Pints With Aquinas - 111: Can we speak meaningfully about God?

Episode Date: June 19, 2018

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What's up everybody? Welcome to Bounce with Aquinas. My name is Matt Fradd. If you could sit down over a pint of beer with the big man, that's Thomas Aquinas by the way, in case you're new to the show and thought I was talking about William of Ockham or something. If you could sit down over a pint of beer with Thomas and ask him any one question, what would it be? In today's episode, we're going to ask Thomas, can we talk meaningfully about God? Great to have you back here at Pints with Aquinas, the show where you and I pull up a barstool next to the angelic doctor to discuss theology and philosophy. Today, as I said, we're going to be discussing whether or not we can talk meaningfully about

God. If God is infinite, then whatever we say of him, it doesn't sort of capture his essence. It doesn't kind of comprehend it. When we say something is wise or something is loving or something is good, we might know what that means if we're speaking of creatures. But do we know what we mean about God when we say God is wise and loving and these sorts of things? So that's what we're going to be discussing. I hope you're doing well. I don't know what you're doing. Maybe it's night.

Maybe it's morning. Maybe you're running on the treadmill. I'm sitting down here with a beautiful beverage. It's actually not an alcoholic beverage because it's the morning time and that's not cool to drink whiskey in the morning, actually. I'm drinking Guadalupe Roastery coffee. If you're looking for really awesome coffee that actually comes from a Catholic company, go to guadaluperoastery.com. I kind of feel like I have to talk about these guys because they actually send me bags of coffee from time to time. And I remember when I first got in touch with them, they were like, it's very ethical. We care for the farmers and their website goes into all of that. And I was like, yeah, that's great. But if your coffee came up with a cure for cancer and it was bad coffee, I still wouldn't drink it. So let me see if it's good or not. And it was really good. And they're

really ethical as well. So if you want to get some good Catholic coffee that actually tastes amazing, go to guadaluperoastery.com. What else? Did you like last week's episode with Bishop Robert Barron? Wasn't that fantastic? Man, so many of you have said to me that you've just loved the show and got a lot out of it. So thanks for your feedback. Also, I ran a competition last week. I said I was going to give away a copy of the Summa Theologiae and 10 copies of my new book, Does God Exist? A Socratic Dialogue on the Five Ways of Thomas Aquinas. And I will indeed do that. How do you know if you won? Here's how. Go to pintswithaquinas.com. And in this week's episode, so I'll put a link in the show notes, you can see

if you've won. And if you've won, I'll let you know how to get in touch with me and I'll send you that stuff. Finally, before we get into today's show, I want to let you know that next week, we're going to be selling some Pints with Aquinas merchandise. All right. This is the best merchandise we've ever sold. So we have these, you've probably seen our Pints with Aquinas shirts before. They're usually gray and black. This time they're black and white. So it's a white image on a black shirt. They look spectacular. We're also selling coffee mugs and stickers. So I think you need a shirt that says, yes, I'm a geek, but I know how to party. Okay. And you have to say it like that. This is shirt baby this is your shirt i have been told

though i cannot verify that just by donning this shirt the information contained within the summa theologiae will be downloaded into your brain in a moment just by slipping on the shirt it's crazy it's almost unbelievable but that is what somebody has told me and i just thought i should relay that on to you now it'll be for sale next week and it'll only be for sale for about 10 days. Now, every time I do this, every couple of months, I sell this Pints with Quietness merch. The time runs out and people contact me and ask if they can get it. And I say, no, it's no longer available. And some people get upset. So don't be upset. Just buckle up and get ready. I'm going to be tweeting about it, Instagramming about it. You're going to see it. And that'll be that.

All right, man. I'm excited. I'm excited today. We want to talk about Thomas Aquinas and what he had to say about God. And more to the point, can we talk about God? You might think, well, what does that mean? Can we talk about God? Well, here's why we should think this is an interesting question to ask, because here's what Aquinas says

in the Summa. He says, we do not know what he, that is God, is, but only what he is not. We cannot consider how God exists, but rather how he does not exist. Isn't that interesting? He says, we don't know what he is, but only what he's not exist. Isn't that interesting? He says we don't know what he is but only what he's not. I remember tweeting this at Richard Dawkins a couple of months ago. I said something like, you know, Richard Dawkins thinks he knows what God is and doesn't believe. Aquinas, on the other hand, is convinced he doesn't know what God is and yet believes. Okay. So, Aquinas says we cannot know what God is, only what he's not. We'll speak about why that's the case in a moment. But I want to point out that it is possible to exaggerate this negative theology of St. Thomas

