, Aquinas contends that it was fitting for God to make known through divine revelation even those truths that are accessible to human reason.

For if such knowledge depended strictly on the difficult and time-intensive nature of human investigation, then few people would actually possess it. Also, our cognitive limitations may result in a good deal of error when trying to contrive successful demonstrations of divine realities. Given our proneness to mistakes, relying on natural aptitude alone may seem particularly hazardous, especially when our salvation is at stake Ibid.

Popular accounts of religion sometimes construe faith as a blind, uncritical acceptance of myopic doctrine. Such a view of faith might resonate with contemporary skeptics of religion. But as we shall see, this view is not remotely like the one Aquinas—or historic Christianity for that matter—endorses.

There are other things that fall under the purview of faith, such as the doctrine of the Trinity and the Incarnation. But we do not affirm these specific doctrines unless they have some relation to God. These beliefs are not so it seems things over which we have much voluntary control. By contrast, the assent of faith is voluntary. By will Aquinas means a native desire or love for what we think contributes to our happiness.

How is the will involved in the assent of faith? Aquinas appears to have something like this in mind: For Aquinas, the mere acknowledgment of this truth does not denote faith—or at least a commendable form of faith that is distinct from believing certain propositions about God. After all, the demons believe many truths about God, but they are compelled to believe due to the obviousness of those truths. Thus we can imagine that a person who is convinced of certain sacred truths may for any number of reasons choose not to consider or endorse what she now believes.

Alternatively, she may, out of love for God, actively seek God as her proper end. According to Aquinas, this love for God is what distinguishes faith from the mere acknowledgement that certain theological statements are true. For faith involves an appetitive aspect whereby the will—a love or desire for goodness—moves us to God as the source of ultimate happiness ST IIaIIae 2.

But what prompts the will to desire God? After all, Christianity teaches that our wills have been corrupted by the Fall. According to Aquinas, that transformation comes by way of grace. We will say more about grace in the following subsection of this article. For now, we can construe grace as Aquinas does: According to Aquinas, if a person seeks God as the supreme source of human happiness, it can only be because God moves her will by conferring grace upon her. How can the act of faith be voluntary if the act itself is a result of God generating a change in the human will?

Does the infusion of grace contravene the sort of voluntariness that Aquinas insists is a component of faith? Limitations of space prohibit an extensive treatment of this subject. For this reason, a brief presentation of Aquinas' view will follow. The act of faith has a twofold cause: Observing a supernatural act or hearing a persuasive sermon or argument may corroborate the truth of sacred teaching and, in turn, encourage belief.

These inducements, however, are not sufficient for producing faith since not everyone who witnesses or hears them finds them compelling. We must therefore posit an internal cause whereby God moves the will to embrace that which is proposed for belief. But how is it that God moves the will? In other words, what does God do to the will that makes the assent of faith possible? None of the proposed answers to this question are uncontroversial, but what follows appears to be faithful to the view Aquinas favored for some competing interpretations of Aquinas' account, see Jenkins, ; Ross, ; Penelhum, ; and Stump, and Thus we might think of the inward cause of faith to be a kind of infused affection or, better yet, moral inclination whereby the will is directed to God Ibid.

As a result of this moral posturing, a person will be able to view Christian teaching more favorably than she would were it not for the infusion of charity. John Jenkins endorses a similar account. He suggests that pride, excessive passion, and other vicious habits generate within us certain prejudices that prevent us from responding positively to sacred teaching Jenkins, In other words, faith formed by charity transforms the will by allaying the strength of those appetitive obstacles that forestall love of God.

On this view of faith, the person who subordinates herself to God does so not as a result of divine coercion but by virtue of an infused disposition whereby she loves God.

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For grace curtails pride and enables us to grasp and fairly assess what the Christian faith proposes for belief Jenkins, In doing so, it permits us to freely endorse those things that we in our sinful state would never be able—or want —to understand and embrace. Indeed, the arguments offered in support of Christian claims often provide us with the motivation we sometimes need in order to embrace them.

But does the use of reasons or argument compromise the merit of faith? Aquinas expresses the objection this way: He also quotes St. In short, human investigation into sacred doctrine threatens to render faith superfluous. For if one were to offer a good argument for the truth of what God reveals, then there would be no need for us to exercise faith in regard to that truth. What sort of reasoning or argumentation does Aquinas have in mind? He makes a distinction between demonstrative reasoning and persuasive reasoning.

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Were a person to grasp the truth of sacred doctrine by means of this sort of reasoning, belief would be necessitated and the merit of faith destroyed Ibid. Persuasive reasoning, on the other hand, does no such thing. In other words, the arguments in which persuasive reasoning consists may provide reasons for accepting certain doctrines, but they cannot compel acceptance of those doctrines. One still needs the grace of faith in order to embrace them. A closer look at some central Christian doctrines is now in order.

And although there are many doctrines that constitute sacred teaching, at least two are foundational to Christianity and subject to thorough analysis by Aquinas. These include the Incarnation and the Trinity. Aquinas takes both of these doctrines to be essential to Christian teaching and necessary to believe in order to receive salvation see ST IIaIIae 2. For this reason it will be beneficial to explore what these doctrines assert. The doctrine of the Incarnation teaches that God literally and in history became human in the person of Jesus Christ.

The doctrine of the Incarnation further teaches that Christ is the complete and perfect union of two natures, human and divine. The idea here is not that Jesus is some strange hybrid, a chimera of human and divine parts. The idea rather is that in Christ there is a merger of two natures into one hypostasis —a subsisting individual composed of two discrete but complete essences ST III 2. Aquinas' efforts to explicate and defend this doctrine are ingenious but may prove frustrating without a more advanced understanding of the metaphysical framework he employs see Stump for a treatment of this subject.

