Prima Pars
Lecture 16: Divine Simplicity and the Five Attributes of God

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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. God, our Enlightenment, Guardian Angel, strengthen the lights of our minds, order, illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. St. Thomas Aquinas, Angelic Doctor, pray for us. Help us to understand all that you're written. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Amen. So, we saw at the end here, last class, I guess, that the beginning of the question on simplicity of God, Thomas will enumerate the five parts, you could say, of the consideration of the substance of God, what He is, or maybe what He is not. And so he says, first, we'll inquire about the simplicity of Him, by which is removed from Him composition. And because simple things, embodied things, and were known to us, are imperfect in parts, secondly, we'll inquire about the perfection of it. So, you kind of see the reason why the simplicity and perfection are put next to each other. So, in material things, the plants are more perfect than the inanimate things, and the animals than the plants, but they're more composed. So, simplicity and perfection doesn't seem to go together, right, in the material world. But in God, He's both simple and perfect. So, He puts those two alongside each other, right? And then the infinity of Him, which is rather close to His perfection, because God will be infinite not in the quantitative sense, right? But in the sense that there is no limit to His perfection, right? His perfection is not limited to any particular kind of thing, huh? But He's universally perfected, huh? Lacking in nothing, as Aristotle and Thomas say. Then the fourth thing is about the immutability, the unchangeableness, you could say in English. And the fifth about the, what? Unity, huh? That God is one, huh? Now, I raised the question there about two and three, right, huh? Okay. And of course, I'm not a fanatic about two and three. I usually state the rule is that most single divisions, or even distinctions, are into two or three, right? And therefore, when you divide into more than three, usually you are, what? Combining, huh? A number of distinctions or divisions, huh? Okay? And when Thomas, you know, explains, let's say, the division of being according to the Figurative Predication, there are ten kinds of being, huh? When he divides them, he divides them into three, and then he subdivides by two or three until he gets down to all ten, huh? So, should that be done here, or is that something that is an exception to the rule, right? An exception that proves the rule, as they say. Because an exception proves that something is true for the most part, right? Okay. But it's kind of interesting. As far as I know, Thomas is the only one who, in his consideration, the substance of God, divides it into these five, huh? And he does so both in the Summa Theologiae and in the Summa Contra Gentiles, huh? Although the order is a little bit different in the two. But he has those same five, right? You say, what's that? Is that all that can be said, so to speak? Is there something complete about this? It's hard to see a division into five, right? All by itself, huh? Now, as a natural philosopher, I am struck by a certain likeness of what the Greek natural philosopher has said about the first matter and what Thomas is going to say about the first mover or maker or creator, that in words, at least, right, four of these five names will be found. Now, let me recall, just for a second, then. The first natural philosopher was, as you may recall, Thales, right? And Thales seems to have looked for one beginning of all things. And did he have, did he know there was one beginning of all things? Did he have any reason for saying there was one beginning for all things? I don't know. But, would reason be inclined to look for one beginning for all things? We have another fragment from the great Heraclitus, the central thinking of the plot, where he says, it is wise, he says, listening not to me, but to reason, to agree that all things are one. Heraclitus is saying that it's a very nature of reason to look for something one. So I sometimes say to the students, a guess can be reasonable because there's a reason for it, right? Or because reason is naturally inclined in that way. And sometimes I say that reason, or try to show a little bit, that reason is naturally inclined to look for something one by something perhaps there's even more so a reason that it looks for order. And that's why the scientist is always talking about laws. Law and order are always coupled together. Where Shakespeare defines reasons looking before and after, or by them, before and after. Now, is order more based upon many or upon something one? Yeah. And even the first sense of order, which is that of paragogical order, temporal order, we order all events before and after the birth of Christ. We order all events by one event. And not because we're Christians, though, because of Mohammedan's ideas they take the Agyra, the flight of Mohammed from Reca to Medina, and they order events before and after that, right? But if I order events, say, by my birthday, and you by your birthday, and so on, we couldn't understand each other, we couldn't see whether the number you have, right? It's before or after the time I'm talking about my numbers, right? So you can kind of see that order is based upon something one. The order of the army has to go back to one man in charge, right? And the order of the country to what government, right? Not several governments. So there's