Tractatus de Deo uno secundum naturam

ON THE ABSOLUTE PROPERTIES OF THE DIVINE ESSENCE, INSOFAR AS IT IS ONE, TRUE, GOOD.

The divine essence is one with the unity of singularity.

« From the demonstrated fullness of absolute perfection there follows that unity of the divine essence, so that its multiplication, and any number of gods, cannot be conceived in the mind without the notion of the same divine essence being subverted; rightly therefore the Fathers have said that polytheism is atheism. »

In Scripture and from the Fathers, the reason of the divine essence, which is Esse simply, has been declared, as shown in the preceding theses, to be the fullness of absolute perfection, and from this very thing unity is defined: so that, besides him who is יהוה ἄλφα and ὦμεγα, first and last, beginning and end, there is nothing of divine and absolute being. Now, from the fundamental doctrine of absolute perfection, and with the Fathers leading the way, we shall attempt to explain more distinctly the intrinsic repugnance of multiplication.

I. If the individual perfections are considered, for example truth, goodness, wisdom, and so on, it is easily understood that it is plainly repugnant for perfection which is perfection simply, that is, which comprehends the whole reason of perfection, to be multipliable and not wholly one. For who, thinking of wisdom, which is the whole reason of wisdom, ἡ αὐτοσοφία, does not clearly understand that it is as repugnant for two entire and distinct reasons of it to exist, as it is repugnant that the whole reason of absolute reality, or absolute totality, be conceived in the mind as twofold, one absolute totality distinct from the other? Now truth, goodness, wisdom, and perfection wholly, all that can be conceived in the whole reason of perfection and limited by no imperfection, are not, from what has been demonstrated, a merely abstract concept, but are by intrinsic necessity really existing¹; essence is not, and cannot be, only in an ideal state, but it is real Esse (Ego sum qui sum); he is יהוה, the true and infinite God. Therefore it is intrinsically repugnant that the divine absolute Esse be multiplied, or that there be some number of gods. « The very truth is one God, says St Fulgentius to Donatus c. 4; and just as, besides the one truth, there is no other truth, so without the one true God there is no other true God.... and so two true Gods cannot truly be spoken of, just as the one truth itself by its own nature (from the intrinsic nature of the thing) cannot be divided. »

Indeed, if you do not conceive in the mind (for that cannot be done) but state in words two infinite things which are the fullness of absolute Esse itself, you have said that one is infinitely perfect, lacking the infinite perfection which is in the other; and this other likewise you call the fullness of the whole absolute being, lacking the whole fullness of absolute being which is of another, infinite nature distinct from itself: therefore of each you affirm and deny at once the whole fullness of perfection. « For if there are several gods, each will lack as much as there is in the others » Lactant. Instit. 1. I. c. 3. Hence, « if there is something outside him (absolute and not depending on him), it is no longer the pleroma of all, nor does it contain all things; for the pleroma will lack, or the God who is above all things will lack, that which they say is outside him. And what lacks (that is, to which something is lacking), or is taken away from something, that is not the pleroma of all » Iren. l. II. c. 1. n. 2. Boethius expressed this same thing (de consolat. phil. l. III. prosa 10.), in words most apt for bringing the matter to light: « That goods which differ, that one is not the other, is plain; wherefore neither of them can be perfect, since to each the other is lacking. »

This is the inner reason why the multiplication of the divine essence is repugnant, and therefore why its unity is not such as the unity in number is, but is above unity (see above p. 168.). Whence, if anyone attentively examines, he will see that this argument is either presupposed or implicitly contained in all the others by which the Fathers are wont to demonstrate the unity of God from the very perfection of the divine essence: namely, that if there were two gods or more, none would be supreme²; that among several there could be no difference³; that several gods would be superfluous, since one suffices⁴. Likewise, where they demonstrate the unity from the reason of necessary being, this same argument from the fullness of perfection is deduced as a kind of middle term; for from the necessity of existing they infer the fullness of perfection, and from this the unity to which all multiplication is repugnant. « Moreover, thus Hilary writes of his own philosophy (de Trin. I. n. 4.): his mind held for certain that the divine and eternal is nothing but one and undifferentiated, because that which, being to itself the cause of what it was, had left nothing necessary outside itself that would be more excellent than itself; and thus omnipotence and eternity belong only to the one. »

II. Therefore the tritheists, who did not explicitly deny the infinity of the divine nature but taught that its unity was only specific and not of every kind of singularity, were in conflict no less with reason than with the principal foundation of revealed faith; nor could they defend their heresy without wholly perverting the very notion of the infinite perfection of God, which revelation teaches must be believed and which sound reason attains by understanding. But the Gentile worshippers of idols and of many gods, and those who usurped the Christian name, the Gnostics, Marcionites and Manichaeans, denied God by the very multiplication of gods, insofar as they affirmed gods; while they substituted for the supreme object of worship either a creature or some product of the mind, and « they were unwilling to know the God whom they could not fail to know »⁵ Tertullian says admirably: « If God is not one, he is not; for we believe more worthily that it is not, whatever has not been as it must be. But that you may know that God must be one, seek what God is, and you will not find it otherwise » Tertull. c. Marc. I. 3. Hence by St Paul, Eph. II. 12. the worshippers of gods are called ἄθεοι; and the holy Fathers say that the worship of many gods is the denial of God, that polytheism is atheism (τὴν πολυθεότητα ἀθεότητα εἶναι λέγομεν Athan. cont. gent. n. 24. 40.).

On the unity of simplicity in the divine nature.

« From the demonstrated absolute perfection of the divine essence a unity follows, just as the unity of God, which lies in the repugnance of multiplying the nature, follows; this unity is absolute simplicity, free from any composition in God himself, whether physical or metaphysical. This is demonstrated first from the intrinsic reason of composition itself, which necessarily presupposes imperfection. »

Because the explanation of the composite is easier for us than that of the simple, we explain the latter by means of the former as better known. In the composite a) there must be considered parts, whether each of them is in itself something physical really distinct from the other parts, and so the parts are real components of the whole—such as matter and substantial form, for example in man, integral parts in the body, and substance and its accidents, which are not mere modes; or whether the parts are not things distinct in the object itself, but are conceived, nonetheless, with objective precision one from the other, so that one, precisely taken, is understood to be imperfect and to be perfected by the other, and this contingently, not from the intrinsic nature and necessity of the thing. In this way we understand the composition of essence and esse (actual), of nature and hypostasis formally taken, and universally of subject and contingent modes properly so called, and finally of the metaphysical grades of genus and specific difference. Now whatever has parts is in some way multiple and not wholly undivided and indivisible in itself; but what has no parts is plainly undivided in itself, and this is called one¹. b) There must be considered the coming together of parts into one, from which the composite is formally produced, whose immediate and direct negation is simplicity. Hence one in itself (in the declared sense of unity) and simple are distinguished not in reality but only by mode of consideration; namely, one in itself is considered in opposition to the many of which the composite consists, simple in opposition to the composite that consists of many.

Hence it is further inferred that a composite approaches more nearly to the notion of the simple the fewer distinct realities its parts have, and the more closely they coalesce into one indivisible whole. In comparison, therefore, with bodily things, in which both the constituent and the integral parts are substantial, created spirits are wholly simple, in which there can be no other composition than of qualities, habits, and spiritual acts, which inhere in a substance free of substantial parts.² But if they are compared with pure act, where we set out to demonstrate that no such composition is or can be, created spirits are sometimes denied by the Fathers to be simple. After St Basil ep. 8. ad Caesar. n. 2. T. III. p. 82. demonstrated that there is substantial composition indeed in the world, in man, and accidental composition, from substance and adventitious holiness, in angels, and therefore that they are not simple, he adds: « wherefore also number designates everything that has been allotted a material and circumscribed nature (ἐνύλον καὶ περιγραπτὸν φύσιν), but monad and unity is the distinguishing mark of a simple and incomprehensible essence. »

The kinds of composition are usually enumerated: from matter and substantial form, from integral parts, from substance and accidents, from essence and esse, from nature and hypostasis, and finally from genus and difference. To define now the sense and declare the reason how and why all the compositions enumerated, some of which do not even seem to be real, are said to be repugnant in God, first the very reason of part must be considered. By the name of part is understood an imperfect thing which, by communicating with and uniting with another, receives perfection. Hence parts properly so called always mutually perfect one another by mutual communication, and the perfection of the whole composite issues from the union and mutual communication of all the parts. Whatever therefore has the reason of a part is conceived either in mere potency (objective potency) toward perfection, which the Greeks call ἐντελέχειαν and the Scholastics call act; or it is in act in some measure and in potency toward some further perfection arriving to it from the communion of another (receptive potency). A part therefore, as a part, is an incomplete being. From this intrinsic reason of parts it is understood how the diverse compositions usually enumerated are consequences and sure indications of limitation. Where composition is physical, from parts really distinct in the thing itself, whether the parts are already substantial or one is merely an accident, the cause is clear. For since each part, by the very fact that it is a part, is essentially a circumscribed being, by the negation of absolute perfection, the perfection of the whole that springs from the mutual communication of finite things cannot be absolute and infinite; because the finite and the infinite, perfection in a certain respect and absolute perfection, differ not by degree but by their whole intrinsic reason and essence.

Now indeed this same reason, which is drawn from the imperfection necessarily included in composition from parts, also applies to metaphysical composition, even though those things which are conceived as parts are not distinct in the object itself as thing from thing. We confess that our mind cannot understand essence in act and the existence, or esse, of this essence, as two distinct things. We think also that the substantial nature in created things, without any thing superadded with which it is physically compounded, is hypostasis, but only because it is wholly its own, and not a nature of a higher hypostasis by way of a part; concerning which matter we have argued at length in the treatise on the Incarnation. Finally we concede that the metaphysical grades of animal, for example, and of rational in man, are not compounded as two real parts into one whole, but are one thing, in which nonetheless, by objective precision, two are distinguished, so that what is understood by the concept of genus does not include that which is understood by the concept of difference. Therefore we defend that metaphysical composition is not repugnant in God because in it really distinct parts concur, which indeed in infinite perfection can be none, as we demonstrated a little before; but because, of the enumerated reasons of composition, we maintain that in the necessary and absolute Esse there can be no place, since this metaphysical composition is conceived, and can be conceived, only by reason of contingency and limitation, which is in the essence, in the nature, in the genus and species of creatures, and is expressed and understood by this very concept of composition.

