Deeper Waters

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 in Christian Theology and our guide for this has been the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas. You can read this online at newadvent.org. We’re studying the topic of the will of God right now and we’re asking if any cause can be assigned to the divine will. Let’s go to the question.

This is along the lines of the question of “If God created everything who created God?” If the will of God is the cause of all things, what caused the will of God? However, this can continue to an infinite regress. If there is a cause of that, we can ask what caused that. Can we rest in the conclusion that nothing causes the will of God?

Suppose you want to do something. For instance, I just mailed a letter out at a local mailbox. It’s a distance away, but not too far away, so I chose to walk. My end of course was getting the letter in the mail and I figured a walk would grant me some more reading time. However, I could have just as easily got in my car and drove over to the mailbox or I could have even just left it for the mail carrier to pick up here in the morning.

However, once I will the ends, I also will the means I want to go through to get to that end, but those are two different activities. I had the end in mind already that I wanted, but there were a number of ways that I could use in order to get to that end and willing the means was something separate.

It is the same with knowing a conclusion based on a principle. In seeing the conclusion, one can look at the principles then and understand how one got to that conclusion. Think back to being in a math class and being given a problem and seeing the answer and wondering how that answer was reached. Then, your teacher, if they were a good one, went through a process and showed you. You knew the conclusion, but in a separate act, you knew the way by which that conclusion was reached.

It is the same with the will of God. God wills all things by his goodness. However, once he has the end in mind, he does not will a means because of that end but in order to get to that end. It is by willing the means that he wills the end desired by that mean.

For my scientifically minded friends, Aquinas has some words for you also. By all means, seek out means by which processes come about. However, those are not primary causes. You can by all means consider why it is the arrow flies at the target, but do not neglect that there is an archer pulling the bow launching the arrow at that target. There is no need for Christians to fear secondary causes. These are instrumental causes God is using to bring about his goal.

We shall continue tomorrow.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the Ocean of Truth. I’ve had an odd day and I just ask everyone keep praying for me. I’m realizing more areas to work on and my tendency is unfortunately to focus on the negative. God’s making me a better man though with a great instrument to do that with. For now, let’s focus on our study of the doctrine of God. Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica has been our guide and we’ll be continuing our study on the will of God. You can read the Summa for yourself online for free at newadvent.org. For now, let’s get to the question.

Tonight, we’re asking if the will of God is the cause of things. An important distinction needs to be made at the start. By things, Aquinas means substances I believe. I do not think Aquinas is saying that God is the cause of every action or event. Now he would believe that God allows every action or event, but God is not the cause of evil for instance, especially since evil isn’t a substance.

We have seen that God does not have to will anything outside of himself. He needs only will himself and he is complete in himself. However, his will flows out of his goodness and is an act of intellect. There must be an intellect before there is action as action seeks to reach an end.

This is also a challenge to our naturalistic way of thinking that tries to deny God. In this, there is no purpose. Things act, but ultimately, there is no reason why they act. The gazelle might seek to survive so it can reproduce, but there is no ultimate meaning for its reproducing. Even if it passes on fitter genes, so what? In the end, all dies in a cold death. There is no true progress for there is nothing for us to progress to.

God is also not determined by anything outside himself. He does not act out of necessity but out of the desire of his goodness and this is done through the will acting through the means of his intellect. Since the will is the one that acts through the intellect to produce things, then the will is the cause of those things.

Further, Aquinas tells us that results are produced insofar as they pre-exist in an agent. The classic example is that a painting is produced insofar as it pre-exists in the mind of the painter. In God, all things pre-exist in him. Since they pre-exist in the intellect, the way they come out is through the working of the will. If that is the case, then the will of God is the cause of things.

Thus, we conclude in agreement with Thomas that the will of God is the cause of things. How this relates to the problem of evil and the free-will of man will be discussed later on, but all substances that exist exist because it is the will of God that they exist.

We shall continue tomorrow.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. We are going through the doctrine of God right now in Christian thought so we can learn all the more about the one who identified himself as “I AM”, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob who revealed himself best in Jesus Christ. Our guide for this has been the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas. This can be read online at newadvent.org. We’re discussing the will of God and tonight, we’re going to discuss whether God wills what he wills necessarily.