something about the very nature of reason that makes us look for something one behind the many. And of course, you can see in numbers that one is the beginning of all numbers. Now you may have, in addition to that, some reason to think that there's one beginning too. And all the more would you look for this. But of course, the difference between Thales and the Bible say, Thales is looking for one matter in which all things are made. And the Bible begins, you know, with one maker. But of course, the Bible is the word of God so you can speak about the maker right away. But Thales is the word of man, right? It started with the senses. And it's more obvious that things depend upon matter than upon a maker. And so he looks for one matter. The second thing you see about Thales is that he guesses that this here, water, is that one matter in which all things are made. He takes something which, at least to our senses, appears to be homogenous, to be very simple, the water. He doesn't take orange juice, you know, or sometimes one part separates from the other, or milk, you know, that sort of thing. Or even something that has a quality, like red wine, or something like that. So he guesses that this is that this is that there's something simple, right? Of course, you could say, well, isn't the simple before the composed? And so isn't the beginning of things the simplest thing there is, huh? So, two of the five words are right there, right? And it doesn't mean now that one simple will mean exactly the same thing in these two cases. It's not purely by chance, huh? Now, the next thinker, if you recall, just using the fragments we have, was in Acts of Manit, right? And in Acts of Manit, he said that the beginning of all things was the unlimited. That's the third of the words, right? The infinite, the unlimited. Everyone uses a lot of the word. And Thomas will recall, I think, in the Summa Canto Gentile, is that how all the Greek philosophers, he quotes Aristotle, saying that the Greek philosophers all thought at the beginning as being unlimited in some way. And Thomas takes it over Aristotle's phrase, he uses the physics for other things, where Aristotle says, they all say this same thing without giving me a reason, but as if coerced by the truth itself. It is a natural inclination. And notice, if this one simple thing, if out of it there comes an infinity of things, and no end to things coming to be, in some way that beginning has to be unlimited. Just like in the simple example of a piece of clay, you can mold it into a sphere, or into a cube, or into a pyramid. There's an infinity of shapes you can mold it into, right? So there's something infinite about that piece of clay. Or water can take on the, what, shape of any container. And there can be an infinity of different shapes that water can take on. So there's some kind of infinity, right? In the case of water, it's a quite different kind of infinity than God does, because God's one is not an ability to be formed or to be actualized in various ways. But nevertheless, in some way it's unlimited. And so, as Thomas says, after Aristotle showed the unlimited, the way they thought didn't exist, well then they realized the unlimited beginning is something different, right? Okay? Now, the other thing that Max of Andrew says, that's very interesting, is that he says, whatever is the beginning of things is also their end. Now he's thinking of beginning and end in a sense of the matter. That whatever you make things out originally, whatever is the first matter of which things are made originally, when you break those things down, you come back to that same, what? Matter. And in class I sometimes, you know, simply explain this by saying, you know, if you buy your little boy a bag of blocks, and he builds a tower or something out of it, and then you knock the tower down, do you have a Lego set? No. He had the same thing you began with, right? Like your Bible Lego set, and you built a rocket out of it or something, right? You took it apart. Do you have a bag of blocks? No. You come back to the same beginning. So, Eric Max of Andrew says, then, if the unlimited is the beginning of things, the unlimited is, what, eternal, and doesn't grow old, huh? In some way it remains throughout all change. So it's unchangeable in some way, right? And there's a reason to think that the beginning of things must be something unchangeable, incorruptible, right? Because at the beginning of all things, we're corruptible, then everything could, what, cease to be, right? So, you have the four of the five, right? Okay? Now, of course, all of this is thinking of the beginning as, what, one matter, huh? But for the things set of that one matter that they're thinking of as the beginning of all things, those same words are used to talk about the Divine Substance. Is that purely by chance or equivocal? Pretty equivocal? Or is there some likeness there? Now, the one you don't see here so much at all is the, what, perfect. Okay? And, of course, that doesn't fit matter, huh? Because matter is perfected by form, by the actuality that comes to it. So there's kind of a difference between perfect and the other, what, four. Okay? A little distinction there, huh? Into two, right? Now, just to elaborate on this up here again, huh? The reason why I'm emphasizing this natural inclination of our mind, right? Because what is going to be shown about the summons of God here can be known by faith, but it could also be known by reason. This will come up in the first book, say, the Summa Concenti, that's found in the fourth book, which is known only by faith. So you want to see there's something