First, because the essence of a creature is not necessarily really existing, but in itself is in the state of mere possibility, or in objective potency; therefore when esse of a determinate order, for example an angel, is created by God, we conceive the essence of the angel, to which esse in act is added. But this signifies nothing other than that we understand this essence, really existing, not to be necessarily existing. Yet in God essence is Esse itself, nor therefore can the divine essence be conceived to which divine Esse accedes; for if you understand the divine essence so that Esse accedes to it, it would be an equally or even more absurd invention, as if you wished to conceive the essence of some creature to which intrinsic possibility accedes. See above th. XXII. n. II.

2°. Again, although subsistence, or that by which a first, singular, complete substance is formally constituted as hypostasis, is not, even in created things, some distinct thing compounded with that substantial nature; but is the wholeness in itself of the substance itself³, that is, is one whole in itself, insofar as it is not communicated to another by way of a part: nevertheless this very thing, not being of another, is not essential to a finite nature, nor required by the necessity of its perfection; but a nature which is complete and actually existing can be by way of a part to be perfected by the nature of a higher person, at least a divine one, as is established by faith from the mystery of the Incarnation. Hence it was only from this mystery that Christian philosophers and theologians learned to consider created hypostasis as composed, as it were, of the nature itself and of the mode of subsisting through itself, which is not essential to it. Now this very thing follows from the limitation of the nature, and is the most certain indication of limitation. Wherefore the divine nature, from the very reason of infinite perfection, is in itself by intrinsic absolute necessity, so that it is wholly repugnant for it to be of another by way of a part, by the very fact that it is absolute Esse, to which no perfection can accede.

Therefore, although in God we distinguish, as the Fathers very often warn, the absolute nature and the three modes of subsisting (τρόπους τῆς ὑπάρξεως), this is not composition in God. It is not physical composition, as is evident of itself, since we deny physical composition even in the created hypostasis, and since « each of the three persons is substance, essence or divine nature, and that thing is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit » (cf. Conc. Later. IV.). Nor is it metaphysical composition of the kind we assert in the created hypostasis. For in creatures we can conceive the nature with objective precision from the mode of subsisting through itself, since this mode is not essential to the created nature; but in God we can, by our imperfect mode of understanding, conceive the nature only with formal distinction, not, however, with objective precision from the very mode of subsisting through itself; that is, we can think of the nature without expressly thinking of the mode of subsisting, but we cannot think of the infinite nature so that the mode of subsisting through itself is not included in the thing thought; because subsistence through itself is essential to such a nature, that is, it is by intrinsic necessity of infinite perfection. In creatures a nature can be thought and can be without the mode of subsisting through itself, and therefore this mode can be conceived as accruing, as a metaphysical grade superadded to the nature considered in itself; but the divine nature can neither be nor be thought without being a substance wholly in itself, in which very thing the reason of hypostasis lies; and therefore this reason of hypostasis cannot be conceived as some grade metaphysically superadded to the nature, although the formal reason of the nature or quiddity can be conceived without expressly conceiving the formal reason of hypostasis. Thus being can be conceived without expressly conceiving the reason of good; but because being by its own intrinsic reason is good, therefore the reason of good cannot be conceived as a metaphysical grade superadded to being, but only as a more explicit mode of being. (See above p. 160.)

These things would be clear if the divine person were one as the nature is one; but a greater difficulty can arise, because we know by faith that one nature subsists in a threefold mode of subsisting, and that one nature is in three persons really distinct from one another. For it seems that the nature must be conceived as not subsisting through itself, to which, as a further grade, at least in our mode of understanding, the relations of paternity, filiation and procession accede, by which the subsisting persons are constituted; and thus it seems that in the divine person there is metaphysical composition of nature and mode of subsisting, no less than in the created hypostasis. Moreover, three distinct persons might seem to constitute one God; but where things really distinct constitute some one, the composition is not only metaphysical but physical.

To the first: it must indeed be distinguished by reason, with a foundation in the thing, that one and the same supreme thing is both absolute and communicable nature, and is also one and the same thing as three relatives really distinct from one another: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But while absolute nature is conceived, it is not conceived as incomplete and in need of completion, as though by a further degree of paternity, filiation, and procession; rather, the same infinite thing, by its intrinsic and necessary perfection, is at once absolute (and under this reason, common nature) and at once relative (and under this reason, three mutually incommunicable, that is, distinct hypostases). Hence we truly need a double concept: to understand one thing as absolute nature, not indeed as something yet to be completed, but only by conceiving it, not yet expressly, under the reason of the relative; and then to understand that very same thing expressly under the reason of the relative, so as to be three distinct ones, by analogy with the way we said being, truth, and goodness are conceived: not by adding degrees of truth and goodness to being, but by a more expressed mode of being. In a word, because infinite nature cannot be conceived as completed by some superadded degree, and so cannot be conceived as a metaphysical part, no metaphysical composition can therefore be understood there. In form, the objection is answered: nature must be conceived as not subsisting per se, I distinguish: it must be conceived with objective precision from subsistence, that is, so that subsistence is not contained in the thing thought, I deny; it can be conceived with formal distinction, that is, so that the mode of subsisting is not expressly thought, I concede. What is added, that subsistence is conceived as an accruing further degree, must be denied. On these see Tract. de Trin. th. XXI. sqq.

The second objection, on physical composition, is far too absurd. The persons are not parts mutually perfecting one another so as to compose some whole. The three persons are one, insofar as both each one and all together are identically the divine nature itself, and so are not really distinguished from the divine nature; but where there is no real distinction, there can be no real composition. Insofar as, however, they are really distinguished from one another through the opposite relations of paternity, filiation, and procession, they are not joined so as to compose one thing. Therefore, in that in which they are one (in nature), they have no distinction; in that in which they are distinct (in their proper relations), they have no unity. Therefore they are not parts of one another, but each is subsisting per se; nor are they parts concurring to compose one nature, but each and all together are the very nature: the holy Trinity is one God (cf. Petav. de Deo l. II. c. 3. 4.).

3°. The last remaining composition is from the metaphysical degrees of genus and difference. In this case too, that the limitation of being must be presupposed as a necessary condition is clear from the reason by which we declared above, Coroll. 1. ad th. XXIV., why absolute Existence can have neither the reason of genus nor of difference. For under a generic degree we conceive a perfection which is in power to another perfection, namely a specific perfection, and which therefore involves limitation in its very concept. Likewise, under specific difference we conceive a degree of perfection which does not include the perfection of the genus, much less includes infinite perfection, but is limited by its own reason. Therefore both genus and difference are understood as something incomplete and as a part to be completed. Therefore, while we conceive a composition from a generic degree of being and from a specific degree of being, by that very fact we understand being to be limited under both the one reason and the other. Therefore, even though no distinction of perfections, if it is only according to reason and our mode of understanding, repugns the divine perfection and simplicity, nonetheless this distinction repugns through reasons limited by their intrinsic nature, such as are found in composition from genus and difference. Moreover, genus and species include in their formal reason a multiplication, or multiplicability, in individuals, so that the unity of genus and species is by its very concept a unity only logical and according to reason, whereas the multiplicability of the perfection and nature, whose notion is contained in genus and species, is ontological and according to the thing itself. But multiplicability and the negation of every kind of singularity are repugnant to infinite being. Therefore from this head too it is manifest that the reason of genus and species is essentially founded in the limitation of being. There is therefore no place in God, who is essentially one with the unity of singularity, for this distinction, and therefore also no place for this composition.

Corollary. Absolute simplicity is formally a perfection not by negation, namely that the simple has no parts; but by the positive intensity of perfection, namely that Existence itself is every absolute perfection, and therefore nothing can be conceived there as limited by the lack of a further possible perfection. This limitation, however, is the essential condition of a part and a quasi-part. Therefore, on account of the intensity of perfection, no part or quasi-part can be conceived there to be perfected by another part or quasi-part. Hence it can be said: simplicity is a perfection not in that the simple has no parts, but in that it cannot be a part or quasi-part⁴.

Hence also in creatures, whose simplicity compared with the divine is only in a certain respect, perfection formally does not lie in the negation of parts, but in the intensive reality of being itself. But since every created entity is limited by the lack of a further possible perfection and is therefore perfectible, a composition, physical or metaphysical, is required for the perfection of a creature, the greater the less the intrinsic entitative perfection is. « Among us, composites are better than simples, because the perfection of creaturely goodness is not found in one simple thing but in many; but the perfection of divine goodness is found in one simple thing » S. Th. 1. q. 3. a. 7. ad 2.

From what has been said, the dispute among the Scholastics is easily settled: some, with Cajetan, deny that simplicity is a perfection per se, others affirm it. If what is meant is an ontological perfection excluding composition, it is indeed a perfection per se and simply; if only the negation of parts is meant, this, per se and apart from ontological perfection, is not a perfection. Cf. Ludov. Molina in 1. q. 3. a. 7. disp. 2. It further becomes clear from what has been said what weight the argument drawn from the perfection of simplicity carries against the possibility of simple material beings, which are called simple insofar as they are supposed to consist of no integrating parts, and so to lack extension. Whatever you think of such beings, it is certainly ridiculous to deny their possibility on the ground that simplicity is a perfection.

From the documents of revelation is declared the divine simplicity, and its proper reason, that God is pure act.

« The dogma of God's simplicity in every respect has in Christian doctrine not only always been held as most certain beyond controversy; but both in the Scriptures and in the doctrine of the Fathers there is also explicitly declared the intrinsic reason of divine simplicity, namely that in God both every perfection and, in particular, understanding and volition are really the very substance of God: whence simplicity is finally traced back to this, that the divine essence is pure act of perfection. »

I. As regards the profession of the dogma (setting aside its finer declaration), the Fathers first put it forward in many ways by explicit predication. They teach that God is most simple and most remote from all composition with Cyrillo Alex. Thesaur. XIII. 2; XIV. 1. 2; supremely simple with Augustine de Trinit. VI. 6; first and purest simple with Bernard in Cant. serm. 81; as simple as one, and if it can be said, most one with Bernard Consid. 1. V. c. 7; above all simplicity with Cyrillo Alex. dialog. I. de Trin.; one eminence of simplicity (ὑπερβολὴν) with Dionysius de div. nom. c. 5. Origen hands down that this is the truth from those things in which the whole Christian name has agreed, de Princ. I. n. 6; indeed, the very « whole human race confesses that God is simple, not composite, » as Cyrillo Alex. Thesaur. XXXI. testifies. Hence, although in denying and excluding composition they say that to think God composite is « the mark of a very stupid and dull man » Gregor. Nyss. cont. Eunom. I. p. 68; Basil. ep. 141; « the mark of supreme impiety » Damasc. Fid. orth. I. 12; « absurd and wicked » Maxim. centur. IV. de charit. c. 8; « blasphemous » Cyrill. Hier. catech. VI; « a new kind of blasphemy » Athanas. de Synod. n. 34.

