Aquinas`s Account Of The Naming Of God

Aquinas' Account Of The Naming Of God In The Light Of Recent Discussions

Since the sense of positive devotional attributes of divine perfection like 'good' and 'wise' is learned from and anchored in the ontologically dependent creaturely experience which gives the context of their intelligibility for us, a question arises as to the validity of their application to a God whose metaphysical perfection, (i.e. ontological independence), is expressed through negative terms indicative of a total absence of the potentiality which they imply. [Wynn/Byrne&Houlden:424]

Mediaeval thought sought to answer the question of the sense of creaturely terms predicated of God in different ways. . A univocal use of terms holds that a common core of meaning is valid despite ontological divisions, an approach which can lead to anthropomorphism. . The negative way, asserting a completely equivocal sense for our words in application to God. . A third alternative, analogy, is represented by Thomas Aquinas.

It will be suggested that, rather than helping towards an unclear conceptual knowledge of God, Thomas' account of the literal truth of analogical terms is intended to clarify the nature of the unbridgeable gap between a human, essence-directed knowledge that cannot formulate existence, and a God who accounts for the existence of everything as subsistent Existence-itself [Burrell'86]. Instantiating the universe, Aquinas' God cannot be described in terms of an object within it, unlike the less-than-ultimate deity put forward by Aquinas' modern critics in the interests of univocity. Such modern writers could be seen as furthering the cause of a religiously inadequate, reified idol.

Duns Scotus represented the univocal approach. Like Aquinas, he held that our concepts are formed in dependence upon sense perception, essences being abstracted from material individuals. But owing to God's ontological distinction from the world of things, He has no materially instantiated quiddity. Therefore, unless a logically univocal concept of being-in-general, independent of finite or infinite application, were admitted, Scotus believed that we could never lay claim to knowledge of God. Scotus' univocal conception of 'is' means no more than an opposition to nothingness shared by both God and creatures, regardless of ontological differences between infinity and finitude, etc. God's ontological transcendence is protected inasmuch as to hold that both God and creatures are opposed to nothingness is not to say that they are opposed to nothingness in the same way, [Copleston'03:500-505]. Scotus' position becomes of relevance to the modern discussion of Aquinas and analogy in that Alston and Sherry share his belief in the necessity of an isolable and univocal common core, valid for both creatures and God, to render talk of God meaningful. The crux is whether such accounts provide sufficient ontological transcendence to satisfy theological scruples concerning idolatry.

For example, Sherry [1976:431-46] investigates whether Aquinas' perfection terms need be analogous, holding that some can be shown to be univocal. In contrasting Aquinas' approach to divine predication with that of Scotus, Sherry notes that Aquinas is driven to analogy by epistemological and ontological concerns, whereas Scotus, like modern writers, simply offers logical reasons for choosing a univocal scheme [1976:438-9]. Sherry doubts the credibility of Aquinas' ideational theory of meaning [1976:442-3], according to which, words stand for concepts derived from sense experience: (God is not an object of sense, therefore he is beyond the direct reach of our words).

Sherry puts forward two methods of testing the sense of predicates: (a), the use of terms in comparative statements [1976:439-40], and (b), attention to the truth conditions governing the application of terms [1976:443-5]. In a comparison such as 'a lifeboat is much sounder than my argument', different senses of the same term, although associated, make the comparison seem unnatural, since there is only an analogical relationship between watertight woodwork and logically valid chains of reasoning. On the other hand, the comparison 'God is wiser than me' does not seem strange, but natural, suggesting the term 'wisdom' is being used univocally for God and man. The latter test, (b), suggests that when we call God just, for example, we are imagining the same truth conditions to apply as in a human context: we are suggesting that God is not vindictive in his dealings with people. If the same truth conditions govern the application of terms, then the same sense could be said to apply, but can a god whose adequate descri ption is conditioned by a standard of truth derived from human behaviour-patterns be the same God about whom Augustine writes: 'Where I have found the truth there I have found my God, the Truth itself'? [Hick'90:253]. Since Sherry's deity is not evaluatively ultimate, it is arguably not the God of Judaeo-Christian worship. Maimonides represents the equivocal approach to divine predication, (although the via remotionis is also a necessary part of Thomas' scheme). As pure actuality, there is no potentiality in God. Since an attribute like wisdom is an innate potential disposition realisable in human beings or not, God cannot be thought of as wise. He is not dependent on any exemplar such as 'wisdom', 'goodness', etc. To speak of God's wisdom is to refer to his creative activity, but the varied terminology needed for us to describe different activities does not affect the divine simplicity, [Copleston'03:204] .

