Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. We’ve been going through the doctrine of God and right now we’re studying the unity of God which we will conclude tonight. Our guide for this has been the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas. For those of you who do not own a copy, you can read one online at newadvent.org. Before we go to the blog, I have some prayer requests to share. First off, for my continued Christlikeness, such as in handling the many changes of life. Second, I ask for prayers for my financial situation. Finally, I ask for prayers for a third related are in my life. For now, let’s get to the blog.
Is God supremely one? What does this mean? For Aquinas, one refers to an undivided being. In order to be supremely one then, something must be undivided supremely and to be being supremely. God qualifies for this of course since he is simple and based on the other arguments that we’ve seen, we can be sure that he is the only one who matches the criteria.
Interestingly, while he does not go into this now, Aquinas uses a quote from Bernard that says that the divine Trinity is supremely one. When we get to Aquinas on the Trinity, we will see how he handles this, but for the time being, while we may disagree with Aquinas on some points, we can be assured that he was not an idiot not were his contemporaries. If they can easily assert the tri-unity of God and his being supremely one, there is no contradiction between the two.
But are not all things one? How can something be more or less one? When we are dealing with the transcendentals, we must remember that all things insofar as they are partake the transcendentals. Thus, all things are good, true, beautiful, things, and all things are one. If that is the case, what keeps us from being one the same way God is?
Again, we return to the doctrine of analogy. We have oneness in us but not the way that God has it. God has it as the source. We have it by gift. Our oneness is also a limited oneness. We have limitations to our being since we are finite and we can be divided by nature as we are mutable beings.
None of this applies to God. God is simple as Aquinas has said earlier and because of this he cannot be divided. God is also then supremely being due to his perfection as well. He possesses full and unlimited being. Our being is limited by that our natures and by that which is external to us. Our being is a gift and we do not possess it by nature.
We conclude saying that God is indeed one and he is supremely one like no other. While we have written extensively on the Trinity of God, we must never lose sight of the oneness of God either as the oneness of God is essential if we are to even talk about the Triunity of God. Let us not lose sight again of how unique God is in Christian thought.
We shall start the next chapter tomorrow.
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