2°. Frequently both the Fathers and the Councils take the dogma of God's simplicity in every respect as foundation and principle, from which they either prove and declare other revealed doctrines, or refute and condemn errors. Thus at the Council Later. IV., the unity of the divine nature in distinct persons, without a quaternity following from it as Abbot Joachim objected, was declared from the simplicity of the divine nature: because the three persons, and each of them, are that nature and essence; and so they are not one thing and another, but Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are altogether the same, since the whole nature, not in part but entire, is common to the three persons « as being wholly simple » : and so, by reason of divine simplicity, the Fathers define that the persons are distinguished not from the nature but only from one another. By the same principle of simplicity, the doctrine of Gilbert of Poitiers was first condemned by the Bishops of Gaul, and then at the Council of Rheims, with the Pontiff Eugene III himself presiding. He taught that God is God by deity, yet deity is not God; and thus he thought of the attributes as forms in God, so that God is not each of the attributes that we distinguish, nor is any single attribute God. This doctrine, I say, was abolished on the principle that « the supreme and uncreated nature, which is the Trinity, God, claims for itself the pure and singular simplicity of its essence, so that there is not found in it one thing and another.... Far be it that the catholic Church should assent that there is some substance, or some wholly other thing, by which God is, and which is not God » (S. Bernard. in Cant serm. 80. n. 5-8, where he disputes against Gilbert). Hence the definition of the Council is understood, as Otto of Freising reports it, « lest any reason in theology should divide between nature and person, nor God be said to be divine essence by the ablative sense only but also by the nominative, » that is, not only God by deity but also deity.

Long before these controversies, when God's supreme simplicity was called into doubt directly « by heretics, not by dialecticians » (Bernard), the ancient Fathers Basil, Gregory Nazianzen, Gregory of Nyssa, Chrysostom, Cyril, and others to be read in Petavius 1. II. c. 4. and 6. n. 9. seqq., used this same simplicity of God as a principle by which they attacked the Arian heresy. Athanasius or. V. adv. Arian.; Basil. contr. Sabell. hom. 27; Cyrillus Thesaur. XIV; Dialog. V. de Trin.; Damasc. Fid. orthod. I. 18. argue most truly and most subtly. The Son is called in the Scriptures wisdom, will, and power of the Father, while at the same time distinct from the Father: therefore, they infer, either he is subsisting wisdom, and then he is God; or he is a quality inhering in the Father, and then God is composite, which by everyone's admission is absurd¹. Moreover, Athanasius refutes the insidious confession of the Arians, who teach that « the Son is from the Father, but not from the substance (ἐκ τῆς οὐσίας) of the Father » (1. de Synodis and 1. de decretis Nicaen.), by driving the view to an absurdity of which even the Arians would be ashamed, namely to the denial of all simplicity in God; for if their profession were sincere, there would follow in the Father something other than the substance, distinct from it, and thus God would be composite. « You said the Son is from God; therefore you have already said he is from the substance of the Father »². Lastly, for the same reason of divine simplicity, the Fathers refute the Arian evasion by which some said the Son is like the Father, others unlike. For Athanasius in ep. ad Afric. and Basil in ep. 141 say that if the Son is not consubstantial with the Father, he could be called like or unlike the Father only by reason of qualities; but if you say there are qualities in God, you feign God composite: « far be it; for the substance is simple, in which no quality inheres »³. From the few things we have described, it is plain how certain was the profession of all Christian antiquity, that nothing is to be said of God that could carry a suspicion of composition, and how grave and cardinal the holy Doctors judged this dogma of divine simplicity to be.

II. In this thesis we are not so concerned with the thing itself, whether it is, as with its intrinsic reason, namely what sort it is divine simplicity; that is, how, according to the teaching of Scripture and the ecclesiastical explanation of preaching, it can be understood somewhat more distinctly by seeking understanding from faith.

1°. We here assume as manifest in itself that simplicity in God which excludes substantial parts, whether constituent or integral, such as are found in bodies or in things composed at least in part of some material element. For how could it not be self-evident that God cannot have absolute perfection constituted or completed by that which is imperfect by its own intrinsic reason, both in the grade and order of being considered in itself, and in the composition of the parts of which it consists? « That nature does not receive dull matters, nor is it made of diverse things so as to remain » S. Hilar. Trin. VI. Because of this evidence of the matter, in the Scriptures, even of the Old Testament, where greater caution might seem to have been necessary, anthropomorphic expressions, by which God's operations and relations to what is outside him are described, are used everywhere without danger. « God, who is everywhere and in all things, hears entirely, sees entirely, acts entirely, walks entirely... The power of God, which is equal and undivided (one, undistinguished), has names of offices and members: as the power by which he sees is eyes; the power by which he hears is ears; the power by which he acts is hands; the power by which he is present is feet; the diversities of offices being accomplished by the power of this one power » Hilar. in Ps. 129. n. 3. It is indeed strange that among Christians there could be found (the Audians and Egyptian monks of the fourth century) who, with an absurd horror of allegorical interpretation, insisting that such expressions in Scripture are to be taken in their immediate sense, ascribed a body to God altogether.

As for Tertullian (contr. Prax. c. 7; contr. Marc. II. c. 16.), who seems to speak of a body of God, or even to affirm more absurdly that God, by the opinion of all, is a body; and who in other places (de anima c. 7; de carne Christi c. 11; cont. Hermog. c. 35.) writes that whatever subsists is a body of its own kind: St Augustine (de haeres. c. 86.) says this can be understood in such a way that Tertullian called a body whatever is not empty and not merely an accident, but a substance subsisting in itself. Likewise Lactantius must be thought to have wished only to vindicate the divine Existence as singular, determinate, and personal against Stoic pantheism, when (de ira Dei c. 2.) he defends that God has some « figure and form ». Finally, to take in together the ambiguous sayings of the Fathers, Athenagoras (Legat. pro Christ. n. 23. coll. n. 24.) said that the good in God is by accident (κατα συμβεβηκος), in roughly that sense in which we have seen other Fathers considering the divine attributes which are « about God » (τα περι Θεον supra p. 128. 130. 150.). Since, namely, in our mode of understanding we distinguish many perfections in God, Athenagoras could call a perfection, which we as it were add to another by our concept, accruing or accident. For in what other sense could he, in n. 24, conceive essential Existence and unity (το ὄντος ὄν και το μονοφυες) together with goodness in God, as accidents, or rather accruings (επισυμβεβηκοτα)? Cf. Petav. 1. I. c. 12. n. 1.

2°. Setting aside this crude composition, whose exclusion contributes little to illuminating the intrinsic reason of divine simplicity, we conceive a more subtle composition, from which no creature can be free: insofar as composition in general is founded on imperfection together with the possibility of a further perfection, or in power to act. Every essence that can be conceived apart from God includes indeed an objective power to existence, but does not include in its intrinsic reason existence in act itself; and therefore in the preceding thesis we said that composition can be conceived between essence and existence, as objective power with act. For the same reason, participated existence, since it is not simply and absolutely Existence, as in every line and in the whole reason of being, does not, by the very fact that it is some existence, include the degree of being which is life. Therefore participated existence, from its intrinsic reason insofar as it is some existence, is not also life; but it is in receptive power to life: hence a living creature is said to have life, but not to be life. In the same way, participated life is in power to the higher degree of intellectuality. Further, a created substance that is living and intellectual is not absolute and simple intellect, but has intellect according to some degree of perfection; and so such an intellect, considered in itself, is in power to acts of understanding, in power to formal truth, to wisdom: and if it is in act of understanding, truth, wisdom, this cannot be except according to some degree together with a power to a further perfection. It will therefore be in act in one respect, and in power in others; but it cannot be pure act: whence it will have understandings, formal truth, and wisdom in a certain measure; but it cannot be absolute understanding itself, truth itself, wisdom itself. Likewise these things hold of the will and its perfection. In all these, therefore, there is some distinction with objective precision, so that one is not contained in the other; and hence there is conceived some at least metaphysical composition from power and act, or from the perfectible with another perfecting, and the power to a further perfection remains indefinitely, or (as is commonly said) act mixed with power.

But the essence which is Existence itself in full plenitude, or which by its intrinsic necessary perfection is absolute reality, is understood formally as this essence, pure act, without any potentiality either objective to existence or receptive of a more perfect existence. Hence there the essence is itself without any addition (for nothing can be added to absolute perfection), and its substance, without any quality that is not itself, is, just as Existence itself is, life itself, intellect itself, truth itself, wisdom itself, charity itself etc., and all these in absolute act. Accordingly, in the reverse order too, these individual perfections, and all together, are really that one most simple essence, which we understand inadequately by diverse concepts taken from the perfections of creatures. Therefore we cannot conceive in God, as in creatures, essence or Existence or perfection under any name as something imperfect and to be completed by something added to it; but we understand each perfection to be the very plenitude of absolute Existence, which by us, on account of the imperfection of our intellect, is conceived under diverse reasons, as the diverse created perfections correspond to that infinite and most simple exemplar.

We demonstrate from the Scriptures themselves that this notion of divine simplicity is genuine.

For in the sacred letters there is contained not only the foundation from which the simplicity of God, declared above, necessarily follows, namely that the divine essence is Existence itself and the plenitude of absolute Existence (th. XXII.); but the Scriptures explicitly exhibit God as one and the same with each of the perfections which we predicate of God, so that not only is perfection in him, but he himself is perfection, now one, now another, and consequently all together.