Aquinas as though we can't know anything about God. This isn't what Aquinas taught. He actually thought that it would be contrary to the goodness of God if he didn't communicate to us some knowledge about himself. So, how do we know anything about God? Aquinas says through two ways, reason and grace. We can know that God exists in this life by reason. Incidentally, Aquinas didn't think it was an article of faith that God exists, but rather something that could be discerned via philosophy. So you don't need revelation to know God exists. That's what the first Vatican council says anyway. Nevertheless, you can believe God exists based on revelation if you're not smart enough to look at the philosophical proofs and

arrive at the conclusion that God exists. That's not my words. Well, it is my words, but it's essentially what Aquinas says. So, Aquinas basically says that, yes, okay, there are good arguments to show that God exists and you can know that God exists apart from revelation. But then he says, but look, not everyone is, you know, intelligent enough to figure that out. Or maybe they're, you know, concerned with looking after their families and working at a job and they don't have a lot of leisure time to sit down and look at the arguments. He also says we can know about God through grace, right? Through revelation. So in this life, Aquinas says we can't know what God exists. In the next we can, because we will, well, we'll see the divine essence. That's what we mean by the beatific

vision. But even in heaven, Aquinas says we won't comprehend God. So there's a distinction there that needs to be made between knowledge and comprehension. We can know that God exists, and in heaven we'll not only know that he exists, but we will, in a sense, know God, because we'll see him. But we won't comprehend him, ever, for all eternity. Why? Because he's infinite and we are only finite. I like to think of heaven as this sort of continual amazement at the existence and essence of God. So you think of the angels in Revelation who say, holy, holy, holy. It's almost like with every holy they utter, they see deeper into the heart of God and are in complete ecstasy. I think something like that

will happen. So, all right, let's talk a bit about this. How can we speak about God? Well, first we should say, how do we speak about anything? Well, when we speak about anything, we have to use a subject and predicate. We have to use terminology. So if I say, my dog is black, dog is the subject, black is the predicate. I'm saying something about both dog and black. I understand dogness, the nature of dog, and blackness to some degree. If I say Matt is Australian, okay, I'm saying something of the subject Matt. I'm predicating Australian of the subject. Now, when we use terms, we can use them in three ways. We can use them univocally, analogically, or equivocally. I'll say that again. We can use terms univocally, analogically, or equivocally. What do I mean? Well, when we say a term is being used univocally, we mean in the same sense. So if I say to you, my dog barked, and that dog over there barked, I mean my bark the same thing.

If I say my dog barked, and then I pointed a tree, and I say that tree has bark on it, that tree has bark on it, and suppose you weren't aware that trees had bark, and you only thought of bark in relation to dogs, that would be a pretty confusing statement, right? In that sense, I'm using the word equivocally. That is in different senses, different senses. This is what most of our jokes boil down to, by the way. Yeah. Those, at least the short jokes, like, um, all right, I'm going to tell you a very offensive joke and you have to promise not to get too offended. Although you're probably listening to this through the internet and apparently it's the internet's job to be offended. So anyway, we'll see how we go. Uh, this is a story. I remember my mom told me a while back, a joke.

My mom told me there were three old couples sitting at an old folks home, you know. There was an Australian couple, an American couple, and why not, an Irish couple. And the Australian man said to his wife, pass me the sugar. Sugar? That's very nice. And then the American man said to his wife, pass me the honey, honey. And then the Irish man looked at his wife and he said, pass me the tea bag. That's funny, right? It's funny because we're equivocating, right? In one sense, a tea bag is a bag of tea leaves. But in another sense, it refers to a grumpy old woman or something. So most of our jokes are based on equivocation, where we use a term in different senses.

Now, to speak analogously is, what do we do when we use analogy? Well, we draw an analogy between things when they're alike in some respect, but actually different in nature. So, apparently the philosopher John Locke wrote somewhere that people think that the idea of scarlet is like the sound of a trumpet. All right. So, colors and instruments are clearly different in nature, but there's a similarity between the two, he thinks. So, how do we speak about God then? Well, can we speak about God univocally? Aquinas says no, because to speak about God univocally would be to predicate things about God as if we knew God's essence, but we don't because God is infinite. Well, what about equivocally? This is something that the philosopher Maimonides, who was a contemporary of Averroes, who was the translator

of Aristotle, didn't live too long before Aquinas. This is what he had to say. He thought whenever we speak about God, we're using equivocal language. So, when we say we exist and that God exists, we mean something entirely different, like that dog barked and that tree has bark on it. Or when we say God is love and that this person over here is loving, we mean entirely different things about it. Now, the problem there, of course, is if that's true, we can't actually know anything about God. So, Aquinas says we can't speak of God univocally and we cannot speak about, well, when we speak of God, we don't speak about him equivocally, but rather analogically. Well, why do we speak about God analog we don't speak about him equivocally, but rather analogically. Well,

