Month: May 2010

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we continue our dive into the ocean of truth studying at the moment the deepest topic of all that we can, the doctrine of God. On this journey, we have had as our text the excellent work of Thomas Aquinas, the Summa Theologica. If you wish to read it for yourself and do not own a copy, simply go to newadvent.org. We’re studying the topic of the knowledge of God and we’re asking the question tonight of if God understands himself.

This question is different from the question of if God comprehends himself. Most of us understand ourselves to some degree, though none of us comprehend ourselves. We all wonder why it is we do the things that we do or why is it we don’t do the things that we want to do.

This ultimately gets to the question of knowing. We know sensible things through our senses. For instance, I look outside the window and I know that it is dark. I can tell that by looking through my eyes. If I was asked to give an argument for why I think is is dark I do not know where I would begin.

Now let us suppose you are watching a crime drama. One of my favorites was Monk. Let’s suppose then that Monk walks into a crime scene and says “It was a wife who murdered her husband in this case.” Now that is not apparent to every officer who is on the scene. They may see the husband’s corpse and know he’s dead and some may suspect the wife, but how is it that Monk knows that that is what happened?

In this case, since the sense data is all the same, there is something else going on. That is intelligible data. The rational mind is taking the data that has come through the senses and is drawing conclusions based on that. This is one question we have about animals. Animals do not reason in this way as they are driven by their senses without an intellect capable of grasping ideas about ideas. Animals have thoughts but not thoughts about thoughts.

So how about God? How does he know things? Well he doesn’t know them through sense experience. God does not know the experience of eating something or touching something. One could argue that Jesus does, but that is only in his humanity. This will be important when we come to the question of if God knows evil.

Since God’s nature is his existence, God understands things by understanding being. Since he can understand being and he is his own being, then it would follow that he understands himself. Once again, this is a separate question from if he can comprehend his own being which is something we will discuss later on.

For us, we can understand things about God, but it would be hard to say we understand him. This would seem to be what Paul is saying in fact in his doxology at the end of Romans 11. Who can really understand him? We can apprehend him though however based on how he has revealed himself, and for that we should be thankful.

We shall continue tomorrow.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. Tonight, we start a new section in our study of the doctrine of God and that will be a long one. It’s the study of God’s knowledge. Our guide is the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas which can be read at Newadvent.org. I thank my friend Joel for responding as I know this will be an area of debate. Open View Theists will have contention with much of what Aquinas says here. However, one aspect that needs to be kept in mind is that Aquinas’s doctrine of knowledge in God is built on the prior doctrines he’s established, like simplicity especially as well as perfection, immutability, infinity, and eternity. If someone wants to use my blog for interchange, feel free. Do note I rarely if ever respond. For now, let’s go to the text.

Is there knowledge in God? Once again, we are reminded that the medievals debated everything. For us we could argue “Well it’s obvious that there’s knowledge in God.” Perhaps so, but that does not mean we should not make a case for it. Many of the people in the world today find it obvious that God exists, but that does not mean it does not hurt to have some good reasons for believing in his existence for those who do not think so.

Knowledge for us is really a habit. It is based on a constant study and learning and research. However, there can be none of this in God for that would be a potential becoming actual. Aquinas has already said that God is a being of pure actuality. If the objection holds, there can be no knowledge in God.

However, readers should remember that for God, our talk of him must be analogical. God has knowledge but he does not have it the same way we do. We gain our knowledge through experience. God does not gain knowledge but seeing as he is simple, his knowledge is his substance.

Knowledge is also about coming to conclusions, but God cannot come to conclusions because that would point to a cause in God. Aquinas answers that what exists divided and multiplied in creatures exists simply in God. The knowledge of things, the cause of that knowledge, and the use of that knowledge all exist as one in God.

Aquinas also says that God alone can know things the highest way. The knowledge of a thing is found in the knower and not in the thing known. Knowledge is in the mind after all. The subject of that knowledge of course is independent often of the knower, aside from the case where something knows itself of course.

We are bound by matter and can only know things first through matter. I deduce from the existence of triangles the idea of a triangle, but I cannot produce the idea itself. I can only produce an example of triangles. You cannot show me a bunch of triangles and ask me to pull out the triangularity of them.

The intellect in Thomistic thought is free of matter although it can use matter to understand. However, the more free something is from matter, the more it can know something. God is in the highest degree of immateriality, as Aquinas says however, therefore, he has the highest place in knowledge.

What more can be said of his knowledge? We’ll find out tomorrow.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the Ocean of Truth. First off, I wish to send a thanks to a kind reader who made a donation to Deeper Waters Christian Ministries. It is appreciated. It is my hopes that someday that will be a ministry with more than just a blog but a website as well. Getting back to the blog, we are going through the doctrine of God now and using the Summa Theologica as our guide. This can be read at newadvent.org. We are asking the question now of if affirmative propositions can be formed about God.