In particular, just as God is said to have life in himself, and life is said to be in God, Io. I. 4; V. 26; so God is life itself (ἡ ζωὴ) Io. I. 4; XIV. 6;1. Io. I. 2: whence he alone has immortality, 1. Tim. VI. 16. As there are « the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God » Rom.XI.33; Iob XII.13.16; Psal.CXLVII.5, and in God are « all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge » Coloss. II. 3; so God is wisdom itself Prov. I. 20; VIII; Sap. VII. 21. sqq.; Ecclesi. XXIV. 1; 1. Cor. I. 24: whence God alone is wise, Rom. XVI. 17. (and in the received Greek text, 1. Tim. I. 17; Iud. 25.). Likewise, as God is « full of truth » and from God is all truth; so God is truth itself (ἡ ἀλήθεια) Io. XIV. 6; 1. Io. V. 6. As he dwells in light, 1.Tim.VI.16; 1. Io. I. 7; so he himself is light, Io. I; III. 19; XII. 46; 1. Io. I. 5. As charity is from God and of God, so God is himself charity 1. Io. IV. 8. 16: whence « there is one good God » and « no one is good but God alone » Matth. XIX. 17; Marc. X. 18; Luc. XVIII. 19. Therefore the divine Existence itself, whose singular name is ὁ ὢν qui est, is expressed in the Scriptures not only as living and having life from himself, as having all wisdom, all truth, as dwelling in unapproachable light, as the God of charity, but as life itself, wisdom, truth, light, charity. Life itself, moreover, is not life through another life, but through itself; wisdom itself, truth itself, charity itself is not wisdom, truth, charity except through itself⁴. Therefore the divine Existence is as it were an infinite form⁵, which through itself, not through a quality distinct from itself, is all these things: « for justice (and the same holds of all perfections) is not through another virtue, but is itself virtue through itself » Clemens Alex. Paedag. I. 8. In these, moreover, the very denial of any composition is expressed, and the simplicity necessary from the intrinsic reason of absolute Existence. In the Scriptures, therefore, the doctrine of God's absolute simplicity is not only implicitly contained, but also principles are set forth by explicit declaration, from which its metaphysical demonstration is constructed.

3°. The holy Fathers supply this demonstration, most lucid, from the principles set forth in holy Scripture. We shall consider in the doctrine of the Fathers, first, the manner in which they declare the intrinsic reason of divine simplicity; then the manner in which the Fathers show, in particular, that those things which we conceive as actions of God are in God the very immutable substance.

a) As to the first, there are chiefly two modes of declaring it among the Fathers. First, from the absolute perfection of God they conclude that God himself is each of the perfections, and all together, which we can name: that God is in himself wholly both justice, and omnipotence, and wisdom, etc. Whence it follows that the perfections are distinguished neither from the essence nor from one another; but one most simple Existence must be understood, which by us is conceived truly but inadequately under these diverse notions of perfections, and is called by diverse names. « He is of many names and all-powerful, and yet the substance of one form. For not because he is called good, just, omnipotent, is he therefore different and various.... Not seeing in part and lacking sight in part, but he is wholly eye, and wholly hearing, and wholly mind, not as we, understanding in part and not knowing in part; for this speech is blasphemous and unworthy of the divine substance » Cyrill. Hier. catech. VI. n.7.⁶ Altogether similar statements are found in Irenaeus I. c. 12. n. 2; II. c. 12. n. 3; c. 28. n. 4; Clemens Alex. Strom. VII. p. 721; Gregor. Nyss. in Cantic. hom. VII. T. I. p. 570; Epiphan. in Ancor. c. 56; Maximus M. apud Euthym. Panopl. tit. 3. p. 80.

The second explanation differs from the former not in substance but only in form. God, they say, is that perfection which he is said to have. « God is therefore called simple because what he has, that is... In that which is said of itself and not of another, this is what it has; just as life is said of itself, having life indeed, and it is the same life he himself is » Aug. Civ. Dei XI. 10. and often elsewhere, as also other Fathers. In creatures, as we explained above, it is not by the mere fact that they are that their final perfection is already present; because their existence is participated, not absolute Existence: hence for them to exist is one thing, and to exist in final perfection is another. Hence created substances are not all their perfection; but they have perfections, by which, as accruing, they are perfected: for them, therefore, to be is one thing, to be thus is another; and hence composition of the perfectible and the perfecting follows. In God, however, on account of the opposite reason, since his essence is by itself necessarily every perfection, nothing can be perfectible in him (no passive power), and so nothing as a perfecting form, but the whole is perfect (pure act), and therefore no composition. « No one of men is truth, says Pope Leo the Great with many others (ep. 93. c. 5. ad Turribium), no one is wisdom, no one is justice; but many are participants in truth and wisdom and justice. God alone, however, has need of no participation, of whom whatever is worthily thought in any way is not quality but essence. For nothing accrues to the immutable, nothing is lost, because Existence which is everlasting is always proper to him. » Gregorius M. Moral. l. II. c. 27. has similar things. « Otherwise the light that illuminates, otherwise the light illuminated; otherwise justice justifying, otherwise justice justified. Wisdom is and is wise, and does not have existence other than being wise: but servants of wisdom can indeed be wise, yet they do not have this existence which is being wise; for they can exist and not be wise. Wisdom has life, but does not have it as something else, it is it; for to it to be is to live: but servants of wisdom, when they have life, are one thing and have another; for to them this very existence is not to live. »

Hence it is understood why God's simplicity is expressed most properly, as far as we can, by names of abstract form. Yet because the divine, which is expressed by those names, is self-existing and subsisting, we also use, by a certain necessity, names of concrete form to express this very thing. « In speaking of God we use concrete names, to signify his subsistence, because among us only composites subsist; and we use abstract names, so that we may signify his simplicity » S. Th. 1. q. 3. a. 3. ad 1; q. 13. a. 1. ad 2; q. 32. a. 2.

b) It remains to be said of the manner in which the Fathers teach that immanent acts, as we conceive them, are the very substance of God. As to the thing itself, so long as only whether it is is asked, there cannot be here a greater difficulty than in all the other divine attributes. For if the divine essence is by itself perfection in its whole plenitude, and if any perfection that we can distinguish by reason is really the divine essence and substance itself in the plenitude of absolute Existence: by that very fact the intellect, will, (active) power is not, nor can it be conceived as, a faculty to be perfected by an accruing act of understanding, of willing, or of efficiency; but the divine essence and substance itself is, as infinite intellect, infinite will, infinite power, without any lack of reality, so a substantial act understanding, willing, and effecting, by itself, not by anything accruing beyond the essence itself.

This follows as a necessary corollary from the very plenitude of being and from the simplicity of divine Existence declared so far; nevertheless the Fathers also declare it in explicit teaching. « It must be understood, says St Maximus on Dionysius de div. nom. c. 5. §. 6, that since the super-excellent goodness is itself mind and wholly act turned upon itself, it is in act and not in power, as if it were first not wisdom and then became mind in act. Hence also it is only pure mind, not having being wise superadded; but altogether it is wise from itself »⁷. The same explanation is given by Augustine (in Io. tract. 40.). « If what few understand is the simple nature of truth, this means that for the Son to be is to know. He therefore has from him that he knows, from whom he has that he is, not that he would first be from him and afterwards know from him. But as by begetting he gave him to be, so by begetting he gave him to know. For in the simple nature of truth, as has been said, to be and to know are not one thing and another, but this very same. » He repeats the same thing in very similar words about God considered absolutely, tract. 99. Cf. Cyrill. Alex. Thesaur. XXXI. pag. 267.

What is said of the act of understanding is plain to be no less true of the act of willing. But in the act of volition, which is freely directed outward, a special difficulty presents itself to our imperfect understanding, if we ask how it is. The teaching of St Gregory of Nyssa will smooth the way to some explanation, so far as it can be given by us. « Not as in other things, to which some power of acting is given by nature, is one thing considered in power and another in the completion of act (in God): for example, we always say that the power of ships belongs to the shipbuilder who has the art, but then he is in act, when he now puts his knowledge into the work itself. It is not so in that blessed life, but everything that is understood in it is act and action, while the will passes without any intervening means to the appointed end. »⁸ St Gregory of Nyssa says this in cont. Eunom. XII. p. 340. In God, therefore, the will is not a faculty of willing, which is now in act of volition, now not; now in this, now in another act of willing: but will is one act of willing, always the same in itself, since the divine essence and substance is itself, by itself, infinite substantial volition. For neither are essence and will distinguished as a subject to be perfected and a perfecting form, nor will (βούλημα) and volition (βούλησις) as faculty and act; but essence, will, and will in its act or volition are one in reality, and are distinguished only according to the consideration of our mind. « For as truly as you are, you alone know, who are immutably and will immutably. And your essence knows and wills immutably, and your knowledge is and wills immutably, and your will is and knows immutably » Aug. Confess. XIII. c. 16.

Now it is asked how liberty can exist in this same will, along with this identity of the act of willing with the divine essence, and therefore along with the full immutability and necessity of the act in itself. The explanation must be sought from the very infinity of the act. Just as the divine intellect is an actual infinite comprehension of the divine essence, infinite truth, with which the intellect itself is identified and in which all truth is comprehended: so the divine will is an actual infinite delight and necessary love of the divine essence as of infinite good, with which love itself is identified. Because the good in which love rests in full essential sufficiency and beatitude is infinite, that substantial act does not necessarily have some participated good as its object; yet that same infinite act of volition can regard participated goods, so that they have existence from that good, through it, and toward that infinite good. But this regard and this terminating in finite goods cannot be by a volition superadded and accidental; for this is repugnant to absolute, substantial, immutable volition: but only the substance itself under its formal reason, insofar as it is infinite will, can immediately, by itself (that is, with no other act of volition intervening), regard and as it were stretch out to a participated good, without any change in itself, just as one act of understanding is at once extended to all intelligible things. This is what St Gregory of Nyssa says: « without any intervening means will (substantive) passes to the appointed end » and as it were is stretched out (ἀμέσως τοῦ βουλήματος πρὸς τὸ κατὰ πρόθεσιν τέλος μεταδιαταμένου). It is clear, therefore, that in God, even when we consider free volition which has an outward term, there is not a power of acting and an act; but there is only act, whose term can be now this and now that, which adds something not to the act itself but to the object to which it reaches out. And so it is clear that no composition from a power of acting and free act can be conceived in God.

Hence from what has been said it follows how great is the difference between divine volition and our volitions, and between the reason of divine liberty and of ours, or of created liberty in general. Our volition is an accident and a modification of the substance, which can be or not be, and can be one thing or another. But while some determinate act of our will is present, its terminating in the object is intrinsic to it, necessary, not free. We are therefore free in our will only insofar as the volition itself is in our power, so that it be or not be, be this or that; but our liberty does not lie in this, that the terminating of an already posited volition toward its object depends on our choice. On the contrary, the act of the divine will, or divine volition, is substance and really the very essence of God; it is therefore in itself one substantive act, necessarily existing. The terminating of this act toward its object, indeed the chief object, namely the goodness of the divine essence with which it is identified, is absolutely necessary; but its regard for secondary objects, the participated good, is most free. Therefore the liberty of God does not lie in this, that the act of will can be or not be, or that in itself it can be one way or another; but in this, that the infinite substantial volition of infinite good can, without any change in itself, be as it were extended toward goods distinct from God, so that they be; or not be extended toward their existence, in which case, given that hypothesis, they will not be. In other words we can say this same thing. The one divine act of willing, which wills (loves) the infinite good of the divine essence and in this good rests with full beatitude, necessarily indeed wills this good in itself, but does not necessarily will it with imitation in participated goods, or without such imitation outward: freely, therefore, it wills both imitation, and this rather than another of its degrees, and its negation. The reason of this liberty is that analogical imitation of the infinite exemplar, whether it exists really or does not exist, adds nothing to perfection nor takes away. The reason of immutability, moreover, is that not another act but one infinite substantial act of willing the divine essence wills at once its imitation in participated goods, or the negation of imitation; and because this relation to one term or the other adds nothing to the substantial act itself, but all the diversity resides on the side of the term. Therefore the liberty of a creature is (active) indifference toward an act, which is an accident and not a substance; the liberty of the Creator is indifference of the termination in the act, which is substance necessary in itself and immutable. Cf. S. Th. cont. Gent. I. c. 82.

