Category: Summa Theologica

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters. We are diving into the ocean of truth here. Keep an eye on this site as hopefully we will see some expansion of Deeper Waters in the not-too-distant future. For now, we’re going to continue the path that we’ve been on. We’re going through the Summa Theologica now of Thomas Aquinas with the goal of being getting a more thorough understanding of the doctrine of God. For those who do not own a copy, you can read it at NewAdvent.org. We’re starting tonight looking at the Will of God and we’re going to be asking tonight if God has a Will.

To begin with, this is not speaking about God’s will for our lives in that way. We’ve already done a short series on that. It is also not speaking about moral will at this point, although I do believe each of those could be included in some way. For now, the will has more to do with desire. Does God have desire?

Desires are meant towards end. God has no end however. Things that have ends are objects created for a purpose. You and I were created to glorify God. Angels were created for the same purpose. That we have an end does not mean that end will be fulfilled always, but we do have one.

God’s end however is himself. He was not created, but he is his own good and desire. What does God desire more than anything else? It’s not us. It’s himself. For Aquinas, when the will has that which it desires, then it can rest in the happiness of what it has.

We know this to be true for ourselves. If you are married, you should not be looking at other people of the opposite sex for sexual fulfillment. If you are hungry and eat something, generally, you have your appetite fulfilled and you can rest in that fulfillment. If you have had a hot day and you get a cold drink, you are fulfilled in that.

God has a will however because will is related to the intellect. God is his own intellect and he desires that which is the greatest good, which is of course himself. The desire is related to that which is intelligible. This is different from the appetitive sense, which even the animals have. Now appetite is a function of our will, but our will is not limited to that. We desire truth and goodness, something that the animals do not desire.

What we can take from this at this point is that we do not change the life of God. We do not make him happier by worshipping nor do we make him sad when we don’t. He has all he desires within himself. He wishes to share that love, but he will not suffer if we do not return the favor. In fact, we can only gain by receiving the love he has for us. The one who thinks he hurts God by shunning him only hurts himself.

We shall continue tomorrow.

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.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. I apologize for being absent. I had to move some furniture around here and in the process, had to unhook my computer and then I had to get it re-installed and I was without internet service for a long time. I just now have it back so we can get back to where we were. We’ve been going through the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas and studying the doctrine of God. The Summa can be read by anyone by going to newadvent.org, though I would have no objections to your reading it yourself. Right now, we’re on the third article in the topic of the life of God and we’re asking if life is properly attributed to God.

The question is largely based on the idea of movement and how it means for God to be considered self-moving. In a sense, can we really say that. After all, we can all move ourselves, but that movement refers to a change of some kind. On the other hand, we can all be moved externally. That refers to a change as well though self-movement is that which is necessary for life. However, we hold to the immutability of God. How can we hold to that and still hold that God is moving or rather, changing?

Those who have been keeping up should realize that there is analogy going on here. We have life, but we do not have it in the way that God does. To say that God is not moving in the sense that he is not changing and going from A to B is correct. To say that he is not moving in the sense that he is not active is entirely false however. In fact, God is the most active of all.

God is acting in the sense that he does all that he does eternally. He is not affected by anything external to himself. Even with prayer, he does not respond so much as he pre-answers. He knows what we pray even before he asks us and he acts in accordance with that knowing how we will pray in advance. Some of you might be saying “That doesn’t make much sense.” I agree. It’s hard to wrap one’s head around, but that is because I am a being limited by time and I cannot fathom what it is to not have this limitation.

Thus, God is the one who is truly living as he is the most actual of all beings. We live in a different sense. Because he lives, we also live. Our life has an origin and his doesn’t. He is his life. As Paul said to the Greeks, in him we live and move and have our being. Yes everyone. Paul engaged in metaphysics. We as Christians should recognize this. He is called the living God for a reason. He is the one who is in fact the most active and we dare not simply have a God who is entirely passive. That would be contradictory to good Thomistic thought. We serve the God who lives and is the source of life in all others. Let us celebrate that today. We serve the LIVING God.

We shall continue tomorrow.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. I’m looking forward to tonight as we start a new topic on the life of God and even then, it seems like I cannot even begin to tell you what that means. What does it mean for something to be alive? Well we’ll find out. Our guide for this study has been the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas. You can read it online at newadvent.org. Tonight we begin the new topic by asking if life belongs to all natural things.

It would be a mistake to say that the medieval time period had no interest in science. Indeed, science had been a huge help to them as it was through such work that they came to improve the agriculture system giving them more leisure time in which to pursue other interests and in these interests came the idea of learning more about the natural world. They reasoned that a rational God had made the world and made it to be understood so they could learn more about God if they studied that world.

This would include the scientific realm and while they were not as advanced as we are, we cannot fault them for that. The discoveries that we have made today were made because we were standing on their shoulders. For us, our question today does in fact deal with the scientific world for let us keep in mind that Aristotle was quite the scientist.