Aquinas answers that they can. While we have said much of the via negativa, that does not mean that for Aquinas, the only things we can know about God is what he is not. In fact, we’ve been affirming quite a lot about him in this blog. Aquinas also knows that much of what we can know about God is found in Scripture, contrary to those who might think only philosophy was the guide of the medievals. (I recall a philosophy professor who opened up class reading the Bible and reminding students what that book was. It’s easy to lose sight of as a philosophy major.) Aquinas had a high view of Aristotle, but he had a higher view of Scripture. We should follow likewise.

Aquinas says there are some things we know through diverse ideas. For instance, man was defined by Aristotle as “rational animal.” We see that man is an animal in that he is a sensible being who relies on sense experience. However, he is also a rational animal in that he can take what comes through sense experience and draw inferences from it and make judgments.

Those two are quite diverse. However, both of them apply to humans. Even accidents can apply to humans. For instance, you could say that brown-haired applies to me. That could change one day. When what is said in the predicate truly fits the subject, then we can say that something has been affirmed.

This must happen with God in some way according to Aquinas. We do know that God is simple and yet we know that we affirm many diverse things about him. We affirm that he is good and true and beautiful for instance. What is important for us as good theologians is that we realize that while we affirm many diverse conceptions about God, this is because of a lack of understanding on our part.

That is something we must grasp. We need to realize that what we know intellectually we need to live out emotionally and spiritually. For instance, I know intellectually that God is in control. However, in practice, this is a difficult system to live out. Aquinas would probably say then that what needs to be done at this point is to realize the intellectual truth and that we must keep moving forward to that and not live in such a way as to give in to what we know to be false.

It is a work in progress, but it is part of becoming like Christ.

Tomorrow, we shall start looking at God’s knowledge.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters. It’s been awhile since we’ve got to talk about the doctrine of God seeing as I was away on an important matter and then I had a movie review last time, but now let’s get back into the Summa. Thomas Aquinas is our guide on this journey and a most excellent one he is. Those who do not have a copy of the Summa Theologica are invited to read it online at newadvent.org. We’re going to be covering again an article in the section on the Names of God. I do ask also readers for your continued prayers. I am still unemployed and it’s starting to get tight here. Especially with other major expenses coming up. Anyway, let’s go to the text.

If you were to describe God, how would you do it? What if you had to do it in a short way that would capture his essence. I recall knowing someone who once tried to describe God as “Maker of everything.” Well that can be fine to some extent, but does that mean God cannot be defined unless he creates? Do you consider evil a thing? What about some Christians who don’t believe God made everything. (There are some strong Platonist Christians who hold this kind of view.)

There have been many attempts to describe God in many ways. Jonathan Edwards used beauty for instance. Plato could have said “the Good” possibly. However, Aquinas in pondering this thought that the best way to describe God was to use the name that he gave of himself. We see it as “I AM.” Aquinas sees it as “HE WHO IS.”

So let’s look at this name. When we consider God’s simplicity, this means that God is the only one in existence whose essence is his existence. If you take a being such as an angel, the angel has an essence plus existence as the angel does not necessarily existence. It is simple in that it has no parts in one way, but it is not absolutely simple as God is.

God is the only one who is absolutely simple. This is something that separates him from creation. In fact, I’d say it’s the main thing. All other beings depend on something outside of themselves for their existence. God alone does not depend on anything for his existence. In fact, everything else depends on him for its existence.

In essence, God’s name for himself points to his being. He is being by nature. It is impossible for him not to be. All other beings however exist by his grace. They are contingent and the universe does not depend on them in anyway for their existence. If God were to somehow go away however, then there would be nothing else.

Today, we can be thankful that God is he who is and I find the essence/existence distinction to be a strong argument for theism. In this way, you can see something in existence and say that that is going to be your starting basis for a theistic argument. Let us live today thinking that God is and just how awesome it is that he is.

We shall continue tomorrow.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. I hope all is going well for you. I want readers to know that I will be away again starting tomorrow night and won’t be back until Monday so don’t expect a blog again after this one until Monday night. Prayers for my safe travels and a great weekend are appreciated. Anyway, we’ve been going through the doctrine of God lately and we’ve been using the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas as our guide and we’re on the topic of the Names of God and on the tenth article in that. Today’s blog title is definitely a mouthful so let’s get to it.

God. We Christians apply great meaning to that name, however, at the same time, I, as a Christian, believe that the name of God is one of the most meaningless names that there is. Now I don’t mean that when I speak of God from the pulpit or in a class or in correspondence with other Christians or debating non-Christians. I mean that from the way that the name is used by others.

In our word today, God means anything and everything. Oprah speaks of God. Deepak Chopra speaks of God. Muslims speak of God. The New Age crowd talks about God. Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses talk about God. About the only people who have a real problem with God are atheists, some agnostics, and some that come from more naturalistic religions.