kind of reasonable about having these four, huh? that the mind and the natural incline is towards that. Now, when you go to the mathematical physicists, who are the most reasonable amount of scientists, I always like to quote Max Born, right? We talked about Max Born before, but Max Born got the Nobel Prize, right, for explaining what the waves mean, the way of mechanics. He also wrote many books on the waves, and so on. So he's a guy who won the Nobel Prize in physics, but he's also intimately associated with all the other great physicists. So he worked with Einstein in Berlin, right? And you can buy, it was in Borders Bookshop, in fact, not so long ago, and they had re-edited the letters between Einstein and Max Born. It's kind of a beautiful collection of letters back and forth, doing the scientific matters mainly. And Born is also, you know, given a little kind of induction to the letters, kind of the circumstance of the letters and so on. So he's very good to be associated with Einstein now, perhaps the greatest of the scientists. But then he was very close to what? Heisenberg and to Niels Bohr, the development of quantum theory that's going to get the Nobel Prize. And I think it was Max Born who suggested to Heisenberg, Heisenberg was trying to develop the mathematics for quantum physics. And Born said, and that reminds me that's a weird kind of math we have over here in Gattingen. And sure enough, that was useful to Heisenberg, And anyway, Max Born, in his book there, The Rest of the Universe, he says, the genuine physicist, the real article, right? The genuine physicist believes, he says, absolutely, in the unity and simplicity of nature despite any appearance to the contrary. What does that show? It shows a natural inclination, right, huh? That even in the absence of a reason, right, even the appearance might be that there is no unity or no simplicity, he's still going to believe in it, huh? Now, you read Max Planck, the father of the physics of the 20th century, and Einstein and so on, and they'll talk about this inclination of mind to find unity, and if you ask somebody, you know, if you're going to reduce everything to one equation, well, they'll probably say probably not, but he says, well, you're actually thinking, that's what you're trying to do. So they naturally incline towards unity and simplicity, right? Now, of course, as you know, an equation is, what, unlimited, in the sense that, you know, force equals mass times acceleration, you can calculate an infinity of forces by that equation, right? So there's something infinite about this as well as being one simple. And the most basic laws of physics are the conservation laws, the conservation of energy, the conservation of momentum, and the conservation of angular momentum. But that's a kind of unchangeableness, right? That something remains the same throughout all change, yeah? the same amount of energy or momentum and so on. So that's another place where you see the great physicists this natural tendency towards these four things, something that has all these four. That's kind of strange, huh? Because here we're talking about one maker or one mover, like in our arguments for the existence of God, one greedy, you can say. And it's kind of strange that these same four names will show up, huh? Now perhaps the thinking about the maker among the Greeks that is closest to us would be the great Anaxagoras, right? Who spoke of a greater mind as being the cause of the order. Of course, when he talks about the mind, the first thing he says is, it's unlimited. He's got one mind, right? He says it's the, what, thinnest of all things, right? And it has no matter, so it's a changeable, right? That's kind of strange, it's like this, huh? Between what is said of the first matter and what is said of the first, what, maker. That doesn't mean that these four mean the same thing, because the same word is being said of both, huh? But it's not purely equivocal or equivocal by chance that these same four words show up for both, huh? And if you go back to the definitions, huh, that we have in the four kinds of causes, huh? Of the four kinds of causes that Aristotle defines them, the definition of matter and the definition of mover or maker seem to both, in a way, say that it's a beginning. The definition of matter is that from which something comes to be, existing within it, huh? Well, that from which something comes to be, he says, is obviously emphasizing this kind of a beginning, the origin of this thing, right? The mover is defined by Aristotle as whence, from where, right? Whence there is a first beginning of motion or of rest, huh? But the definition of form that he gives is the definition of what was to be. It doesn't have as explicit as the matter and the mover, the idea of the beginning of it, you see? And the end, or it's the very word end, it seems. Not to be a beginning at first, right? It's time to get to the last meaning of beginning, as we know from the fifth book of wisdom, that the beginning, the end is a beginning, right? But at first sight, the end is not clearly a beginning. It's just the opposite of a beginning, right? So, there's a likeness between matter and nature in that they both seem to be a, what? A beginning, right? And what would seem to characterize the beginning of things, huh? Well, obviously, the simple would seem to be the beginning of the composed, right? The one, the beginning of the many, right? If the beginning was not unchangeable, right? Then everything would disappear, right? And if the beginning of things gives rise to all things, it must be in some way unlimited, huh? So, it