why do we speak about God analogically? And what does that mean? Well, Aquinas thought that created things can lead us to know that God exists and that created things contain within them certain perfections and that we can learn about God from the perfections in creatures that exist, that must exist in him in a preeminent way. It would be sort of like if you were an artist or use a different analogy. Suppose you're studying an artist. Would you rather one of his paintings or all of his paintings to study? You'd want all of them. Why? Well, because it's a good thing to have beautiful works of art, but also it would help you know

more about the artist, wouldn't it? If you only had one painting, you could say something of the artist. If you had a whole gallery, you could say a lot more. But there is clearly a dissimilarity in the artist and the effects. So you can't know who the artist is necessarily, but you can know about him by looking at his works. Let me use another analogy that we used in our book, Does God Exist? A Socratic Dialogue and the Five Ways of Thomas Aquinas. Suppose you were to arrive home after a vacation and you found that your front door was unlocked and ajar. That would

concern you because you were pretty sure you'd locked the door. And so you have to come up with an explanation now. You say, well, doors don't unlock themselves. So maybe the wind blew it open. It didn't latch all the way. Maybe someone opened it. But then you go inside and you notice a table has been turned upside down. A drawer has been raided. You go into your bedroom and notice that the private safe is empty. Well, wind can't do that. So this must be a person. But you don't know the identity of the person.

But you do know that it must have been a person. This is sort of how each of Thomas's five ways end, incidentally. When he argues for the existence of God from motion and causality and contingent being and degrees of being and finality, he always concludes by, this is what we mean by God, right? This is what all men mean by God, right? At least to a degree. He doesn't say, and now we know what God is. So, we can know things in a sense, analogously, through their effects. To get back to that image of a gallery of paintings, and it's saying something about the artist. This is a really beautiful point here that Francis Selman in his book Aquinas 101 makes. He says that God has

created a great variety of creatures which manifest his perfections. Well, why has he created a variety of them? Why not just man? Or why not just a single-celled organism? Well, he says that it takes a variety of creatures to manifest the perfections of God, because no one created thing could adequately represent the goodness, power, and wisdom of God. But he brought up this point, which I hadn't really thought of before, and it really struck me. He says, well, actually Aquinas says this, right? There's only one adequate representation of the divine nature. What is it? It's the divine word.

It's Jesus Christ. Think about that for a moment, would you? You put all of creatures on one side, okay? All the creatures that have existed, do exist, and will exist. All of these, in some respect, manifest his perfections, right? We can know something about God's perfections by seeing the perfections in creatures. And this includes angels and archangels, okay? And then on the other side, you put Jesus Christ. Aquinas says that all of these creatures taken together don't adequately represent the perfections of God, but that Jesus Christ on his own does. How powerful is that?

I really think that we underestimate just how powerful the person of Jesus was. Just how powerful the person of Jesus was. Imagine hanging out with him in a fishing boat as he calms the storm. Imagine being with him at the wedding of Cana. Pretty amazing that this one individual can represent adequately to us the divine nature, whereas all creatures taken together can't, I think. Okay, now earlier I was saying Francis Selman. He sums this up really nicely. Okay. When we speak about God negatively, well, first of all, let me say this. When we speak about God negatively, Aquinas says every negation rests on an affirmation. So, because we can speak about God negatively, we can know something about him because every negation rests

on an affirmation. So, you can't say someone is ignorant unless you know what knowledge is. You can't say something is insoluble unless you know what soluble means. So, that is a lot of our names for God. Like when we say God is immutable, what we mean by immutable is he doesn't change. So we look at creation and realize that change is something of an imperfection. I mean, for creatures, we have to change, but if there was a perfect being, it would be unchangeable. And that's why we say God is immutable. And okay, so much to say here. Every time I make a claim here, I'm realizing that it could be taken in a million different ways. So like for Thomas, we can say that God is a being, but more to the

point, we say that God is being. His essence is existence. He's not like, it's not like, okay, some creatures have wisdom and God is just a being who has wisdom to the highest degree possible. That's not what we mean. God doesn't have wisdom. He is wisdom. This is what Thomas means by divine simplicity. And it's not just Thomas. Augustine, the church has really always taught this. And it's not just Thomas or Guston. The church has really always taught this. God is the things we say of him. I'm not, neither are you. If I say you're Australian or you're American, well, gave birth to me, for example, then I would be American. But when we say God is wise, God is loving, that's the language we have to use to try and understand it. But there's no distinction between his essence and existence. His essence is existence.