There are some aspects to this that make it seem like it would be so. Mainly, isn’t God eternally doing all things and thus whatever he wills, he has been willing for all eternity? If that is the case, then he is willing necessarily. If he is eternally willing necessarily, then whatever he wills has been willed necessarily has it?

Not so fast.

Aquinas says that things can be said to be necessary absolutely or by supposition. Suppose you meet someone who is a bachelor. It is absolutely necessary that he be an unmarried male. If he is not an unmarried male, then he cannot be a bachelor. Suppose you want to draw a triangle. It is necessary that what you draw be an enclosed figure with three straight lines and three angels totaling 180 degrees.

The reason that these are necessary is that they are contained in the term itself. A bachelor is an unmarried male. A triangle is an enclosed figure with three straight lines and angles totaling up to 180 degrees. If you want to draw a figure that does not have those properties, it could be a figure indeed, but it is certainly not a triangle.

Thus, if you say “That bachelor is an unmarried male,” you are not saying anything about the bachelor that could not be known otherwise. If you say “That bachelor drives a Mercedes”, then you are saying something new. It is necessary to being a bachelor that one be an unmarried male. It is not necessary that one drives a Mercedes.

How about Socrates sitting? It is not necessary to the nature of Socrates that he be sitting. However, if Socrates is sitting, he necessarily sits. He cannot not be sitting if he is sitting. He can choose to stand up if he so desires, but he cannot stand up and be sitting at the same time.

God’s will is more that way. Whatever he wills, once he wills it, he wills it necessarily. However, it was not necessary to him that he will that. The only thing that he necessarily wills is his goodness. Aquinas says we can picture willing to go on a stroll. We do not have to will a horse to go on that scroll. We can go on a scroll without a horse, but riding a horse could be more pleasant.

God does not need to will anything else besides himself for his happiness. However, he can will other things in a way of diffusing his goodness that did not have to be. Once they are however, he wills them of necessity and cannot change that he wills something once he wills it.

We shall continue tomorrow.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. We are going to resume tonight our study on the doctrine of God in Christian thought. Our guide for this has been the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas. This can be read online at newadvent.org. We’re discussing the topic of the will of God. Tonight, we’re going to be asking if God wills things other than himself.

What can you get the man who has everything? The answer would be nothing we say. If he has everything, what more does he need? While this is true, it does not follow that he would not want something else. Something can be desired out of need, the way we desire food and water, and some out of want, such as material objects, friends, pleasure, etc.

What about God? Scripture makes it clear that he needs nothing. Does he want some things? Scripture makes it clear that he wants some things as well, which is why he sends the prophets and he sent the apostles. God wanted his message to be known that men might come to salvation.

However, there is nothing outside of God that he needs. He only wants other things. He is not dependent on us for anything at all. We cannot alter him in any way. We cannot reduce him to something lower than what he is. (We can lower him in our minds of course, but not in actuality.) We cannot make him greater than what he is.

Yet the question can be why does God will things other than himself? An obvious answer to the question of if he can can be answered by looking at the fact that we are here, but the medievals would not accept such an explanation. They wanted to look at the philosophical implications of what was said. It was not enough to say “The case is true.” It also had to be “Why is the case true but it doesn’t conflict with the other theology here?”

For Aquinas, when God wills something other than himself, it is because all creatures not just seek their own goodness but to multiply their goodness. Hence, all beings that are alive in some way seek to take part in reproduction. If a human does not directly take part, he tends to what to make sure that others can and favors the spread of human life. Those that do not are anomalies.

This is the same way in which God multiplies his goodness. God does not create out of necessity but rather out of abundance and this creation is his will. You are alive because God willed for you to be alive. You serve an important part in the plan for him. You are not an accident. As the Psalmist says, you are fearfully and wonderfully made.

Christian. Take comfort in knowing that God created you out of an abundance of love and that you are invited to share in that love. If you are sharing in that love, why not take time today to enjoy your life. It is his gift to you and all good and perfect gifts come from him and he gives all good things to us for our enjoyment, including our lives.

We shall continue tomorrow.

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.