Today, we want to know if it belongs to all natural things to live. Some for instance thought there was something to the planets for they were called wanderers. Aristotle had postulated creatures like angels that moved the planets. What is the criteria by which something is said to be alive? Is it simply movement?

Not for Aquinas. For Aquinas, all things are alive if they are somehow capable of moving by their own power. The lowest form of such life is plant life and while it is limited, it is still alive. Plants can respond to stimuli. They do not do this with free-will however, but they are in some way capable of movement. They grow when they receive the proper nutrients and die when they do not, which is something that non-living things do not do.

Of course, we’re also included as are animals. We are more capable of moving by self-will. As I type this out, I am doing so of my own free-will. I have the freedom if I so desired to delete this whole thing and not type any more. However, it is because I have a greater desire to teach and spread some truth that I am continuing the blog.

As we conclude, it seems that we are not far from the science of today if not in total agreement. Would that we had more Christians in the field of science today working to bring glory to God just as the medievals did by looking at the things that he has made.

We shall continue tomorrow.

Hello everyone and I bid you happy returns to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the Ocean of Truth. Of course, if you are here for the first time, welcome aboard and I hope that you will return. We are going through a look at the doctrine of God now in Christian thought and our guide for this has been the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas. You can read a copy of this work for yourself at newadvent.org or you can even order it on Kindle. Tonight, we’re going to be finishing up our look at the subject of falsity and asking if truth and falsity are contraries.

Picture a rock in your mind. The size doesn’t really matter. It can be a massive rock out in the ocean or it can be a rock that can be found in some driveways. Whatever kind or size of rock that you have in your mind, I want you to just get a good image of it.

Now I’d like you to picture a blind rock.

Okay. I hope you’re really confused at this point. We all know rocks can’t see, but we would hardly call a rock blind. However, if I asked you to picture a blind man, you could do that. It could be that some of you know someone who is blind. (Or through the hearing of this blog being read, some of you are blind)

When we speak of blindness, we speak of something that is blind that by nature normally isn’t. Blindness in that sense is a privation. Blindness in the rock is not one but blindness in the human being is due to the nature of the human being in comparison to that of the rock.

In this way, falsity does describe something by comparison. Truth describes something in a thing that is there in actuality. Falsity describes the privation of a thing. It is not the existence of something in a thing. Blindness exists only as an idea for instance. It is the same way evil exists. Evil does not exist as a reality in something but as an actual absence of what ought to be there.

However, when we speak then, we speak of that which is and that which is not. These two are contraries. There can be no middle ground. Something either exists or it does not. It reminds me of the time my pastor was doing a sermon in our church that is small, but we’ve had a string of births within it lately and the pastor speaking about being saved said “It’s like pregnancy. You either are or you aren’t and if you’re here chances are you are.”

So we conclude then that truth and falsity are indeed contraries and because of this, the closer we get to the truth of God, the further we will move away from falsity in our own lives. Let us make it a point to be children of truth and live by that truth so we can banish all that which is contrary from our lives.

Tomorrow, we start looking at the life of God.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are taking a regular plunge into the ocean of truth. We’ve been going through the doctrine of God lately and now we’re on a subset of the doctrine in discussing the idea of falsity. Our guide for this has been the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas. You can read it for yourself online at newadvent.org. Tonight, we will be asking if falsity exists in the intellect. Let’s go to the question.

We discussed last night if it exists in the senses. It does, but it is rare. For Aquinas, there are some things that we can’t not know and these are first principles. This would include some aspects of the moral law. There are some parts of the law that can be erased from our minds somehow over time. However, there are also aspects of the law that we know are right and wrong and these cannot be erased. We can deny it to ourselves and to others, but in reality, we all know these truths.

Also included are analytical statements. These are statements where the truth of the object is in the description. For instance, a bachelor is an unmarried male. Once you understand what a bachelor is, you understand that anyone that you meet that is a bachelor is an unmarried male. All enclosed three-sided figures are triangles. Once you understand the definition, you understand what it is.

There is an area however where the intellect can error and that is in the process of what we call judgment. Consider if I said this proposition about wherever you are living right now and whatever time it is. “It is raining outside.” You can open up a window and look and say “Yes. That proposition is true,” or “No. That proposition is false.”

In each case, you can understand what the proposition means but knowing the proposition does not necessarily entail the truthfulness or falsity of the proposition. “A bachelor is an unmarried male” is true by definition. “It is raining outside,” is not true by definition. You don’t need to make a judgment on the former. You need to on the latter.

It is when we get to the area of judgment that we can indeed error. We could see something wrong or have an error in our thinking that makes us believe something illogical. We do not normally disagree on what the proposition says, though we can disagree on its meaning. Once we agree on the meaning, then we can often disagree on the judgment of whether the proposition under question is true or false.