And so when we say God is wise, we don't just mean he has wisdom, but rather that he is wisdom. He is his attributes. This is a very difficult thing to understand. We did two episodes on divine simplicity a while back. And if you haven't listened to them, you might decide to go and do that. Let me share with you the three reasons Aquinas says we can speak about God negatively. Then I want to address the question, if God is simple, why not just have one word for him then? Does that make sense? Like, if it is true that God

is entirely simple, there's no distinction in him whatsoever, why not just have one word? Why say he's wise? Why say he's loving? Why say he's good? These things are different, aren't they? But anyway, here's what Francis Selman says in regards to these three reasons why we cannot know what God is. First, the mind of no created being can see God by its own natural power, because God infinitely surpasses everything in nature. And so, I said this earlier, we'll only see the divine essence in heaven. And in order for that to happen, we will have to be strengthened by what Aquinas calls the light of glory. The second reason he says that we can't know what God is, and we have to speak negatively of him,

is that we won't ever know God completely because we can only know something as it exists, but God's existence is infinite. And thirdly, when we say what a thing is, we define it. To define it is to set limits to the way it exists, right? Like that's what define means, definite, right? You're setting limits. So man is a rational animal, for example. Like when we define something, we're narrowing it down. Anyway, what else to say? Carry on here with Selman. Thomas points out, the nearer we come to know what something is,

the more differences from other things we add. But we do not know what something is, the more differences from other things we add. But we do not know what God is. We can only say how he is distinct from other things by negative differences. Thus, we can not know what he is, but we have some knowledge of him by knowing what he isn't. For example, when we say that God is infinite, immutable, immense, we're removing limits from his existence, right? We're not adding limits. That's why we can't define God. So, when we're saying things of him, we're actually throwing off the limitations that we might naturally want to place upon him. So, infinite means not finite, right? Immutable means not changing, right? If we say he is omnipotent, we mean he is not impotent. Yeah.

So, next, I said I would address the question, why have many names about God then? Like, why not just say one thing about him? Aquinas addresses this somewhere, and we'll try and read from it in a minute. But he says the reason we have various names for God, like good and wise and so forth, it doesn't have to do with the diversity in God, but from the diversity of perfections we find in creatures, which we then attribute to God as their cause. Okay, so St. Thomas says that although what our names signify is a single reality,

they seem to us to be multiple realities, like many respects. So they aren't just synonyms. So when we say God's love, God's powerful, God's wise, they're not synonyms because they have diverse meanings in our mind, even though they refer to one thing in reality when we apply it to God, if that makes sense. So, all right, this is obviously some pretty lofty stuff, and I would like to spend another episode or two in the future discussing this a whole lot more. I hope I've done something of a good job at introducing you to why Aquinas says we can only speak about God analogically. Let's see a couple of articles from the Summa Theologiae. I'll read a couple of his respondios, and now hopefully Aquinas, who is a brilliant writer and writes very succinctly, will be able to sum up the rambles that I've just been laying upon you.

Okay, this is from the Prima Pars, question 13. Let's look at article two. Are any names applied to God predicated of him substantially? So here's what Aquinas says in the Respondio. Well, first, here's what Augustine says in the Sed Contra, right? He quotes Augustine says in the Sed Contra. He quotes Augustine, the being of God is the being strong or the being wise or whatever else we may say of that simplicity whereby his substance is signified. And then Aquinas says, therefore, all names of this kind do signify the divine substance. Aquinas continues, negative names applied to God or signifying his relation to creatures manifestly do not at all signify his substance, but rather express the distance of the creatures from him or his relation to something else or rather the relation of creatures to himself.

relation to something else, or rather the relation of creatures to himself. But as regards absolute and affirmative names of God, such as good, wise, and the like, various and many opinions have been given. For some have said that all such names, although they are applied to God affirmatively, nevertheless have been brought into use more to express some remotion from God rather than to express anything that exists positively in him. Hence, they assert that when we say God lives, okay, so here I notice Aquinas is referring, remember I mentioned earlier the philosopher Maimonides, this is who he's referring to right now. Hence, they assert that when they say God lives, we mean that God is not like an inanimate thing. And the thing, and the same in like manner applies to other names. And this was taught by Rabbi Moses,

