Aquinas
Metaphysics
Aquinas thinks that since Aristotle’s metaphysic with his teleology in other ways preferable to the Platonic tradition, can we then doctor up Aristotle’s metaphysic to make it compatible with Christianity. Aquinas add to Aristotle’s metaphysic the examplarism of Augustine, the views that Forms are exemplars, archetypes in the mind of Logos. With that, the assertion that God is good. God is the exemplar for all creation and all creation seeks to like God. He also wants to add that God knows his creatures in advance, so he creates them out of nothing. One of his major works “Summa Theologica” was written in response to averroesists, people with that interpretation of Aristotle. Averroesism is to handle the problems of Aristotle of the doctrines of two fold truth, truth of faith and truth of reason. The first topic in Summa Theologica is about faith and reason. Second is the conception of God. There are five proofs of the existence of God in the book and what he establishes is that you can use Aristotelian premises to argue for non-Aristotelian God. In the conclusion of his proofs, is a God whose essence is to exist, source of being as well of order, who knows exemplars and Forms in his mind, a intelligent God who directs all things for a purpose.
God is not an essence, a Form of all Forms, God’s essence is to exist, he is the source of all being. God is not the source of existence, it is the source of all beings as well as order and goodness. From Aquinas point of view, drew in the Logos doctrine that’s from Augustine, such that Form being in the mind of God, and God being exemplars for all possible kind of things, including prime matter. There is materia prima and materia sigmata, the conception of prime matter is pure potentiality, it has material potential that it is going to exist. In the act of creation God gives existence to what does not have existence, it is not giving of Form, and it is not Form or matter that gives existence, but God gives the actuality of existence to a combinations of Form and matter. Every individual creation is to made to imitate and glorify God. Aquinas speaks about three things that needed for generation, for things to become, matter, which is potential being, Form, through which matter is able to come to be something and privation, the lack of existence, which precedes the becoming. In regards to the four causes, the efficient cause of creation is God, the formal cause the divine reason, the final cause is the imitation of God, and there is no material cause.
Faith & Reason
-
Natural reason is limited in regards to the knowledge of God. Natural reason means reason without benefit of special revelation. There is a degradation intellectual abilities of human beings because of the hierarchy of beings. There is a potential of knowing God but also limitations. We tend to think of God by analogy to other persons, we predicate goodness of God by analogy to goodness of created things. He makes a distinction between the image of God and the likeness to God. The image of God is seen in human reason, the likeness to God is a moral likeness, which is lost when Adam fell. While the fall leaves our rationality operative, it affects it indirectly, when a person is prejudices against certain conclusions, etc. Natural reason has its limit both in finiteness and in falleness.
- Revelation declares what reason can demonstrate. Aquinas thinks that reason can demonstrate the existence of God and immortality of the soul, but these are things which revelation also declares.
- Revelation declares things reason cannot by itself obtain. Like doctrine of trinity or incarnation.
- Faith ascents to the truth of revelation which may then be confirmed by reasoning. That is the work we now call philosophical theology.
- Reason gains an imperfect understanding of these truth of faith.
- Faith and reason are not opposed and the truth is One.
Existence of God
When Aquinas tries to argue the existence of God, that’s a rational undertaking, but the conclusion that he wants to come to is something that is compatible with the God of Christian revelation. There are three attempts to claim that the existence of God can be known a priori, all of those Aquinas rejects. A thing can be self evident in two ways, one is self evident in itself not to us, and the other self evident to us, the proposition that God exists is self evident in itself because God is its own existence as we have shown that existence is necessary to God, but it is not self evident to us.
If it is not known a priori, then is it a posteriori? That is to say it is dependent on some experience, whether the existence of God can be known from the effects of God. And to that his response is affirmative. His argument for the existence of God are going to be cause-effect arguments, with premises drawn from human experience.
Then he dive into his proofs of existence of God. The premises of the proof are the Aristotelian premises. It begins with Aristotelian concepts from experience. The first is arguments from motion and change. The second way is from the nature of efficient cause. The third is from possibility and necessity. The fourth way is about the hierarchy of being and goodness. The fifth way, from governance of the world everything in nature acts for an end, which is the final causes from Aristotle. We see that he tries to modify the Aristotelian metaphysic to serve Christian purposes. He argues for an non-Aristotelian God from Aristotelian premises.