Keeping this in mind, we as Christians should be very careful about our judgments. We should watch our words to make sure that we are speaking of the things the way that they really are. We are to be people of the truth and in order to do that, we have to be in the business of making sound and informed judgments on matters of truth.

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 lately and right now we’re studying the idea of falsity, in contrast to our prior study of the idea of truth. Our guide for this has been the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas. If you wish to read through the work on your own, you can do so for free at newadvent.org. Tonight, we’re going to be asking the question of if falsity exists in the senses.

To begin with, we must remember that in Thomistic thought, all knowledge begins with sense experience rather than with a priori ideas. This was the position of Aristotle as well in contrast to his position of Plato. While there is a healthy respect of course, there would be disagreement between Aquinas and Augustine. As Augustine Christianized Plato, so did Aquinas with Aristotle.

Aquinas argues that falsity does exist in the senses. The senses can detect many things in many ways, but they are often detecting likenesses. After all, when you see a triangle, you are seeing an object that possesses triangularity. You are not seeing triangularity itself.

This is one reason Plato was against artwork in his perfect city. After all, for him, there were the forms that dwelt independently of the things themselves and even of God. What you saw in the real world was a poor representation of the forms. Since what you were seeing was a poor representation, why make it even worse by making a poorer representation of that thing?

Generally speaking, our senses are reliable, but from time to time, they can let us down. One can think of the Navy Seals who in training undergo sleep deprivation and then begin hallucinating. There is an account of three out on a raft together in training. One was waving at an octopus that was waving at him. Another was using an oar to hit dolphins leaping overhead. Another was wanting to dive out of the way of an oncoming train. What made them realize that these were all hallucinations? None of their friends saw the things that they were seeing.

We do realize however that our senses are generally reliable which is a good thing and an amazing thing. How is it that this bundle of molecules can so well relate to that universe that exists independently? It is because of the reliability of the senses that we have the studies of science and other areas. We trust historical accounts because we believe sense experience to be reliable across space and time. Of course, we recognize that people can lie and exaggerate and sometimes have malfunctioning senses, but overall, we do trust sense experience.

For this, we should be thankful. God gave us a world that we are to explore and learn about and he gave us a reliable method of doing such. Our senses are wonderful gifts and we should thank God that he loved us enough that we are allowed to experience the wonder that is the world.

We shall continue tomorrow.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. We’re going through the doctrine of God and recently, we finished up a look at the doctrine of truth. Now, we’re going to turn to the other side of the coin and see what we can find out about falsity. Our guide for this has been the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas. You can read that online at newadvent.org. Tonight we’re going to be asking if falsity is in things.

When I was younger, I remember walking the railroad tracks with my Dad on some summer afternoons. I also remember him trying to tell me how we had stumbled across gold on the tracks. Singer Geoff Moore of Geoff Moore and the Distance has a song called “Good To Be Alive” where he echoes the same thought of how at the age of eight, he had a pocket full of rocks that he knew were made of solid gold.

Well, it’d be nice if we did have that gold, but we have in fact what is called fool’s gold. This is something that has the appearance of being gold and you could fool someone who did not know better, but it only goes to the point of appearance. It does not have the substance of gold.

In a similar way, falsity does exist in things. All things are true insofar as they are knowable, but they’re false insofar as they are not what they can often appear to be. The only exception of this, though not mentioned by Aquinas explicitly, would be God in whom there dwells no falsity.

Our moral culture certainly needs to learn this as we have gone on a quest to find the ultimate. In the west, Christianity has been forsaken and in its place we have had for awhile secularism, but people are finding they cannot live in a godless universe and there is still a hole in their hearts. Unfortunately, rather than return to Christianity, they are turning to Eastern thought.

These have the appearance of truth, but they are false. Many times today people get taken in by claims that sound spiritual, but aren’t. The Mormons are an excellent example of this. It sounds really spiritual to hear things Mormons say about relying on God alone and having faith based on a confirmation of the Spirit. It’s just not biblical. People were told to examine claims and test them. A person was to know Christ rose from the dead based on the evidence and not a burning in the bosom.

Ultimately, falsity exists in things in which they appear to be what they are not, including being a unity when in reality they are not unity itself that is found in God. It is said that an actor is a false Hector. If someone is on stage playing a role, they are pretending to be a character and thus necessarily they are not that same character.

Thus, we conclude falsity does exist in things.

We shall continue tomorrow.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we’re diving into the ocean of truth. We’re going through the doctrine of God right now and our guide for the journey has been the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas. If you want to read the work online, you can do so at newadvent.org. We’re on the topic of the nature of truth right now and we’re going to wrap that up tonight and start studying the converse of falsity tomorrow. Tonight’s question is if truth is immutable.