that's Maimonides. Others say that these names applied to God signify his relationship towards creatures. Thus, in the words, God is good, we mean God is the cause of goodness in things, and the same rule applies to other names. Both of these opinions, however, seem to be untrue for three reasons. First, because in neither of them can a reason be assigned why some names more than others are applied to God. For he is assuredly the cause of bodies in the same way that he is the cause of good things. Therefore, if the words God is good signified no more than God is the cause of good things, it might in like manner be said that God is a body, inasmuch as he is the cause of bodies. So also, to say that he is a body implies that he is not a mere potentiality,

as in prime matter. Secondly, because it would follow that all names applied to God would be said of him by way of being taken in a secondary sense, as healthy is secondarily said of medicine for as much as it signifies only the cause of health in the animal, which primarily is called healthy. Thirdly, because this is against the intention of those who speak of God. For in saying that God lives, they assuredly mean more than to say that he is the cause of our life or that he differs from inanimate bodies. Here, Aquinas sums up his thought. Therefore, we must hold a different doctrine. He says, we must hold that these names, these positive names that we say of God, signify the divine substance and are predicated substantially of God, although they fall short

of a full representation of him. Again, this is what we mentioned a moment ago, right? Analogously, this is why we can speak about God by analogy. And he says, and it's proved thus, for these names express God so far as our intellect knows him. Now, since our intellect knows God from creatures, it knows him as far as creatures represent him. Now, it is shown that God prepossesses in himself all the perfections of creatures, being himself simply and universally perfect. Hence every creature represents him and is like him so far as it possesses some perfection. Yet it represents him not as something of the same species or genus, but as the excelling principle of whose form the effects fall short,

although they derive some kind of likeness thereto, even as the forms of inferior bodies represent the power of the sun. This was explained above, in treating of the divine perfection. Therefore, the aforesaid names signify the divine substance, but in an imperfect manner, even as creatures represent it imperfectly. So, when we say God is good, the meaning is not God is the cause of goodness or God is not evil, but the meaning is whatever good we attribute to creatures pre-exist in God and in a more excellent and higher way. Hence, it does not follow that God is good because he causes goodness, but rather, on the contrary, he causes goodness in things because he is good, according to what Augustine

says. Because he is good, we are. I love that final line. Didn't that make a lot more sense? If you've never encountered this way of talking about God, right? Talking about him via negativa, right? The negative theology, right? All this stuff, talking about him analogically and not univocally or equivocally. I think that hopefully what I've said over the last kind of 15, 20 minutes before reading this article has prepared you for this article. And I think that this hopefully would have made a lot more sense to you. But let's look at that line again. Hence, it does not follow that God is good because he causes goodness, but rather on the contrary, he causes goodness in things because he is good. That is to say, God isn't made in our image, we're made in his image. If you saw a photograph of my son,

and then saw my son, you wouldn't say my son is like the photograph. Let's use a different analogy. This might be better. A painting of my son. You wouldn't say my son resembles the painting, but rather the painting resembles the son. So it doesn't follow when we say God is good. We're not saying that because he causes goodness. We're saying the other thing, the other way around. He causes goodness in things because he's good. As Augustine says, because he is good, we are. All right. Ooh, baby. I hope that was a help. The tremendous mystery and awe we ought to have before God. This reminds me of St. John of the Cross, who says that the way to God is nada, which they tell me is Spanish for nothing. No se nada. I know nothing. I know nothing, right? The dark night of the soul journeying into the heart of God. Powerful stuff.

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And if you're not, and you'd like to support the show, go to pintswithaquinas.com, click donate. And that's how you'll be an awesome person today. You know? Thanks so much for listening. You want to know what we're going to be talking about next week? I'm going to tell you. It's a little funny. I'm going to be interviewing my friend, Emily Sullivan,

who is a beautiful woman and very intelligent. And we are going to discuss the very controversial things that Thomas Aquinas had to say about modesty and makeup. And we're even going to ask what Aquinas would have thought of, well, to put it crassly, well, maybe I won't put it crassly just in case there are some young people listening, but shall we say breast enhancements? What would Aquinas had to say about those sorts of things? Or like getting your lips done? Like Aquinas says some things, and if you read it today, you'd probably be pretty offended. What did he mean?

How should we interpret him? Was he wrong? Man, let's just leave it at that. But I look forward to chatting with you next week. Thanks so much for tuning in. If you haven't reviewed Pints with Aquinas on iTunes or wherever you listen, please do that. We always appreciate it. Thanks so much. Chat with you next week. In the meantime, check out pintswithaquinas.com,

our brand new website. We have a whole new section there called Ask a Thomist where you send your questions and different people like Dominicans and apologists respond to them. So be sure to check that out as well. God bless and have a great week. to carry you and I would give my whole life to carry you to carry you and I would give my whole life