kind of fits our easy notion of a beginning, right? But now you get to the important question. Is the one beginning of all things, the one simple, unlimited, unchangeable beginning of all things, is it one matter, or is it one maker? Or one creating, you say. Well, beginning means, right? Almost the same thing as first, right? Before all the rest, huh? Okay? So, you have to go back to the famous thing in the ninth book of wisdom, huh? Is ability before act, in which case, then, the very first beginning of all things would be most in ability, and be, what matter? Or is the beginning of all things most in act? In fact, pure act. Then you be back to one, what? Mover or maker, right? What I think we taught when we did that is a very important kind of distinction which corresponds to a very common kind of mistake. And this kind of distinction is a distinction between what is so simply and without qualification and what is so, it is not so simply but with some qualification, some imperfect way, huh? Okay? I was talking today in the Mino, huh? And Mino makes this kind of mistake for mixing up these two. And Socrates tries to reply and makes the same mistakes. But I was telling the students, you know, that this is the kind of mistake you're making all the time in your life when you do what is bad because in some imperfect way it's good. Or you don't do what is good for you to do because in some way it's bad. You see? So if someone said to you, you know, is it good to rob the bank? You'd say no, huh? Okay? Well, why did people rob the bank? Well, in some way it is good. It increases the money in your pocket or something like that, right? Would it be good to me to murder you because you annoy me? Well, no, he'd say no, of course not. Okay? But it would remove an annoyance from that other. See? So you're choosing something bad because in some imperfect way it's good, right? Or you're not doing what is good because in some imperfect way it's bad. So there's nothing so good in this life, I said, even that you should do that doesn't prevent you from doing something else which is good too. And so in some way, prevent you from doing good and therefore in some very diminished sense, it's bad. Do you see that? Okay? Well, this is the kind of mistake that is made about the greatest question of all, in a sense. Is the first cause something like matter, some kind of matter? Or is it like a move or a maker? Well, as Aristotle points out in the book, in the thing that goes through ability to act, ability comes before act. So in some way, ability does come before act. But then he points out that the thing that goes through ability to act doesn't give itself the act, which it doesn't have. It goes through ability to act because it's something already in act. So simply, you'd say that act is before ability. And therefore, the very first thing is most in act. And therefore, the final answer is it is one maker, one creator, not one matter out of all things. But because it's what? Act is simply speaking, then the first beginning will be most perfect, but that doesn't come up in some of the guys because they're thinking of the beginning of all things as being matter. I'd like to mention something before people came in. I happened to look at the newspaper the other day. There's this controversy about intelligent design in the schools and so on. And so somebody's getting in to the newspaper there and saying, you know, they should allow this intelligent design talk and it's unscientific and so on, you know. And he laid down the three rules of science, right? I don't know. Rule number one was everything's got to be explained by material cause. Okay, so that obviously excludes intelligent design. But it's because he's the matter, the mover, too, but the cause, huh? Which doesn't make any sense even in terms of generation, let's say, or something like that, huh? But he doesn't understand what kind of a cause of matter is. So, one way, let's say how useful this is, right? But one way of dividing these fives into two, right? And you might contrast perfect with the other four, right? Because the other four, our mind is very much naturally inclined to, right? And in some way, it fits the other kind of beginning as well, right? It's a little different, right? Perfect is something you don't find in these guys because of thinking of one beginning, the sense of matter. Okay, do you see that distinction a little bit? I don't say how useful that is, but I think it's interesting to see that. And when you see that our mind is naturally inclined towards something one, simple, unchangeable, infinite, then it's not like Thomas of Kulisama or out of the blue, right? Our mind is going that way definitely, right? And even in, say, the mathematical physics of those, machine that was born in Iceland and the rest of them, you know, that's in some sense a very limited thing because there's no real matter of motion in mathematical physics. It's mathematical, huh? As Schrodinger said in perfected the mathematics of the other, there's no stuff at all in the modern atom. He compares it to Playboy and the tomatoes there, right? There's this geometrical theory for earth, air, fire, and water. There's no matter of motion in math. But even despite that, you find that tendency, right? Mathematical physicists are something one, simple, unchangeable, right? So, it's kind of a, you know, confirmation that we're on the right way, yeah? This is the way our mind is moving, right? Even without having a reason to move in that direction, you see? But we'll be getting reasons why God is these four, right? Even before we see the reasons, we