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The Unknowability of God in Thomas Aquinas

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The Unknowability of God in Thomas Aquinas The Unknowability of God in Thomas Aquinas Andrew Murray A paper delivered at the Ninth Biennial Conference in Philosophy, Religion and Culture, The Expressible and the Inexpressible, Catholic Institute of Sydney, Strathfield 5 – 7 October 2012. The idea for this paper arose out of a certain The paper will have four sections: first, discomfort I felt following a paper at a previous Thomas’ treatment of our knowledge of God in ST Biennial Conference on Thomas Aquinas’s use of I 12; second, his use of negative or apophatic analogical language in talking about God.1 theology; third, his treatment of the Divine Thomas, indeed, used analogy, or Aristotle’s pros simplicity in ST I 3; and fourth, the unknowability hen equivocation, as a very powerful linguistic tool of God as subsistent Being (ipsum esse subsistens). with which to speak about God in positive terms Our Knowledge of God (cataphatic theology). His claim is that certain Thomas raises the issue of our knowledge of positive perfections, like good, wise and living, can God in Question 12 of the First Part of the Summa be literally and properly applied to God. My Theologiae. His primary concern is clear in the discomfort lay in the opposite direction. Thomas first article, where he asks whether any created frequently claims that we can know that God is but intellect can see the essence of God. His answer is not what God is. What are the depths of this yes, because what he wants to save is the unknowingness? Or, in other words what are the knowledge of God had by the blessed in heaven. limits of the knowability of God? Multiple scriptural texts promise this, and This is not to depreciate analogy, which is a Thomas’s own transformation of Aristotle’s clever and useful doctrine. By denying the depiction of ultimate happiness as the application of terms used univocally of God and contemplation of the highest things sees the creatures, Thomas avoids anthropomorphism in achievement of human destiny in the heavenly respect of God. By denying that such terms are beatific vision. The mode of this knowledge is necessarily used equivocally, he avoids atheism. A unusual. It comes not through the intellect’s own term used analogically conveys meaning that is power and by forms or likenesses as is usually the somewhat the same in the two instances of its case, but by the direct action of God through an application though also different. In the case of a infusion of ‘the light of glory’. positive perfection like ‘good’ Thomas uses an The reason that he puts the question in terms of important distinction between the thing signified knowing God’s essence is that if there is to be any and the mode of signification. The term ‘good’ quidditative knowledge of God it can be only of applies more properly to God than it does to God’s essence. As we shall shortly see, God is creatures in its primary meaning or as the thing identical with his essence and there is nothing of signified, because goodness is best found in God. God outside this essence nor parts of God that On the other hand, in its mode of signification, it could be considered separately. Thomas asserts carries with it its origins in the human invention of that God is supremely knowable in Himself as language. With such a tool, Thomas writes eight ‘pure act without any admixture of potency’.3 and a half million words, which apart from the However, as an object of human knowledge the Aristotelian commentaries is mostly theology – divine intelligibility is far beyond the human about God and our relationship to God – God as capacity to receive it. ‘the beginning of all things and their last end’2 Two other questions apply limits to the eschatological knowledge of God. In Article 7, 1 Andrew Murray, ‘Talking about God: Analogy Thomas asks whether the blessed in heaven can Revisited’, The Australian Catholic Record 82/1 comprehend God. To comprehend is to know (January 2005): 29 – 40. perfectly or to know something to the degree it can 2 Summa Theologiae I q. 2 proem. The latest be known. Even the blessed are denied this discussion of analogy is in Summa Theologiae I 13. because the created light of glory cannot be infinite Parallel earlier discussions occur in the as God is. The second question, treated in Articles Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, in the Compendium of Theology and in the Summa I will follow the Summa Theologiae, although the Contra Gentiles, as well as in various places in the parallel texts are in the background. disputed questions. For the purposes of this paper, 3 ST I 12, 1, p. 49. Andrew Murray – Unknowability of God 1 8 – 10, has to do with what of the created world the Thomas reverses this. His project, as we know blessed know in being united to the divine essence him from his writings, is focussed on discursive who knows all. The answer is ‘not much’, because and positive theology. He proposes three ways to although the effects of God’s creative action carry God: the way of causality, whereby created effects the likeness of their maker, the multiplicity of these give rise to knowledge at least of the existence of effects does not imply multiplicity in the cause their cause; the way of negation, whereby we itself. What is multiple in creation and in human clarify our understanding of God by denying all understanding is one in its supreme cause. The imperfection in God; the way of pre-eminence, human intellect is not powerful enough to grasp the whereby whatever we grasp of God is understood full possibilities of divine power. to be exceeded by the super-eminence of God. At the end of the question in Articles 11 and 12, Thomas uses each of these ways variously and with Thomas turns his attention to our knowledge of a terminology that is quite fluid, and together they God in this life. We cannot know the essence of enable him to build a rich and vigorous theology. God because as bodily beings our knowledge is Nevertheless, we ought not to neglect the directed to form that exists in matter, and God is mystical dimension of Thomas’ life. In his early beyond this. The use of reason similarly begins work, The Commentary on the Sentences of Peter from sensible things, so that we can reason to the Lombard, he writes, ‘We know God most perfectly existence of God as the cause of what we see in the in the present life when we realise him to be above world, but our grasp of the power of the cause falls all that our intellect can conceive; and thus we are far short of how God actually is. We cannot, joined to him as one unknown.’7 therefore, know what God is but only that God Though the language is not that of Thomas, exists ‘as the first cause of all things, exceeding all Rocca analyses three kinds of negation in Thomas. things caused by Him’.4 In Article 13, he allows a A qualitative negation is the absolute denial that a more perfect knowledge of God through grace, but quality or a characteristic could be applied to God only in so far as we become ‘united to God as to in any way whatsoever. To say that God is one unknown’.5 immaterial implies that matter should not be thought in any way in relation to God. An Thomas’s Use of Negative Theology objective modal negation denies the creaturely The tradition of negative or apophatic theology mode of a perfection, even if it can be said of God had Jewish, Platonic and Gnostic sources and so in a supereminent way. When we say that God is was understood and used in quite diverse ways. good, we abstract every aspect of creaturely Thomas’s principle source was the Pseudo- particularity. A subjective modal negation holds Dionysius, an early sixth century Syrian author, open the possibility of denying even those things who combined Neo-Platonism and Christianity. that we analogously affirm of God. Hence, it is His other major sources were the eighth century just as true to say that God is not wise as it is to say Eastern theologian, John Damascene, and the that God is wise, because, while in the light of our twelfth century Jewish philosopher and theologian, earlier distinction, ‘wise’ understood as the thing Moses Maimonides, author of The Guide for the signified can be said primarily of God, Perplexed. nevertheless, ‘wise’ understood in terms of the Gregory Rocca suggests that two kinds of mode of signification falls far short of the reality of negative theology are to be found in Dionysius. In God. In other words, even with the care and the first, the process of denying or negating precision with which Thomas applies language to attributions to God ‘forms a dialectic with the God either negatively or analogically, subjectively assertions of affirmative theology’. The second is a he recognises that we are always at risk of mystical unknowing that is part of the dark ascent collapsing into our ordinary meanings of the of the soul into God. It is not discursive but is terms.8 found in silence and its object is the God beyond reason. Rocca suggests that the two are intimately The Divine Simplicity connected, and that while Dionysius mostly follows Thomas begins his Summa with a discussion of the mystical way, his mysticism also acts as a the nature of theology or Sacred Science and then corrective to more discursive theology.6 in the second question investigates the existence of God, producing in Article 3 his famous Five Ways.
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