Hence, this is one reason it’s so great to speak about Jesus. When you as a Christian speak about Jesus, more people know about who you are. God can be rather impersonal and abstract in modern terminology. Jesus, on the other hand, is not. Now true, there are some that have a twisted view of even him, but we are on firmer ground.

Aquinas would agree. We are not speaking univocally. When the pagan speaks of God and the Christian speaks of God, different things are meant. However, there are some similarities. For instance, the pagan can speak of a god as the one to whom he owes his highest allegiance. He can speak of him as the creator and sovereign of the world.

The reason the pagan cannot speak of God univocally with the Christian is because the pagan does not know the divine nature. While Aquinas was Aristotlean, he would say the same of Aristotle. Aristotle came about as close as a pagan can to the nature of God without really knowing him. Aristotle’s God, for instance, spent all his time thinking about himself and had no interest in the world.

Thus, the terms are not used univocally. We can have enough similarities that we can have a dialogue, but there are great differences. While the Christian also does not know the divine nature as it is furthermore, he comes the closest. Why? Because unlike the pagan, the Christian has divine revelation from God himself so that we can know him better, this in the form of Scripture and the form of Christ.

We shall continue Monday.

Hello everyone. I bid you a welcome back to Deeper Waters and if this is your first time, I hope you enjoy it. Come on in. The water’s fine. As we’ve been diving in the ocean, we’ve been studying the doctrine of God and the thought of Thomas Aquinas has been our guide. We have been using his Summa Theologica. If you do not have one, you can read it online at NewAdvent.org. Right now, we’re covering the names of God and we’re on the ninth article.

As I was reading over this, I was struck by how amazing it is that the objections that were raised in the days of Aquinas are still the objections that are raised today. There is nothing new under the sun. So as we go through this today, we are going to cover objections raised today that were addressed around 750 years or so ago.

To begin with, by communicable, we mean “Can the name of God be shared with others?” For our Arian friends, keep in mind that Aquinas, like all good Christians, is a Trinitarian and so he upholds the teachings that have been handed down throughout church history.

Now Aquinas does say in a certain sense, the name is communicable. This is in the sense that something that is a description of that nature in some way is passed on. For instance, when we say that someone is a lion of a man. We do not mean he is a hybrid beast. We rather mean that he is strong and courageous, much like when we speak of the lion of Judah.

An objection arises that it is said that we will become partakers of the divine nature in 2 Peter 1:4. Anyone who has dialogued with Arians before knows that they bring forward this verse. I have also seen Mormons use this verse in order to justify their doctrine of exaltation in which humans become gods.

However, the answer is readily apparent when one simply reads the verse. In what way do we become partakers of the divine nature? It is in relationship to a holy lifestyle as Peter says. It is not about having ontological equality with God as Aquinas has shown earlier would be impossible. It is saying that we will develop the character that we will live holy and godly lives.

But doesn’t Scripture elsewhere say that there are some who are gods? What about the Psalms that say this. Once again, the same problem is here. These are said to be gods in some likeness but not in the totality of the divine nature. What I believe is going on in Psalm 82 is that Jesus is referring to the rulers of Israel who were trying to claim special authority because they had the Torah and therefore they had all right to lord themselves over their brothers.

God is saying that while they are gods in the sense that they were given a position of rulership, they are not gods in reality. They will die like mere men because that is what they are. In essence, this verse is not lifting up the “gods” in it. Instead, it is mocking them. It is ironic that a verse used to mock is used by others to say that God is saying something really good about humanity.

Aquinas concludes that the name of God in its totality is not communicable and we agree. There can be only one.

We shall continue tomorrow.

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 wanting to come to a deeper understanding of theology. I hope this is beneficial to you as too often, we count on a Sunday School faith to get us through the world and it just doesn’t have what it takes. Hence, our emphasis here has always been about going deeper. Our guide for going deep has been the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas which can be read at newadvent.org.

Our topic tonight is if names of God which imply relation to creatures are predicated temporarily or not. In other words, is God really Lord essentially by nature or is this something that is not essential of him? When we ask if the name is applied temporarily, we also don’t mean that the name must go away at sometime. We simply mean that the name is given to God in time but he does not change by receiving it.

For instance, the Bible says that God has become our refuge. Does this refer to a change in the nature of God? Not at all. What it means is that there is an idea that we have applied to God from a temporal perspective. The qualities that make him a refuge however are what have remained the same.

Each name does carry some meaning to it, such as saying that God is Lord. This implies that he has power over the creation. However, God has power whether the creation is here or not. It is when the creation is in the picture that God has something that he has power over in a new way. His power doesn’t change.