It will be suggested that Aquinas shares but moves beyond the assertion of God's essential unknowability, since he pays attention to the different manner in which we have to think the naturally analogous and thus extendable meaning of perfection terms in application to God.

For Aquinas [S.T.Ia;13] our language is properly applicable to worldly things, since our intellect abstracts concepts from material substances as they appear to sensory perception, and words stand for those concepts. God cannot be an object of sense, so how can our words apply to God? Aquinas points out that creatures are in a dependent relation to God as the cause of their existence, and that effects resemble their causes. God, as the source of the perfections found in creatures, can be spoken of through them as his effects [S.T:I.13.2]. According to Aquinas' theory of causal explanation, to understand something's nature is to have a grasp of the kind of activity it will display [Davies'92:63]. Since the nature of a cause implies what it does, effects can shed light on causes. In God's case, however, transcendence rules out any direct access to the divine nature.

The perfections appearing in creatures must have their source in God, but he contains them in the manner appropriate to a creator, not a creature. Therefore both God's simplicity and his subsistence must be taken into account when predicating perfections of him [ST:I.13.1]: 'God is wise' must be balanced and corrected by 'God is wisdom'[Davies'92:68-9]. Since there is no compositio of matter and form in God [Davies'92:54-5], accidental attribution is inappropriate: there being no difference between God's existence and his essence. Since God is his own existence, he is subsistent, but as 'the actualisation of all actuality' he subsists without the least shadow of potentiality [de Pot.7.2 ad 5,9]. Thus God has not the capacity to develop accidental attributes. Perfections attributed accidentally to creatures are essential to God's simplicity: he is his wisdom, goodness, etc., without distinction.

God may be positively described by remotion and excellence (via eminentiae): the removal of creaturely imperfections, (the negative way of Maimonides), and the acknowledgement that the terms we use pertain to God in a higher manner beyond our understanding, [ST:I.13.2]. Maimonides exclusive use of negation fails because there is no criterion of appropriateness for the terms used. Anything could be said of God negatively, since he is nothing within the universe.

While causation is what enables us to speak truly of God, we are not limiting ourselves to referring to God's actions as distinct from his essence. Aquinas points out that religious people mean what they say in praising God for his goodness [Davies'92:72]. Thanksgiving is not directed to an anonymous benefactor for the excellence of the creaturely goodness he supplies. God is the paradigm of the goodness, etc. that is held derivatively by creatures. God is primarily and surpassingly whatever is found to be perfect in creation. Although we know perfections first from creatures, in the order of being they apply primarily to the Origin of creatures [ST:I.13.6]. We can know that perfections truly apply to God's essence, but we cannot know what they mean in that context, as there is a distinction between the creaturely sense of our terminology (modus significandi), derived from our worldly experience, and the intended reference (res significata) of religious and theological predication [ST:I.13.2]. Sense and reference are distinguished in predicating perfection terms of God.

Perfection terms are capable of extended application, since they are naturally analogous [Burrell'86:58], having no fixed context of significance. While words like 'shepherd' apply metaphorically to God, perfection terms like 'being' and 'wisdom' apply literally, but by analogy. With metaphor, the words used cannot be extracted from their material context. I must be speaking metaphorically when I say 'God is my rock', because rocks cannot occur outside of a material context, and God is outside the created, material environment [ST:I.13.3 ad 1]. Using perfection terms, however, literal predication is accomplished by remotion and resort to the via eminentiae, as described, since such terms convey features of materiality not in what they express, but only in their manner of expression [ST:I.13.3 ad 3].

Since we can speak truly of God, but not univocally, the truth is one of a proportional similarity between God and creatures, which is to say that we speak of God analogically, [ST:I.13.5]. While the primary analogate for health (e.g.) is an organism, we still speak truly of healthy complexions and medicines in different but related causal and symptomatic senses of the term. As has already been pointed out, the perfection terms ascribed to God shift their meaning with their context of use in ordinary application. Such terms therefore lend themselves naturally to the via eminentiae since they are semantically open-ended [Burrell'86:58].