Thomas himself believes that the essential characteristic of God is existence, but its in that existence that he continually imparts to every created things which is contingent on existence.
Nature of God
In Aristotelian traditions, our knowledge of the nature of the natural objects is on the basis of experience by abstracting the essence from our experience of the whole ranges of members of a given class. But when it comes to God, there is a problem because God is the only species of God. The answer is not by abstraction but by analogy and that analogy depends on whole hierarchy of beings, good and truth. There is analogy of degrees and analogy of proper proportionality. Being is a much more complex thing than existing or not existing, a being has a certain nature of its own, and there are transcendental attributes of all beings. We have knowledge of God by analogy and there are two examples, truth and goodness.
The mystifying question is posed whether truth resides only in the intellect. In other words, truth is in the epistemological category. But Aquinas doesn’t answer it that way. The other alternative is whether truth resides in the being of the thing. You have these two conceptions of truth, where one is propositional(epistemic) and the other true to type(ontological). True man is a man conform to the essence of what it means to be human. God conceived these truth is the Logos. All truth has its source in God. Truth is the equation of thought and thing, when the proposition corresponds to the way the thing is, you got the true proposition. Truth is the first in the intellect and therefore in the being.
Goodness is another transcendental attributes. Goodness of God is evident in his providence. And evil is a privation of good. Goodness is manifested in every level and aspect of creation. Predestination is treated by Aquinas in relationship to the divine providence that permits certain things to occur. The goodness of anything is two fold, one belongs to its essence and God can not make thing than itself, but there is another kind of goodness, the goodness of a man is to be virtuous, wise or knowledgeable, that is something which is actualized, in regard to that, God can make things better. Regarding problem of evil, Aquinas response is that evil is allowed for a greater good. Evil exists in the defect of the action caused by defect of agent, but God has no defect, hence evil is not reduced to God as its cause. And for that we have Augustine’s free will arguments.
Moral Psychology and Ethics
Will as Efficient Cause
Like any theist, Aquinas thinks of everything in terms of the relationship between God and creation. Aquinas has proofs that God is the cause of the whole causal order, God is the cause of all causes, include human agency and human nature. When we focus our attention on human action, the efficient cause is human will. In history of western thought, there are two concepts of will, one in 17th century, is a concept of free will operating in a causal vacuum, a free will which is not directed, influenced by any cause at all and another one that is a will that is intellectual inclination, the emphasis is not on choosing in the context where there are no causes, but in choosing whether are causes that affecting choses. The 17th century of will is a part of the mechanic world view, and what you have in Aquinas is a teleological world view. There are other efficient causes pushing you to choose, final causes luring you in a direction, formal causes inclining you to a direction. There is a matter of intention, that is native to us, which still needs to be informed by the natural inclination towards good in general by virtue of human natures and the intellect.
Intellect & Will
Aquinas examines our sensory inclinations of two sorts, there are passions that are concupiscible and irascible, and in addition, there is rational inclination, towards what’s perceived as good. The direction of human will is the efficient cause of human actions. Will in Aquinas may be equivalent to the biblical Heart, the Will is not in casual vacuum, it has a natural direction, which is influenced by experience.
Virtues
The highest good of Aristotle, was the actualization of a life living according to the reason. But for Aquinas, the highest end is to like God. Inclinations, as they develop, become habits of mind, and it is this habits that are virtues. Aquinas has an ethic of virtues. He is concerned in his moral psychology about the development of a good person, whose goodness bears the likeness to God. He lays emphasis on four cardinal virtues. Justice, wisdom, courage and self-control and he adds three theological virtues, faith hope and love. The emphasis on the development of virtues, which requires that we develop these virtues as habits.
Natural Law Ethics
How do we know which to choose and how to act? This is a teleological conception of natural law, in the sense that natural law written in our heart is written in the inclination of the heart, his question in regards to various kinds of human activity is about the natural inclination towards, it’s an end oriented natural law.
There are four kinds of law, he distinguishes between the eternal law, which is in the mind of God. Then it is propagated in two ways, in natural law and divine law. Natural law is applied to rulers of society in human law. Natural law has its aim earthly good and divine law has its aim eternal good.