For a fuller explanation of the act of the divine will, which is directed ad extra, that is, to something distinct from God, three things may be considered: immanent act in itself, efficiency or the very becoming ad extra (transient action), and relation of the creature to God. Immanent act is really the divine substance itself, under the formal reason that it is infinite substantial volition, with a connotation of the thing willed outside God. This connotation adds nothing to God himself or to the infinite volition, yet from it the will is called, e.g., creating. Since, therefore, both the substantial will itself, as is self-evident, and the connotation of the work with respect to some temporal difference of the future, are from eternity, it is understood that the will, or the action, e.g. creative, in God is eternal⁹.

Transient action, or the becoming itself, is not formally in God, but is in the creature; and so it begins in time, or with time, and is something distinct from God no less than the creature itself. Hence, if it is ever read in the Fathers that the action of God is distinct from God, it must be explained: transient action is distinct, I concede; immanent action, I subdistinguish: it is distinct from the substance of God according to reason, I concede; it is really distinct, as it is in God, I deny. (Cf. PP. apud Petav. l. V. c. 12. coll. 13.)

Finally, concerning relation, it must be held thus. Relation is the order of one thing to another: therefore when two things are really ordered to each other, the relation is mutually real, as that of father (under the formal reason by which he is father) to son, and of son to father. But when one thing has a real ordering to another, yet this other does not thence receive any new order by something real superadded, but is only conceived as relative because the other is really referred to it, the relation is real in the one only; in the other it is called a relation of reason, that is, one which is conceived by us only, on account of the real order of the other. Thus knowledge in a created mind has a real order and relation to the thing actually known; but the thing known has only a relation of reason to the knower: for nothing is posited in that thing from the fact that it is and is said to be actually known; but it stands in the same way whether or not it is known. In this way, the creature, having in its whole existence a real dependence on God, has a real relation to God: God, however, is conceived only as having a relation to the creature because the creature is referred to him; but God does not in any way depend on the creature, nor is anything posited in God by which he is ordered to the creature; whence this relation of God to the creature is not real, but of reason only (cf. S. Th. de potent. q. 7. a. 10.).

Therefore no mutation, or metaphysical composition, much less a physical one, can be feigned in God from relations of this kind to what is outside him. St Augustine explains what these relations are, and how they are understood to induce no mutation, and therefore no composition, as follows. « How, then, shall we hold that nothing is said of God by accident, except because nothing accrues to his nature by which it would be changed; so that these are relative accidents which accrue together with some change in the things of which they are said: as a friend is said relatively, for he does not begin to be a friend unless he has begun to love. A coin, when it is called a price, is said relatively; yet it is not changed when it begins to be a price (the whole change, and the real relation, is in the men who value it). If, therefore, a coin can so often be called relatively without any change in itself, how much more easily must we understand of that immutable substance of God, that something is said relatively to the creature in such a way that, although it begins to be said temporally (e.g. creator, lord, etc.), nevertheless nothing is understood to have accrued to the very substance of God, but to that creature to which it is said » Aug. Trin. l. V. n. 17. (Cf. supra th. XXI. n. 2°.)

How God is truth itself.

From the demonstrated plenitude of absolute being it is further understood that God is truth itself, the supreme source and measure of all truth.

We are treating of the absolute properties or perfections of God, whose analogues in creatures are the transcendentals (being, one, true, good); therefore, after declaring the reason of divine being and of divine unity, it remains that we speak of truth and goodness.

The true and truth are spoken of in three ways: a) formally truth is the adequation of intellect with the thing understood; b) fundamentally the true is the thing itself to be understood, whether it is being insofar as it is intelligible, or being with a connotation of intellect, in which there is or can be conformity to the thing itself, or formal truth; c) morally truth is in signifying (see S. Th. de verit. q. 1. a. 1.). As regards this last notion, namely moral truth, veracity and truth can be distinguished. Insofar as a will and an act manifesting it correspond to formal truth perceived, that is, to true knowledge, this can be called veracity; but in the manifestation itself (e.g. by a spoken or written word), corresponding to formal truth, which manifestation has its origin in veracity, there is moral truth¹.

To this place the question of divine truth would properly belong only in the second sense; for if formal truth is considered, it would have to be treated in that part where the divine intellect and the knowledge of God are discussed, an order which St Thomas followed in both Summas. Yet on account of the intimate connection between fundamental truth and formal truth, we shall consider both aspects here together; and if anything about veracity needs elucidation, it will be more conveniently understood where we are about to speak of goodness, insofar as it is holiness. We consider divine truth both in itself and absolutely, and in comparison with analogous and participated truth.

I. The true, considered in things, is nothing other than being itself with a connotation of the intellect, which is conformed to it or can be conformed to it; or, in the words of St Thomas: « the truth which is in the thing itself is nothing other than an entity adequated to the intellect, or adequating the intellect to itself » (S.Th. de verit. q. 1. a. 4.). Truth in this sense is therefore the aptitude of being that the intellect may be conformed to it, which can be said in one word: the true is being itself under the aspect of knowability. Knowability, however, when the intellect is considered absolutely, extends as widely as the very reason of being; whence Augustine (Soliloq. l. II. c. 5.) simply defines: « that is seen to be true which is. » Therefore the greater the intensity of being, or the greater the perfection, the wider is the knowability of being, or the more intense is its truth: « where greatness itself is truth, whatever has more greatness must necessarily have more truth » Aug. de Trin. l.VIII. c. 1.

Now indeed: a) God, from what has been demonstrated, is the plenitude of all absolute Existence; he is perfection and greatness, not by bulk but by infinite power. b) God, from himself and necessarily, from the intrinsic reason of his essence, is this absolute perfection. c) Therefore the divine essence is not only infinitely intelligible, but has from the intrinsic reason of itself that it is actually infinitely understood and comprehended; because it is Existence, which as it is infinitely intelligible is also infinitely intellectual. For God is the plenitude of nobility in the whole reason and breadth of being; and the highest nobility of being which we can conceive is intellectuality, although in God it is more eminent than can be understood by us. The divine essence is therefore so intelligible that it cannot fail to be actually comprehended in accordance with its whole intelligibility; and it is the primary object of the divine intellection, so that God in his essence comprehends every truth by the same act by which he comprehends it, of which matter we shall speak in its place. Finally, d) an infinite entity, in its infinite intelligibility, is not only adequated to an infinite intellect, but is identically one thing comprehended and comprehension, understood and understanding. Just as therefore participated and dependent existence is true insofar as it is apt that the intellect be conformed to it, so absolute, infinite, and necessary Existence is substantial truth itself, insofar as from its intrinsic essence it is the understanding and comprehension of itself. « Truth is in the thing, says St Thomas 1. q. 16. a. 5, according as it has existence conformable to the intellect. This however is found most of all in God. For his Existence is not only conformed to his intellect, but is also itself his understanding. »

II. We shall understand in some measure the eminence of divine Existence by considering the reason in which truth stands to it in creatures. Truth which is, or can be conceived, apart from God is to be considered threefold: actual truth in existing things; purely ideal truth in possibles; formal truth in created intellects. Now indeed the source and measure of all this truth is divine truth: this is truth through itself and first truth; the other is participated truth, derived from the first truth.

For, first, things actually existing are true in relation to the divine intellect insofar as they correspond to the divine ideas; for the things themselves do not determine the divine intellect, but the divine intellect, comprehending the divine essence as imitable, which in conjunction with the divine will is called the practical intellect, is the cause for the things themselves, that they be, and be in this way, in which they correspond to the divine ideas ²: not that things are the measure of the divine intellect, but it is the measure of them. « Natural things, from which our intellect receives knowledge, says St Thomas, measure our intellect.... but they are measured by the divine intellect, in which all created things are, as all artificial things are in the intellect of the artificer. Thus the divine intellect is measuring and not measured; the thing³ is both measuring and measured; but our intellect is measured, not measuring natural things but only artificial ones. A natural thing therefore, constituted between two intellects, is called true according to its adequation to each: for according to its adequation to the divine intellect it is called true, insofar as it fulfils that for which it is ordered by the divine intellect... But according to its adequation to the human intellect a thing is called true insofar as it is by nature fitted to form a true estimation of itself » (S. Th. de verit. q. 1. a. 2.).

Hence also, the creature that acts freely according to the moral order corresponding to the divine ideas and good wills is called truth in Scripture; what acts against this order is called, and is, a lie. « It is not in vain said that every sin is a lie, because one sins only by that will which is contrary to truth, that is to God » Liber Sentent. ex Aug. sent. 150. Therefore, as « all the commandments of God are truth », « his law is truth », « all his ways are truth » Psal. CXVIII. (119.) 86. 142. 151. as norm and measure: so we are bidden « to walk in truth » and « to do truth. » On the contrary, the apostate angel « did not stand in truth, and truth is not in him » Io. VIII. 44; and those who « make a lie » are excluded from the heavenly Jerusalem, Apoc. XXI. 27; XXII. 15.

2°. The metaphysical order itself, and the ideal order of purely possibles, and all truth in them, which properly speaking is not in itself but can be, depends on this: that the divine essence is imitable outside itself in these modes and according to these laws. The whole metaphysical order is therefore constituted by the necessary laws of essences, which laws are necessary because the divine essence requires them. Hence the divine essence itself, not by a free will but from its necessary perfection, is the source and measure of all truth also of the metaphysical order.

3°. Formal truth in created intellects is a certain participation in divine truth, either through the immediate intellectual conjunction with the very essence and substantial divine truth, as it is in the vision in the light of glory; or through a supernatural light of another order, derived from the first truth, which light is in every supernatural knowledge in diverse modes and degrees; or through the communication of the habit of knowledge and of ideas, as it is with the angels, and was the natural knowledge of the first man; or finally through the communication of the lowest of all, which in us is the intellectual light, from whose conjunction with truth in things there arises the conformity of the intellect with the thing, or formal truth. This light, moreover, is itself also a certain participation in the truth and wisdom of God, 'and, as the Fathers speak, the seminal word λογος σπερματικος, through which we are constituted the image of God (supra p. 96. 141. seqq.)⁴.