In stark contrast to Aquinas, William Alston opts for a 'down-graded' version of Divine transcendence, less strenuous than that of Aquinas, since he does not hold that God must be ontologically simple, and finds no problem with thinking of God as a being. Alston questions Aquinas' teaching of analogy on the basis of his misreading of the res/modus, or sense/reference distinction. He mistakenly believes that Aquinas's res significata is an abstracted, common meaning, a semantic core, the modus significandum being seen as the different ways in which this core applies to God and man respectively: 'Thomas says that for certain predicates that are applied both to God and man, e.g., 'good', the property signified is common, but the mode of signifying is not'.[Alston'89:67] Sherry similarly misinterprets, suggesting that Aquinas is 'distinguishing between the "mode of signification" which is learned from creatures and befits them, and so is inapplicable to God, and the "thing signified", e.g.' perfections like "goodness" and "life" which belong to God properly'. [Sherry'76:442] However, Aquinas is in fact distinguishing epistemologically between the sense in which we refer to something, and the object of our reference, which can be presented in differing modes (e.g., Venus is both the morning and the evening star). This idea of a common core of univocal meaning in terms used both for God and man can be traced back to Duns Scotus, (as illustrated above).

Alston wants to show that ascribing personal characteristics to a disembodied deity is meaningful, and in accord with modern Functional theorising about intending and acting. Each mental concept contributes functionally to the operation of the psyche. Feelings and desires are therefore geared to the production of overt behaviour [Alston'89:50-1].

Alston says that a functionalist theory need not be restricted to the requirement that behavioural outputs must be registered in bodily motions [Alston'89:54]. Although all human action is mediated through bodily movement, this latter is seen as a peripheral element removable from the core meaning of action terms, which can then be applied univocally to God. Human actions divide into those that are basic - bodily movements - and non-basic ones: the acts brought to pass by the basic movements. Although, for humans, no non-basic act is achievable save through a basic one, this is peripheral to the nature and meaning of action terms ['89:56-7]. The core component of action terms is their intentionality ['89:58]. The body is moved voluntarily ['89:58] for some purpose over and above that initiating, mediating movement. A common core of intentionality means that action terms and performance-driven mental concepts can be applied univocally to God, since they are applicable to agents inasmuch as they act purposefully, whether they be bodily or bodiless. The question remains whether a justification of the univocal meaningfulness of 'God-talk' that is so intimately dependent on a model of the nature of human intending and doing leads to a God worth worshipping, or merely to an idol: God seems to be fashioned in man's image, and not vice versa, as Genesis, 1:26 would have it. About such a conception of God, Feuerbach wrote: 'Man - this is the mystery of religion - projects his being into objectivity, and then again makes himself an object to this projected image of himself.'[ed.Hick'90:162]

Far removed from Alston, Burrell's interpretation of Aquinas is conducted in the spirit of Wittegenstein: 'It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists ' [ed.Hick'90:265].

Burrell points out that for Aquinas, both the utter distance and the link between God and Creation is existence [Burrell'86:17-18]. Human explanation is always in terms of essences, types of things. Existence is the pre-supposition for things as the ground of their reality and truth but cannot be directly conceived in itself [Burrell'86:30-32;35-7]: as Kant found, 'existence' is not a property word, [Kant'97:pg.567;A599/B627]. Our grasp of existence can only be indirect, as expressed in the relational attitudes we take in response to realities confronting us: the reality that something is cannot be said, but can be shown in the pattern of grammar appropriate for its correct descri ption, [Burrel'86:21-24].

Aquinas goes behind and beyond essential knowledge to its primordial ground and source, his God accounting for the fact that anything is as the infinite act of Existence-itself. To look for clues pointing to God in the bare existence of anything means transcending our normal patterns of essential inquiry [Burrell'86:36], existence being beyond the reach of a direct, cognitive grasp, and this in turn leads to an acknowledgement of the impossibility of ascertaining the meaning ['86:57]of perfection terms as applied to a God who, as an act of pure existence, is necessarily beyond formulation. Since the meanings of perfection terms are naturally extendable - unbound by any specific context - they are the key to divine predication since they can be lifted from their created moorings while still applicable in a literal, though unknowable sense. Since perfection terms in themselves outstrip any of the respective ways in which creatures hold them, and since existing is not a property ascribed in any respect to anything, such terms may be aptly predicated of God, who is existence-itself [Burrell'86:63]. By attending to the manner in which these terms are predicated of created beings we can look for the correct manner of predicating them of God [Burrell'86:57]. Aquinas holds the same commitment to divine ineffability as Maimonides, but, unlike him, does not limit his understanding of perfections to their human manifestation as potential and inessential attributes ['86:58]. By such contextual sensitivity, light is shed on the nature of the gulf between God and creation, without it being claimed that we have any conceptual enlightenment about God's wisdom, goodness, etc: as subsistent Existence-itself, God is necessarily beyond the province - (essences) - of conceptual information.

Only by some sort of acknowledgement of divine transcendence can any realist account of God be safe from charges of idolatrous, anthropomorphic projection.

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