say, hey, hey, that makes sense. That's the way my mind is, what, going, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's kind of profound, I think, yeah? But you don't see that tendency, though, it's perfect so much, right? Because they're stuck on the most known cause, you might say. But the English word for cause is ground, right? Which is very close to the first opinion about the beginning of things, which is Mother Earth, right? Common Mother Thou, Shakespeare says. Whose womb and measure what infinite rest, gains and feeds all. But you're thinking, but Mata, Mother, that's where you get the word matter, huh? Kira, from Mata. But, you know, that's four of the five, right? Then you have to realize which comes first, act or ability, huh? Then you'll see the other one, perfect, huh? Now, we still have a problem here for the two and three man, right? You've got a distinction to two, but one of these is not divided into two or three, but into what? Four. Four, huh? Now, I think one and simple are almost, right? The same, right? And I'm going to show you a little bit of my thinking in this regard. You know, when I was studying the fifth book of wisdom, you study the words whole and part, huh? Okay? And this is one of the axioms, the whole is more than the part, huh? And Aristotle, there, distinguishes about four senses of part and four senses of whole, right? But without going into all of them, right, huh? There's a distinction between the composed whole, the whole that is put together from its parts, but not set of them individually, and the universal whole, right? Which is set of its parts, right? But not put together from them, huh? So he has that distinction in there, and then he distinguishes three kinds of, what? Composed whole, right? Kind of the quantitative whole, right? And then the whole that is the definition, and the whole that is matter and form. So he observes the rule of two and three of it, huh? Because you first distinguish the universal whole from the composed whole, and then you distinguish three kinds of composed whole. So I ask myself, you know, why doesn't Thomas have a question about whether God has parts, right? And which is going to negate any parts in God? A lot of times in class I use this as an example, I'll say, I'm trying to illustrate the fact that a knowledge of the general is more useful in theology than a knowledge of the particular. If we can show in theology that God has no parts, we don't bother to show that he doesn't have two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen. So it's kind of more or less useless for theology to know that water is H2O. But it's very important to know that there are whole parts. But if you can negate that, you know, that God has parts, you don't have to show that there are two arms, two legs, or 200 pages, or whatever, right? There are parts, period. Okay? So why doesn't Thomas have that, right? Well, he said, well, he's got a question here on simplicity of God, right? And that's denying all, what? Composition. And therefore all whole is in the sense of composed whole, right? But what about the universal whole? See? No. But Chini showed that God is not a universal whole, too. Well, when you show that God is one, in a way you're showing that he's not a universal whole. And later on, you say the Trinity, when you say God of Father, Son, Holy Spirit, that's not a universal set of three particulars under it. There's no subject parts, to use a technical term, huh? You know? There's no universal whole in it either. So, in a way, when he denies, when he says God is simple, he's denying that God is composed whole. When he says God is one, he's denying that God is, say, what? No universal whole. Yeah. You see? So, the two of these are going to be put together and say he has no, what? Parts, right? Okay? So, there's a kind of affinity of these two, huh? Now, if you look at the, at the, uh, Thomas' commentary on the sentences of Peter Lombard, right? I know, you know, you have a common text of Lombard, and then you have, often, you have these questions and articles. Well, in one place there, he has two articles next to each other, that God does, you know what? God's not composed whole, that he's not universal whole. It's a kind of confirmation of the affinity of these two, right? You wouldn't see it from this, because he takes up the simplicity first, and God being one at the end, right? But, but there, the two are right together, right? So, you could have combined them, right? Under the idea that God has no parts, great advantages has, because it's such different holes, right? But nevertheless, you could see something, a certain affinity of these, huh? Okay? And, in a sense, to be composed in a way is to be many, isn't it? And not one, huh? It needs to be many in your parts, right? So, you can see how close those two are related. Now, another thing in support of, like, putting those together a little bit, is if you go to the, the compendium of theology, right? Which Thomas wrote for his brother of originality, and one of, you know, a shorter thing for himself to be able to read a lot. But, um, showing that God is one, is one of the little chapters in the consideration as being simple. Well, there, they really are put together, right? Mm-hmm. Okay. So, if in my fanatic way of proceeding, I was going to try to give a division into, what, three, I would give it, you know, it has no parts, he's unlimited, he's unchangeable, right? And then it has no parts, subdivide that into, what, composing parts and subject parts, right? Okay? I mean, it's a little force, but, like this. I do it, right? Now, so.