Finally, from participated formal truth is derived the truth in our signs and words.

It is therefore evident that every truth which is, and which can be conceived, apart from God depends on God insofar as he is truth through himself, as on its principle, exemplar and measure. God is therefore, in the same sense in which he is the first Esse, also the first absolute truth. See Lessius de divin. perfect. l. VI. c. 4.

How God is goodness itself.

« By like reason God is goodness itself: in himself ontologically as perfection, morally as holiness, in some measure finally as beatitude; and therefore he is the supreme good of the creature as efficient and final cause, and, though in an improper sense, as formal cause in sanctification and beatification. »

First the notion of good must be supposed. St Thomas, 1. q. 6. a.1., defines the good as « the reason of the perfect, which is desirable. » In this definition the perfect which is spoken of is that which has all things belonging to it, which the Greeks perhaps more aptly call τελειον, the ultimate, or the end and summit of those things which pertain to it¹.

Appetite is taken both more properly for the tendency and repose of the will toward the perfect that befits it, such as is found only in intellectual beings and by a certain analogy in sentient ones; or improperly for the natural ordering and inclination toward its own perfection, such as is also found in inanimate things.

The reason of the perfect is the good considered in itself, and it can be called bonum quod. But every good in itself is fitting to someone; therefore the good in itself is also desirable, under which reason it can be called bonum cui. Whence the definition of Aristotle: the good is what all things desire. But this « is not so understood, says St Thomas (1. c. a. 2. ad 2.), as if every good were desired by all, but because whatever is desired has the reason of good. »

Further, the good in itself can be understood in creatures as what is perfect with respect to esse indeterminately, and in this way the good follows every being, and so is transcendental; or the good is understood as what is perfect in a determinate essence, and so likewise whatever is, is good (with metaphysical goodness); or the good is understood as the perfection which is added to the essence, whether in the physical order or in the moral order, insofar as it belongs to the nature itself or by itself, or insofar as it is capable, under the ordering of God, of the supernatural end; or finally the good is understood as what is properly τελειον, perfection in repose already in the state of the ultimate end.

The bonum cui, or good for someone, is the good itself in itself, insofar as it is the principle of good in someone, either as efficient cause by action, or as end by enjoyment, or as form by its communication of itself.

Having declared the notion of good as far as the aim required, we shall consider God, both as he is infinite good in himself, and as he is « the good of goods, » the principle, I say, and end of every good, which, apart from himself, can be only by participation and absolute dependence on the good which he is.

I. Esse and good are convertible, for esse includes the reason of good, as is clear from what has been said. Therefore the absolute Esse itself, from its essence, is absolute goodness, or the reason of the perfect in itself. This goodness of God in himself can be considered more distinctly according to a threefold order: ontological, moral, and, as it were, final.

1°. God is goodness itself ontologically. Since God is, by the intrinsic reason of his essence, the fullness of all perfection actually existing, no perfection has come to him by which he is good; but the necessary Esse itself is the whole essential perfection and absolutely necessary, because it is Esse itself. He is therefore not good by anything other; but he is good by his essence: he is not good within some order and degree, beyond which he would not be good; but he is good absolutely by the whole reason of goodness: finally he does not have goodness as something accidental; but he is the whole goodness itself. « The good itself, says Clement of Alexandria, Paedagog. l. I. c. 8, is not called good through the virtue which it has: just as justice is not called good through the virtue it has, for it is itself the virtue; but because it is good in itself and through itself » ².

More fittingly, this absolute goodness can be declared by comparison with participated good. The transcendent Bonum is indeed really identical with esse even in creatures: but the esse of a creature is contingent, and not necessary by its intrinsic reason; whence the essence of a creature is not actual in itself but only in mere possibility: bonum, however, is esse and essence in act; for essence in the state of possibility is only the possibility of good. Finally, this very possibility, if it is some good, wholly flows from the reason of the participability of the unparticipated good, which is the divine essence. A created essence in act, though it cannot be without being good with metaphysical goodness, yet this is goodness secundum quid, and it requires many other goods fitting to it, both in the physical order and, as regards intellectual creatures, in the moral order, so that it may be bonum simply in its own order. Those therefore which lack the fitting conditions of their nature, at least as much as is required for the end in whose attainment lies the completion of goodness, are called simply mala³. But in God, as the good of essence is necessarily in act, so this very good of essence is the whole reason of absolute goodness.

Accordingly, created things are good within some finite degree of being and goodness: a good soul, a good angel, and so on. God, however, is the good itself in the whole reason of good; he is the Good Good. Moreover, creatures in their own order and due degree are not simply good, except with accidental goodness; and therefore they are not the good itself: but God, having no accidental goodness, can be good, since he is essentially the absolute good itself. This teaching is most clear in St Augustine, both in other places and in l. VIII. c. 3. n. 4. 5. de Trin. After enumerating various goods, he says: « This good and that good, he says, take away this and that, and see the good itself, if you can. So you will see God good not by another good, but as the good of every good.... What is this except God? Not a good soul, or a good angel, or good heaven, but the Good Good. For when I hear, for example, that a good soul is spoken of, just as there are two words, so from those words I understand two things: one by which the soul is, another by which it is good.... not because that by which the soul is, is not something of goodness.... but for this reason it is not yet called a good soul, since there remains for it the act of the will by which it may be more excellent; which if it neglects, it is rightly blamed, and rightly said not to be a good soul... When therefore you hear this good and that good, which can also be called not good at other times.... if, these being removed, you can perceive the good through itself, you will have perceived God... This is the truth and the simple good, for it is nothing other than the good itself, and therefore also the supreme good. For the good cannot be diminished or increased, except what is good from another good. Therefore the soul turns itself to this, that it may be good, from which it has that it is a soul. »

2°. Goodness is to be considered in the moral order, which is called holiness, and according to which rational creatures are chiefly called good, because only by this are they duly disposed to the end, in whose attainment, as we have said, lies the ultimate completion of goodness. Now holiness in creatures is negatively immunity from sin, that is, from disorder with respect to the eternal law in habits and acts; and positively it is the conformity and commensuration of habits and acts to the very rule of morals, which conformity is ultimately perfected by love of God and union with God as ultimate end. For just as the law of love is the greatest commandment, on which the whole law depends and to which it is directed, so every conformity to the law of God is ordered per se to this love and to union with God. Now the divine essence itself is the foundation of all order, as of the moral order also; and the same essence, insofar as it is intellect and will, is the essentially right principle of the eternal law, and the measure of all moral rectitude. For God loves with necessary love the fundamental rectitude which is his own essence; and the same essentially right act by which he loves his essential rectitude is directed outwards toward creatures as a law and norm of rectitude, partly necessary and partly free. From this it follows that every divine disposition outwardly is essentially right; and it is as repugnant that either the law or the work of God outwardly should not fully correspond to essential rectitude, as it is repugnant that the act itself, essentially right and the norm of all rectitude, should cease to be right. » God, in holiness is your way; who is a God so great as our God? » Psal. LXXVI. 14. « The Lord is just in all his ways » Ps. CXLIV. 17. « His holy arm » Ps.XCVII. 1. » Holy is the law, and the commandment holy, and just, and good » Rom.VII. 12. « Holy is his name » Luc. I. 49.

The Lord God of hosts, in himself: « Holy, Holy, Holy » Is. VI. 3.

Likewise this essential love, by which God loves infinitely the rectitude in his essence, and by which consequently he wills rectitude in his creatures and loves it, is opposed to its contrary by necessary disapproval and hatred of sin, Ps. V.5. sqq.; Prov. XV.9. Whence it appears how the goodness or holiness of God is, not only identically but formally, even according to our own mode of understanding, the wrath of God, that is, justice in punishing sin, and the love of goodness is the hatred of sin: the distinction, namely, is not in the perfection, even as understood by us, but the difference lies in the object to which one perfection is referred. « God indeed is good through himself, but just consequently on account of those things which are ours, and this very thing because he is good » Clemens Alex. Paedagog. I. c. 8. p. 127.

The proper reason of the holiness of God is thus reduced to what has been said. God is a) positively holiness itself, because just as his essence is intrinsically rectitude itself, not as conformed to some norm, but as it is in itself right and the norm of all rectitude: so he is the very love of this essence, adequate to the lovableness of the object, that is, infinite love of infinite substantial goodness⁴; which same act of love, loving its substantial goodness in it, with it, and on account of it, loves holiness and rectitude participated in creatures. Just as God knows all things in his essence as in the supreme truth, so he loves all things in his essence as in the supreme goodness, according to the diverse degrees of participated goodness. For whatever lovableness there is in creatures is a derivation from that substantial and essential lovableness⁵. b) Therefore God is negatively holiness itself, through an essential and absolute opposition to any aversion from the norm of rectitude, which he himself is. c) He is holiness itself causally; for all participated holiness consists and is perfected by love and union with God, who for this very reason is understood to be holy not by anything other, but in himself, through himself, is holy; and holiness itself is not participated, but is to be participated. (See Lessius de perfect. div. l. VIII.)

3°. In what sense God can be said to be goodness in himself, as it were finally, is understood from the manner in which the final goodness of the creature is spoken of. We have said that the goodness of the creature is perfected in attaining its end. God cannot have an end to which he is ordered and by whose attainment he is perfected, since he is in himself the absolute good itself, and perfect in himself without other goodness. Therefore, just as whatever is besides God has its ultimate end necessarily in God the supreme good, from whom and to whom is all good: so God, as the absolute good itself, rests in himself and in his infinite fullness of the whole good. In this sense, therefore, God is his own end, negatively, namely, that he can have no end distinct from himself, but he is the end of all; positively, that in himself he has the fullness of good, or rather is the fullness itself, is αὐτοτελὴς(Dionysius divin. nom. c. 13. §. 1.). Moreover, just as in the perfection which the intellectual creature attains in resting in its ultimate end lies its beatitude: so God, in the fullness of the absolute good which he is, is himself to himself his infinite beatitude. « Enjoyment, says St Bonaventure, from its general notion means the union of love, namely of what is enjoyed with the one enjoying. Since therefore it happens that something is united to itself and to another, it is fitting to enjoy not only another but also oneself. But where there is union with another, there is dependence, inherence, and need; but where it is with oneself, if it is the supreme good, there is no inherence, nor dependence or need, but all-round sufficiency. If, however, the good is deficient, it needs; and hence it is that God alone fully enjoys himself through himself » S. Bonav. 1. dist. 1. dub. 12.