However, when it comes to our side, we are really related to God as we are entirely dependent on him for everything. Even when you sin, you are still dependent on God for if God were not, you would not exist and you could not be capable of even going against God. Such is the power of God in Christian theology. To go against God requires the power of God.

Is God really Lord? Yes. He is. But that is not his essence. That is applied to him based on his position in relation to the creation. We are really subject to God and our existence is entirely dependent on him. We really do need him to be our savior. He does love us with an everlasting love as he has had love for all eternity and that is offered to us in time. We cannot escape in any way our dependence on him and his independence from us will never change.

Application? We Christians should realize what this means. God does not need you. He does not need me. Were none of us here, he would be just fine with himself. It is we who need him. We will discuss this more when we discuss the love of God, but for now, let us realize that we add nothing to God but he gives everything to us.

We shall continue tomorrow.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. We’re studying the Christian doctrine of God right now and seeing how it affects our lives. Our guide for this has been the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas which can be found at newadvent.org. We are on the section right now on the names of God. We’re going to be looking at the sixth questions tonight. Are named predicated of God predicated primarily of creatures?

What does that mean exactly? Well we say that God is good, but does that come primarily through what we see of creatures? The concept of goodness is primary in them and only secondarily applies to God? It could seem that this is the way because in Thomistic thought, we know the creator by knowing the creation.

However, we have a problem if we take this route. We do not then really know God. God can once again be said to be good simply because he is the cause of goodness in creatures. Because that could be the case, that does not mean that God is necessarily good. After all, God is the cause of bodies in creatures but he himself is not embodied. We could say God is the ultimate mixed bag then since he is the cause of chickens, humans, dinosaurs, whales, giraffes, etc.

The names are primarily applied to God however in that he is good before his creation is good. Creatures are said to be good insofar as they come to approach the goodness of God. However, for Aquinas, there is one sense in which names are applied primarily of creatures and secondarily to God.

This is when we speak in metaphor. When we say that God is a lion, we do not mean he is primarily a lion. We speak of the lion first and say the lion has a trait that we find in God. The lion is a fierce contender and is king over the area he surveys. In the same way, God is a fierce warrior and the area that he surveys is the entirety of creation.

As we saw when we discussed immutability, I would apply emotions to God in this way. God is not literally angry, but his actions are akin to what would be the actions of an angry person. This is the same when God is described as having a body. To those who have a problem, I will say I am consistent in my hermeneutic. It also works with the philosophical problems of an emotional God.

We should always be watchful for how we interpret Scripture as our ancestors in the faith were. Many people today do not treat the Bible as literature and treat metaphorical language as literal. There is much in the Bible that is literal, but there is much that is metaphorical as well. How do you know the difference? Well that’s part of being a good student of Scripture and literature and learning how to read the Bible as literature.

We shall continue tomorrow.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are continuing our dive into the ocean of truth. We’ve been studying the doctrine of God and our guide for this has been the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas. If you do not have a copy, you can read it online at newadvent.org. If you have an IPhone or kindle, you can also read it there and it could be free. We’re studying the names of God and tonight we’re going to answer the fifth question on the discussion. Is what is said of God and creatures predicated univocally of them?

God-talk. We’ve talked about it before. In the middle of the twentieth century, a movement came about called logical positivism that said unless statements were analytical, that is, the meaning of the statement was in the term, such as bachelors are unmarried males, or were empirically verifiable, then they were meaningless. The problem with this was that the test itself didn’t pass the test. The idea had been to reduce God-talk to meaninglessness.

There are three ways that we can use language. One is univocally. If you walk down the street and see someone and say “Good morning” to them and say to the next person you meet “Good morning”, they don’t have any reason to think you meant anything different to any of them. The term meant the same thing.

There is also equivocal. If I tell you “I am going to the bank”, it could mean I am going to a building that stores money for me, or it could mean that I am going to a river and I am going to sit on the edge. Without some sort of context, you will not know for sure what I mean as the term “bank” means two completely different things.

The final way we can speak of something is analogically. Consider this proposition. “2 + 2 = 4.” You can see that in two ways. In the first way, your eyes can see the proposition and you have visual input of it. In the second way, your mind can see the truth of the proposition. If I wrote “2 + 2 = 5”, you could see it the first way, but not the second. (At least I hope you don’t see it the second.) In this case, “see” is applied analogically.

This is the way statements are applied of God. I would hope I am wise, but I am not wise the way God is. Wisdom is something added to my nature. It is not distinct from God’s nature. It is his nature. My wisdom is kind of like God’s, but it is not exactly the same. On the other hand, it is not completely different either.

If we have a univocal concept, we have a God who is just like us, just different by degree rather than by kind. If we have an equivocal concept, we have a God who is entirely different from us and we cannot know him at all. If we have analogical concept, we have a God who we have some similarities to, but at the same time is different by kind rather than degree. This is the kind of God we do have.

We shall continue tomorrow.