Rather than pursue the complexities of that framework, we will instead address a different matter to which the Incarnation is intricately connected.

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According to Christian teaching, human beings are estranged from God. So understood, sin refers not to a specific immoral act but a spiritual wounding that diminishes the good of human nature ST IaIIae Further, Christian doctrine states that we become progressively more corrupt as we yield to sinful tendencies over time.

Sinful choices produce corresponding habits, or vices, that reinforce hostility towards God and put beatitude further beyond our reach. No amount of human effort can remedy this problem. The damage wrought by sin prevents us from meriting divine favor or even wanting the sort of goods that which makes union with God possible. The Incarnation makes reconciliation with God possible. To understand this claim, we must consider another doctrine to which the Incarnation is inextricably tied, namely, the doctrine of the Atonement. According to the doctrine of Atonement, God reconciles himself to human beings through Christ, whose suffering and death compensates for our transgressions ST III Yet this satisfaction does not consist in making reparations for past transgressions.

Rather it consists in God healing our wounded natures and making union with him possible. From this perspective, satisfaction is more restorative than retributive. As Eleonore Stump notes: A partial list is as follows: This last benefit requires explanation.

Aquinas: Philosophical Theology

Only a supernatural transformation of our recalcitrant wills can heal our corrupt nature and make us people who steadily trust, hope in, and love God as the source of our beatitude. This brief description of grace might suggest that it is an infused virtue much like faith, hope, and charity. According to Aquinas, however, grace is not a virtue.

This account helps explain why grace is said to justify sinners. Justification consists not only in the remittance of sins, but in a transmutation whereby our wills are supernaturally directed away from morally deficient ends and towards God.



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In this way God, by means of his grace, heals our fallen nature, pardons sin, and makes us worthy of eternal life. Now, remission of sin and moral renovation cannot occur apart from the work God himself accomplishes through Christ. Yet such favor was not limited to Christ. But again, the aim of satisfaction is not to appease God through acts of restitution but to renovate our wills and make possible a right relationship with him Stump, Thus we ought not to look at Christ simply as an instrument by which our sins are wiped clean, but as one whose sacrificial efforts produce in us a genuine love for God and make possible the very union we desire ST III The preceding survey of the Incarnation and the Atonement will undoubtedly raise further questions that we cannot possibly address here.

For a careful treatment of this issue, see Stump: Instead, this brief survey attempts only a provisional account of how the Incarnation makes atonement for sin and reconciliation with God possible. This section will focus on the doctrine of the Trinity with all the typical caveats implied, of course. Aquinas' definition of the Trinity is in full accord with the orthodox account of what Christians traditionally believe about God. According to that account, God is one.

That is, his essence is one of supreme unity and simplicity. Yet the doctrine also states that there are three distinct persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. By distinct, Aquinas means that the persons of the Trinity are real individuals and not, say, the same individual understood under different descriptions.

Moreover, each of the three persons is identical to the divine essence. That is, each person of the Trinity is equally to God. The doctrine is admittedly confounding. But if it is true , then it should be internally coherent. In fact, Aquinas insists that, although we cannot prove the doctrine through our own demonstrative efforts, we can nevertheless show that this and other doctrines known through the light of faith are not contradictory de Trinitate , 1.

Aquinas' exposition of the Trinity endeavors to avoid two notable heresies: It teaches that Christ was created by God at a point in time and therefore not co-eternal with him. In short, God and Christ are distinct substances. The other heresy, Sabellianism, attempts to preserve divine unity by denying any real distinction in God. Aquinas' account attempts to avoid these heresies by affirming that the persons of the Trinity are distinct without denying the complete unity of the divine essence. How does Aquinas go about defending the traditional doctrine?

The challenge, of course, is to show that the claim. In an effort to reconcile 1 and 2 , Aquinas argues that there are relations in God.

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For example, we find in God the relational notion of paternity which implies fatherhood and filiation which implies sonship ST Ia Paternity and filiation imply different things. Thus if there is paternity and filiation in God, then there must be a real distinction of persons that the divine essence comprises ST Ia The notion of distinction , however, does not contravene the doctrine of simplicity because according to Aquinas we can have a distinction of persons while maintaining divine unity.

This last claim is obviously the troubling one. How can we have real distinction within a being that is perfectly one? The answer to this question requires we look a bit more closely at what Aquinas means by relation. The idea of relation goes back at least as far as Aristotle for a good survey of medieval analyses of relations, see Brower, For Aristotle and his commentators, the term relation refers to a property that allies the thing that has it with something else.

Thus he speaks of a relation as that which makes something of , than , or to some other thing Aristotle, Categories , Book 7, 6b1. On the other hand, the notion of relation need not denote a property that allies different substances. It can also refer to distinctions that are internal to a substance. Would you like to change to the Martinique site? Product not available for purchase.

This highly successful and popular book is now available in a thoroughly expanded and updated new edition. The Basic Readings, 3 rd Edition comprises sixty-eight readings spanning twenty centuries of Christian history. To help readers engage with the material, each reading is accompanied by an introduction, comments, study questions, and a helpful glossary of terms used by its author. The Basic Readings, 3 rd Edition is an essential guide to the topics, themes, controversies, and reflections on Christianity as they have been understood by many of its greatest commentators.

Request an Evaluation Copy for this title. He is regarded as one of the world's leading Protestant theologians and is the author of some of the world's most widely used theological textbooks, including the bestselling The Christian Theology Reader 5th edition, Wiley Blackwell, , Christian Theology: Table of contents Acknowledgments ix.

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