The sum, therefore, of all that we have hitherto discussed concerning the absolute good is this. 1° God is the absolute good itself in himself, by the very fact that he is the fullness of all absolute Esse: therefore God is goodness by essence. And so 2° goodness, to which as exemplar and cause corresponds the perfection of creatures, both physical and moral, is in God the essence itself, not a perfection superadded: it is therefore, as goodness itself in every order, so by name holiness itself. Finally, 3° goodness, to which corresponds the ultimate perfection of the creature in attaining its end, is in God essential beatitude, by which, in the fullness of the whole goodness, he is sufficient to himself, and necessarily the end of all, in whom all things, each according to its own order, have their ultimate perfection.

II. Although God is in himself absolute goodness, and fully sufficient to himself, which can be increased by no created goods nor diminished by the removal of all of them; yet we, while we are still pilgrims from the Lord, cannot fix the eye of the mind upon him alone; but in order to estimate his infinite greatness we need to contemplate him as bonum cui, insofar as he is our supreme good and that of the whole creation. « Thus God is good in his essence, so that, as substantial good, he extends goodness into all things.... For the goodness of divinity, which is above all things, pervades from the highest and most exalted substances to the lowest, and yet is above all; so that neither the higher reach its eminence, nor the lower pass beyond its compass; but it illuminates all things that can be illumined, and creates, and quickens, and contains, and perfects, and is the measure of those things which are, and eternity, and number, and order, and containing preservation, and cause, and end... All things desire goodness as principle, as containing preservation, as end; and the good itself is, as the sacred oracles witness, that from which all things have their stability and have been produced as from a most perfect cause, and in which all things consist as in a foundation containing and preserving and holding all, and toward which each thing turns as to its own end, and which all things desire: intellectual and rational beings knowingly, sensible beings sensibly, and those devoid of sense by the innate motion of vital appetition, and those lacking life that merely exist, by an aptitude for the sole participation of their essence » Dionys. div. nom. c. 4. §. 1. 4.⁶.

1°. God is therefore the supreme good to all as cause exemplary, efficient, conserving of every good which is or can be apart from the supreme good itself. For since in himself he is absolute good, and in himself possesses beforehand eminently every good which can exist by participation, therefore he is good diffusive of himself also outwardly, in the first act indeed from his own intrinsic nature, but in the second act by his free will, which again is goodness itself.⁷ « The perfect is said to contain and abound in all things in itself, according to one unceasing and the same, superabundant and never diminished largess, through which it perfects all perfect things, and fulfils them with a perfection fitting to each » Dionysius, div. nom. c. 13. §. 1. This largess is perpetual and unceasing, since the whole reason of the existence of participated good is from that very largess, and if it ceased, the whole of what is would continually cease to be, from the ultimate material elements up to the highest spirits and to the most holy humanity of Christ itself. Moreover, since all these things are good, insofar as they participate in and imitate absolute goodness as divine exemplar, and they are the better the nearer they approach to that supereminent goodness; therefore this very goodness is the measure of every good: for just as the created truth stands in relation to the divine ideas (supra th. XXVIII. n. II.), so the participated good is good insofar as it corresponds to the divine exemplar, namely to the divine perfection, imitable outwardly.

2°. As God is « the good of goods » as principle and cause of every good, so he is also, to all, the supreme good as ultimate end; and it is as repugnant that anything should not be toward him as it is repugnant that anything should not be from him and through him: « from him and through him and in him (εἰς αὐτὸν) are all things, to him be glory forever » Rom. XI. 36.

Apart from God, the absolute good, nothing at all can exist except formally as imitation and manifestation of the perfection of God. Hence the supreme eminence of the divine essence and the intrinsic nature of things require that whatever is from God as first principle be toward God as ultimate end. God, according to the necessary norm of all rectitude, which is his essence, would not act, and so would cease to be holy, if he established any participated good which was not directed to him as ultimate end. That which is called participated good, if it were not to this end, would involve a contradiction; for it is an intrinsic ordering of the very nature and essence of participated good to the absolute good as its ultimate end, no less than to it is essential total dependence in its whole esse upon that absolute good as its principle. Therefore the destination to God as ultimate end can be called moral essence immediately of the rational creature which is capable of morality, but mediately (through the rational creature as intermediary and interposed) of all the other creatures, and so in the complex of the whole universe. For just as metaphysical essence is the reason and principle of all properties (above th. XX. n. I.), so all other moral relations depend upon and proceed from the ordering to God as ultimate end. From all these things it is evident that the fulfilment and attainment of this destination, and rest in this ultimate end, is the supreme formal good of the creature; consequently God himself is for it the supreme objective good.

There is, however, where the good is treated as ultimate end, a very great difference between rational creatures and irrational and insensate ones. « The good, which all things desire; » whence the good for someone is properly only that which is desired by him. Now the appetite of anything is properly only with knowledge of what is fitting to it. Whence insensate things properly desire nothing, but only metaphorically, insofar as by their very entity they are ordered and tend toward their own perfection: hence properly nothing can be a good for them as beatitude, but only a good in them, as fitting to their nature. Sensitive beings can know, desire, and perceive only material things through the senses, so these alone can be called somewhat good for them; as regards intellectual things they stand in the same way as insensate things. Whence all irrational creatures are ordered to God as ultimate end, for whose sake they are, solely by their own entity (with all ontological perfections); not however by knowledge and will (rational appetite), as to an end that is to be desired by them and by whose attainment they might enjoy. Irrational creatures are therefore not capable of God being the supreme good for them as an end which they might enjoy; but God is the supreme good, to which they are ordered ultimately by their whole entity, and this ordering is good in them. Moreover, the ordering to God in an irrational creature is through the interposed rational creature; for it consists in this, that by their use « they help man in the pursuit of the end for which he was created, » and especially in that by their very entity they are, as it were, a mirror and objective manifestation of divine perfection to the rational creature.⁸.

But God as ultimate end is the supreme good of the rational creature in a far different way. Rational creatures, in all their perfections, both natural and especially supernatural, up to that supreme perfection in the beatific vision, are indeed themselves an objective manifestation of the divine perfections, and a much fuller one and nearer to God, in that the gifts in them are more excellent than in irrational things. But not only in this way is the ordering to God as ultimate end good in them; rather, they are ordered to God, that God, as ultimate end, may be that by which they enjoy, and that he may be supreme good for them. « That is called the supreme good of man, by whose possession man is blessed, or for whose sake other things are to be desired and pursued, while it itself is not for the sake of anything else, but for itself alone. Therefore what is the supreme good of man is necessarily his ultimate end; again, what is the supreme good of man, in it must necessarily consist his beatitude, which is nothing other than the possession of the supreme good. The supreme good and ultimate end is said to be the thing itself, by whose possession and enjoyment we are blessed, and the very possession and enjoyment of this thing; in like manner beatitude is taken both for the thing itself by whose union we are made blessed, and for the union itself; the former is called by the Doctors objective beatitude, the latter formal » Less. de summo Bon. I. 1. Now indeed God, being the supreme good in himself, would be, even in the order of merely natural providence, the supreme good of the rational creature, beatifying through knowledge and love corresponding to the natural faculties of the creature: but in the present supernatural order he presents himself to the rational creature as ultimate end and supreme good, fully beatifying, not according to the exigency of the created rational nature, but beyond the natural exigency, according to the infinity of the good itself; that is, in a mode not tempered to the limits and deficiency of the creature, but in a mode corresponding to the infinity of the God who elevates. For God joins himself as infinite good, to be seen in himself by the intellect raised through the light of glory, to be loved with love responding to this vision of the infinite good⁹, and to be enjoyed with everlasting beatitude, which follows connaturally and necessarily from the infinite good communicating itself to us through vision and love¹⁰. God is therefore possessed¹¹ through vision and love and interminable joy as¹² supreme good and ultimate end, and is for the rational creature the supreme good not only causally, as for the irrational creature also, but through himself as the beatifying good. « For the notion of perfect possession nothing else is required than that the thing be so present and in the power of the possessor that he can use it (if it is only a means) and enjoy it (if it is the end) according to his desire. Therefore, since through vision God is so present and held that the one seeing can enjoy him and draw from him all delight as he desires, the vision of God is his true possession. In like manner the hearing of a symphony is the possession of the symphony, because it is held through hearing in such a way that one can perceive all its delight and all its advantage. Whence it is false that God is not immediately our good in himself. For God is called our good in two ways: first causally or effectively, insofar as every good coming to us flows from him as from a fount; second, he is called our good as it were formally and through himself. Nor is it required for this that he should inhere in us as form; it suffices that he be joined to us through vision. For something to be counted as my good, it suffices that it be apprehended as something pertaining to me, by the mode of a thing possessed by me, whose use or enjoyment is in my power. And in this way God himself through himself is formally our good, namely as a thing possessed by us, so that we can always enjoy him and delight in him, especially since in blessedness he is joined to us most perfectly and perpetually by vital union » Lessius de summo Bono l. II. c. 6. n. 31. 32; c. 17. n. 146.

But does not this way make the ultimate end of the whole created order the beatitude of the rational creature? The answer: the ultimate end that is to be attained is the extrinsic glory of God; and therefore the ultimate end for whose sake all things are created, and to which all things are referred, is God himself. For God's necessary love of his own intrinsic excellence, because of this excellence worthy of infinite glorification (which he indeed enjoys in himself, in intrinsic glory, without need of any other glorification), freely extends to willing its representation and acknowledgment through creatures. And this is the extrinsic glory of God, both objective and formal. But this extrinsic glory itself, both objective and chiefly formal, is ultimately completed by the beatitude of the rational creatures, which we have indicated. For in the perfection of the blessed and in the whole heavenly city of God there is the supreme expression and likeness of the infinite perfection of God, which representation constitutes the extrinsic glory objective; but the most perfect and interminable acts of vision, love, joy, adoration, praise, etc., of all the blessed are the extrinsic glory of God formal in its ultimate term, toward which God himself directs ultimately all that he does outwardly, the whole order of creation and sanctification, of nature and grace, of natural and supernatural providence: all things for the sake of the elect (cf. Rom. VIII. 28; 1. Cor. III. 22.); and the elect, « that we may be to the praise of his glory » (Eph. I. 12.), and so at last « that God may be all in all » (1. Cor. XV. 28.). God therefore in his infinite excellence is the ultimate end, for whose sake and to whom all things are; the glorification of God is the ultimate end that is to be attained: this glorification, moreover, is completed by the very exaltation and beatitude of the saints; or rather the very exaltation and beatitude of the saints is the supreme objective and formal glory of God, because God is possessed by the creature as the supreme good through vision, love, and the beatitude consequent upon them, into everlasting eternities. Read what Leonardus Lessius wrote, more precious than all gold: de perfect. divin. l. XIV; de summo Bono l. II.