By immutable, of course, we mean unchanging. Aquinas again gives us two different answers. In the case of the divine intellect, truth is most certainly unchanging. This is the way that a fallable and finite mind can know immutable truths. The truths are greater than the mind is actually and the mind is subject to the truth. If truth resided only in our intellects, then all truth would ultimately be mutable and nothing could then be true.

This is why I often tell people in debate that when truth is properly understood, it is immutable. It is always amusing to hear someone say the truth of “I am sitting down” is not immutable because it is subject to change, as if such a counter has not been thought of in advance. When properly understood, that statement is tied to what one person said at a specific time and place. While it is tied to a specific time and place, it is true for all people and all times and all places. Thus, it is true that at this time, I, the Deeper Waters blogger, am sitting down. That will be true for all people in all times in all places even if they don’t believe it. The fact that I can stand up in the next minute has no bearing on the fact that I was sitting.

Truth in our minds is quite mutable however as we are subject to change. I was told earlier today that it is impossible for me to change my opinions and become a Muslim because I would not go counter to my experience and data. It’s simply false. It’s highly unlikely that I would do that. However, we all know that there are times that we have taken an opinion that we had previously seen as contradictory to our experience and data. Any time we change our minds, we do that. We say that new data or new experiences or some combination thereof has made itself known that we can now see the prior opinion we held was in fact false.

Once again, our effort should be to try to get to the divine mind and would that more Christian counselors would realize this. For instance, if all human beings could realize that God looks at them and says “You bear my image and I want to conform you to the image of my Son”, imagine how much better we would be!

The philosopher after the time of Christ named Epictetus who was a stoic had this to say in his ninth golden saying. Put it with Christian language and oh if we could realize it!:

If a man could be thoroughly penetrated, as he ought, with this thought, that we are all in an especial manner sprung from God, and that God is the Father of men as well as of Gods, full surely he would never conceive aught ignoble or base of himself. Whereas if Cæsar were to adopt you, your haughty looks would be intolerable; will you not be elated at knowing that you are the son of God? Now however it is not so with us: but seeing that in our birth these two things are commingled—the body which we share with the animals, and the Reason and Thought which we share with the Gods, many decline towards this unhappy kinship with the dead, few rise to the blessed kinship with the Divine. Since then every one must deal with each thing according to the view which he forms about it, those few who hold that they are born for fidelity, modesty, and unerring sureness in dealing with the things of sense, never conceive aught base or ignoble of themselves: but the multitude the contrary. Why, what am I?—A wretched human creature; with this miserable flesh of mine. Miserable indeed! but you have something better than that paltry flesh of yours. Why then cling to the one, and neglect the other?

Realize your heritage Christian! You are a child of God and that is an immutable truth!

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 right now in the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas. If you do not own a copy of the Summa, you can read it online at newadvent.org. We’re covering a subset in the doctrine of God right now as we discuss the doctrine of truth, something that is very much needed for our modern times. Tonight we’re going to be asking if created truth is eternal. Let’s go to the question!

In a sense, all truth is eternal and Aquinas does admit that. However, he does say that we do bring about truth through our actions and propositions that was not true at one point in time. What I am thinking is for instance a created truth. I am thinking that I am sitting at this residence at this time writing this blog on this topic and no one else could have ever thought that before.

However, while these are truths that do reside in my intellect, they are not true because they reside in my intellect. For one thing, I know I have thought many things in the past that are frankly wrong and in fact, I know I think many things right now that are wrong. “Well why do you think them?” In some cases, I don’t know what they are, but theology is a deep subject and I’m sure that I can’t have all of the answers to the questions right. I’m certain to have some wrong theological beliefs.

On the other hand, there are also crazy beliefs we all have such as phobias. If I have an intense fear of something, I do realize that that fear is not rational, but I think it. This is also the case in the problem of doubt. If I am doubting something, I could very well know that my doubts are not true, but there is a part that makes it hard to convince me of that.

Aquinas does say however that our truths that we think in our mind are only true if they are true in the divine intellect, which should give us pause. For instance, if you like me are constantly self-critical, you should ask yourself “Is this what the mind of God is saying right now?” Let’s suppose what you tell yourself is that you’re no good. What you need to do is look and say “Does God say I’m no good?” If he doesn’t, then you need to start changing your beliefs. Of course, I do realize that is easier said than done and something I work on myself.

For Aquinas also, it is because there is truth in the divine intellect that there can be any truth at all. In other words, if there were no God, there would be no truth for there would be no eternal intellect for that mind but rather several finite and changing minds and why should one of them hold sway over another? How could a truth like 2 + 2 = 4 be true even if no mind was there who understood that truth?

Thus, we conclude that created truth is not eternal but the truth that is eternal is that in the mind of God and that is what we should be seeking.

We shall continue tomorrow.