Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters. It is really good to be back and writing regularly again after not having the net for that short period of time. We’ve been going through the doctrine of God lately and trying to understand it better. Our guide on our search for truth has been the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas. It can be read by anyone at newadvent.org. We’re going to wrap up our look at the life of God and ask tonight if all things are life in God. Tomorrow then, we begin a longer study of the will of God which will be most enjoyable I’m sure.
Last time, we quoted the verse in Acts 17 where Paul says that in God all things live and move and have their being. What did he mean by that? Well we cannot know entirely, but Paul was a strong theologian who knew his Tanakh very well and knew the doctrine of God and he was working his theology on how Christ fit into this, but that still allowed him to keep the basic idea of God intact, one that he was able to present to the Greek philosophers.
In today’s question, we look at that. For Aquinas, in God, the intellect and God’s existing are one and the same. That which is in God as understood then is the life of God. Thus, in God, all things are alive. Not that they have life in themselves in that way, but that they are in the divine mind and thus have an effect upon the world.
Without God, there could not be anything that is alive. Now we have said earlier that God has life in a different way than we do. While we have life by his gift, he has his life by nature. There is a sense however in which what we have is more actual than what is in the mind of God.
In the mind of God, man does not exist materially. That is because in God there is no matter. Now of course, God knows that man is a material being, but the idea of a man is not material. It is the man who is actual that is material. In the mind of God, you are an immaterial idea, but in reality, you are material.
However, you do live in God. All that is in him is life and that includes the ideas of God. This does not mean that rocks are living things in this world, but that the ideas are in God and are active and being the exemplar cause of all things that exist, that is, that after which something is.
Let us take time then to consider and celebrate the life of God. I would definitely consider getting the book Perelandra if you haven’t read it yet and read the section on the dance between Mars and Venus. It is one of the most astounding ones in literature and one that I really think shows the glory of God. Thomas would be pleased.
We shall continue tomorrow.
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