3ⁱᵒ. God is not, and cannot be, a formal good for anyone, in the sense that he communicates himself and unites himself to the creature as form properly so called. For every information properly so called implies an essential imperfection of the form: for just as it perfects, so it is itself perfected, and has the character of a part and in some way depends on the whole. Nevertheless God himself, in a supernatural and wonderful manner, communicates himself to the intellectual creature and joins himself to it, so that by this communication of himself, by way of formal cause, with imperfections removed, he raises it to the most sublime state and dignity, which the holy Fathers are wont to call θέωσιν. Chief among these is the supreme hypostatic union of all in the « firstborn of every creature, » where the created human nature has become the proper nature of the Word itself, so that this man is true God. Now this good of infinite dignity, although it belongs immediately and formally to the human nature of Christ alone, nevertheless belongs morally and juridically, so to speak, to every creature that has been exalted in its firstborn, to the creature, I say, especially angelic and human, of which he is the head. Most of all, however, it belongs to the whole human nature, so that this mystery is the source and origin of the whole « ministration from the head into the members »; « for of his fullness we have all received, and grace for grace ». Consequently, and by a kind of extension, it belongs finally also to the irrational creature, which is referred to the rational creature as means to the proximate end. Indeed, there must also be considered the wonderful exaltation of the corporeal nature itself in the body of Christ, which is the body of the divine person, and on account of him in the bodies of all the just, which are called temples of the Holy Spirit by the Apostle (1.Cor.VI.19.), at some time « to be reformed and configured to the body of the glory of Christ » Phil. III. 21; not to mention the elevation of corporeal nature to efficacious instruments of sanctification in the sacraments, and the consecration, which extends very widely, to the instruments and aids of Christian worship; and let us say nothing of the future liberation « from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the sons of God, » which, before it happens, « every creature groans and travails together until now » Rom. VIII. 21. 22. All these things, however, in the present order follow and flow from that mystery by which « the Word was made flesh, » by which « God appeared in the flesh, » by which the flesh of the Virgin has become the flesh of the Son of God.

Another, as it were formal, communication of the supreme good with the creature is seen in the beatific vision, as is sufficiently understood from what was said in the preceding Section, chapter II. « The rational nature, by its intellectual power, is capable of divinity; and, illumined and aided by the light of glory and made like God in the most eminent manner, it passes through and penetrates into God formally by the same power, and God in it exists in a new mode, and communicates himself to it with all its goods, so that it may enjoy the sweetness and beauty of all. To the intellectual power there comes, as its companion and equal, the will, by which the soul, with its whole impetus, is carried toward the good conceived by the intellect, that it may unite itself to it in a new way, namely by love, and be as it were transformed into it. Through these two powers our soul enters into divinity in a double way, and in the most eminent manner, and divinity enters into it; and there is made a mutual, as it were, penetration and intimate vital union between the soul and God. Whence there is born an ineffable joy, by which, as it were, it tastes the infinite good vitally joined to it. Through these acts, therefore, the soul so tends into God that it immediately attains him and is vitally united to him, and becomes a partaker of divinity » Lessius de perfect. div. XIV. c. 5. n. 78-80.

A third communication of the supreme good with the creature, in a certain manner formal, is to be considered in all the just. For although the just are not formally the very justice of God (Concil. Trid. sess. VI. cap. 7.), but justice, charity, and holiness inhering in them, which is poured into their hearts through the Holy Spirit; nevertheless this very inhering gift of sanctifying grace is as it were a spiritual bond by which the just souls are united in a singular manner with God the sanctifier; and therefore God, and by name, speaking according to appropriation, the Holy Spirit, « is given to them, » « dwells in them, » « remains in them » Io. XIV. 23; Rom. V. 3; 1. Io. IV. 16. etc. Of this indwelling of the Holy Spirit we treat in the Tract. de Trin., the whole Section IV. Theologians may be consulted on S.Th.1. q.43., and in 1. dist. 14., and among the rest S. Bonavent. 1. d.14. a.2. q. 1; Molina in 1. q. 43. a. 3. (who treats of this matter briefly but most clearly); Suarez de Trin. l. XII. c. 5; Lessius de perfect. div. l. XII. c. 10. n. 74. seqq., and de summo Bono l. II. c. 1. n. 4. 5; Petav. de Trin. l. VIII. c. 4. sqq.

Therefore, just as the supreme good in itself, already from the very reason of creation, is « every good » of the creature efficiently, and every good finally, as the objective end of all creatures, and as the formal end of the intellectual creature: so God willed, in the order of gratuitous sanctification, to raise up beyond all its exigencies the very good of nature, which is from him and to him, to communion in his own good, rendering himself the good of his creature through the hypostatic union into natural sonship, through the union of grace into adoptive sonship, and through the union of glory into beatification corresponding to the dignity of sons: « if indeed children, and heirs » Rom. VIII. 17¹³. Therefore « no one is good but one God: this supreme good is your good, O soul. What then is lacking to him for whom the supreme good is good?... Raise your hope to the good of all good things; he will be your good, by whom you were made good in your kind, and all things made in their kind are good » Aug. in Ps.102. n. 8.

How God is beauty itself.

« Just as God is truth itself and goodness itself, so he is beauty itself, and therefore the exemplar and efficient cause of all derived beauty. »

Moreover, the beautiful is closely connected with the good. Thus God is, like truth itself and goodness itself, essential beauty itself. The beautiful is defined a posteriori from its effect by St Thomas, 1. q. 5. a. 4. ad 1: « those things are called beautiful which, being seen, please. » Hence the same Holy Doctor observes that the beautiful relates to the cognitive power, as the good to the appetite. Wherefore, in the definition given, if it is extended to the beautiful as widely as it reaches, the seeing is to be understood not only of the sensible but also, and above all, of the intellectual. In this way the definition comprehends under itself those things which agree not univocally but only analogically in the reason by which they are called beautiful. Therefore there ought not to be postulated one and the same reason of the beautiful, but only an analogous one in the diverse things which are and are called beautiful. The beautiful of the lowest reason can be called that which by itself and immediately delights the sense of sight and hearing alone, in which there is a greater analogy with the knowing faculty than in the other senses: as a beautiful colour and a beautiful sound are called. The beautiful is of a second and more perfect grade, which reaches the intellectual power, through sight and hearing or through the imagination, and delights it. It is easy to see that the beautiful in either of these senses cannot be formally except in sensible things, which are either sensible in themselves and in reality, or are presented as sensible.¹

But since that definition, drawn from the effect, does not declare what the beautiful is in itself, « for things are not beautiful because they delight, but they delight because they are beautiful » (cf. Aug. de vera relig. c. 32.): the intrinsic reason and essence of beauty remains to be inquired into. This is generally thought to consist in the unity of multiplicity: « things are beautiful because their parts are like one another, and are brought together by a certain joining into one fitting whole » Aug. de ver. relig. c. 32. n. 59. Therefore it must be said that many things are as it were matter, and unity itself is the form of beauty: « the form of all beauty is unity, » says the same St Augustine, ep. 18. al. 63. ad Coelestin. n. 2. Whence the greater and more distinct multiplicity, provided that the intensity of unity corresponds to it, the greater will be the beauty, whether it is a multiplicity simultaneous in space, as the beauty of a painting; or successive in time, as the beauty of music. But where unity and commensuration are lacking, the formal reason of beauty is wholly lacking. On the contrary, if unity were the greatest in utter simplicity, and the greatest virtual multiplicity, beauty would be greatest. This, however, cannot be in sensible things.

Hence there is another beauty, and that a higher and nobler one, in purely intelligible and intellectual things. For those things which are the object neither of the senses nor of the imagination, but which, seen by the sole intuition of the mind, delight it, are most beautiful with a beauty to which that other, sensible beauty is not of the same reason, but only analogous. Hence intelligible beauty is found even in the abstract truths themselves, which, seen in their wonderful connection, and thus in the unity and simplicity of principles and in the marvellous variety and harmony of their consequences, fill the rational mind with the purest delight. In really existing things, unity in multiplicity and beauty are to be perceived by the mind first of all in every life, whether vegetative or sensitive, from which life, as effects and messengers of intrinsic beauty, there proceed the most beautiful sensible phenomena, for example in flowers, in the eye, and universally in animal bodies. Hence it can be understood how much more noble is the beauty in the rational soul, and still more exalted in pure spirits, where there is the greatest unity and simplicity of a most noble substance, and wonderful variety of faculties, powers, and virtues.² Finally, most sublime is the beauty of soul and spirit in supernatural elevation through sanctifying grace, through the habits and virtues divinely infused into it, and through the fellowship of the divine nature; which beauty is completed in consummation through beatific glory.

Indeed, that supreme unity which God is, is the exemplary and efficient cause, infinitely eminent, of all beauty, order, harmony, multiplicity and unity, whether in corporeal or in spiritual things, in natural and in supernatural things; so that all this beauty comprehended together in created things, and all the splendour of truth and goodness shining forth in all spiritual creatures, is nothing but a faint image and dim shadow of the beauty of God, who is « itself, according to itself and with itself, always existing uniformly beautiful, and eminently anticipating in itself the fountain-like beauty of all that is beautiful »³ Dionys. div.nom. c. 4. §. 7. For its essence, one and most simple, in this its simplicity first comprehends all the reasons of all perfections, which we can distinguish; it then comprehends, precisely as imitable outside itself, eminently all the reasons of all things, not only of existing but also of possible things; moreover it comprehends, by one infinite thought, which is its very substance, all the reasons of all truth in its own essence; and it comprehends, by one substantial volition, all the reasons of all good in that same essence. And all these things are in it one most simple intellectual Esse, so that the unity of perfection, to which all diversity is repugnant, by its infinite intensity equals and surpasses infinitely many distinct things, if a mind could conceive it. If furthermore we consider the most simple unity of the infinite essence together with the real and necessary distinction of the persons of Father, Son and Holy Spirit among themselves, in perfect identity with the essence, we can, by thinking, conceive in some measure, or rather, in this our darkness, surmise, how God is absolute beauty in himself⁴⁵, in whose comprehension and infinite love the divine blessedness itself consists, and by whose clear vision every created mind is rapt into love and is at once blessed.