Tag Archives: Thomas Aquinas

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April 2, 2018

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Why We Should Have Utter Confidence in Prayer

compendiumAt the tail-end of his uncompleted Compendium of Theology Aquinas treats the question of why we must pray to God for what we hope. First, he notes that we belong to him as an effect does to a cause. He has made us with a purpose in mind which it is his aim to see fulfilled. If a pot were rational and could hope, it should hope in the potter who shaped him. “Thus we are told in Jeremiah 18:6: ‘As clay is in the hand of the potter, so are you in My hand, O house of Israel.'”

But Aquinas does not simply want us to know that we should pray to God our Maker, but how we should pray to God: with complete and utter confidence.

The confidence which man has in God ought to be most certain. As we just intimated, a cause does not refrain from rightly controlling its product unless it labors under some defect. But no defect or ignorance can occur in God, because “all things are naked and open to His eyes,” as is said in Hebrews 4:13. Nor does He lack power, for “the hand of the Lord is not shortened that it cannot save,” as we read in Isaiah 59:1. Nor is He wanting in good will, for “the Lord is good to those who hope in Him, to the soul that seeks Him,” as we are reminded in Lamentations 3:25. Therefore the hope with which a person trusts in God does not confound him that hopes, as is said in Romans 5:5. (Compendium 2.4)

Why should we have utter confidence in prayer? As it always seems to be with Aquinas, because God, that’s why.

Soli Deo Gloria

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March 20, 2018

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The Simplicity of God and the Diversity of Creation

compendium

I’ve been working my way through Aquinas’s late, brief summary of his system, Compendium Theologiae, and it’s been a dense, instructive dive so far.

Early in his series of questions on creation, he treats the matter of why there is plurality, or a diversity of things in creation. Why are there trees and monkeys and mountains and starfish, instead of only, say perfectly spiritual beings like angels? Why stars of various shapes, colors, and sizes, instead of one, perfect, massive orb? Why diversity instead of simple, orderly, uniformity?

Well, as with most things in Aquinas, he finds the answer in God who is their creating and sustaining cause. Even more than that, he roots this diversity in the simplicity of God.

How so?

Any active cause must produce its like, so far as this is possible. The things produced by God could not be endowed with a likeness of the divine goodness in the simplicity in which that goodness is found in God. Hence what is one and simple in God had to be represented in the produced things in a variety of dissimilar ways. There had to be diversity in the things produced by God, in order that the divine perfection might in some fashion be imitated in the variety found in things.

Furthermore, whatever is caused is finite, since only God’s essence is infinite, as was demonstrated above. The finite is rendered more perfect by the addition of other elements. Hence it was better to have diversity in created things, and thus to have good objects in greater number, than to have but a single kind of beings produced by God. For the best cause appropriately produces the best effects. Therefore it was fitting for God to produce variety in things. (1:72)

One might think that the indivisible, simple being of God would stifle diversity. Thomas reminds us, though, that the simple being of God is infinite. A mere repetition of the same finite effects will not do. In order to begin to communicate the fullness of his refulgent glory by way of finite creaturely reality will require a diversity of finite causes!

Despite it’s philosophical garb, I think this really functions as a metaphysical gloss on Scriptural teaching. Consider what the Psalmist tells us:

The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they reveal knowledge.
They have no speech, they use no words;
no sound is heard from them.
Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world. (Ps. 19:1-4)

Or again:

How many are your works, LORD! In wisdom you made them all;
the earth is full of your creatures.
There is the sea, vast and spacious, teeming with creatures beyond number— living things both large and small. (Ps. 104:24-25)

Thomas tells us that all this marvelous diversity is a reflection, a testimony to the wisdom, glory. and beauty of the simple God. In the creation of diverse effects, it is as if the pure, undivided brightness of the infinite divine light is refracted before our eyes as through a prism as broad and as wide as the universe itself.

Soli Deo Gloria

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December 17, 2013

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‘The Philosopher’, ‘The Theologian’…A Reformedish Lexicon

Thomas Aquinas famously referred to Aristotle as ‘The Philosopher’, throughout his writings, not because he followed him slavishly on every point, but because for the Angelic Doctor, Aristotle was the philosopher. More than any other secular thinker, Aristotle’s questions, formulations, and answers shaped and were re-shaped in Aquinas’ thought. For myself, I’ve realized that there are a number of intellectual influences that have played similar roles for me. Their thought has so penetrated the warp and woof of my own that I decided to create a Reformedish lexicon of key figures, both for fun and to encourage others to drink deeply at the wells of wisdom found here:

I don't know what he's thinking right here, but it could probably serve as a Ph.D. thesis.

“The Theologian” – I’ve already documented Kevin Vanhoozer’s greatness. Though he is a theologian’s theologian, his humble, eclectic, and faithful approach to God, Scripture, and doctrine in general has deeply shaped my own and will continue to for the foreseeable future.

Lewis“The Apologist” – C.S. Lewis was one of the first Christian prose writers I ever encountered. Like most, he took me in with the clarity of thought & expression, marvelous knack for making complex doctrines seem quite reasonable, accessible, and even more, beautiful. In college, Lewis let me grapple with the big toughies like hell, sin, and evil with intellectual dignity. What’s more, he saved me from thinking apologetic philosophy had to be boring and dull, or, even worse, disconnected from the proper worship of God.

kierkegaard 2“The Thinker” – Soren Kierkegaard is a hard one to pin down. He is a philosopher, but even more than that, he is a thinker-of-life who pressed me into the depths of my own darkened heart during my angstiest college days. I can safely say that if it were not for encountering his works Fear and Trembling and The Sickness Unto Death in college, I probably would not be married to my McKenna today. Also, his epistemology hustled me along the way to embracing the proposals of…

plantinga 4“The Philosopher” – Alvin Plantinga is my favorite living philosopher. Working in Anglo-American Analytic tradition, it is hard to estimate the impact Plantinga’s had on modern philosophy and especially philosophy of religion. The man single-handedly refuted the logical problem of evil in the 1970s, kicked classic foundationalism in the face, and made it safe to be a Christian in a philosophy program again. Plantinga gives not only good answers, but teaches us to ask the right sort of questions in the face of aggressive skeptical attacks on the faith.

Keller“The Preacher” – Timothy Keller falls under so many different categories (apologist, thinker, etc.), but at core, he is a Gospel-preacher. All of the other hats he puts on serve to accent his main call, which is to preach the Gospel to the Religious and the Irreligious alike. His several books and lectures on preaching have deeply shaped my own approach in various areas of ministry, but it may be hundreds of sermons exposing my idolatry and pointing me to Christ that have played the deepest formative role in my own spiritual theology. God has used Keller to shape the core of my understanding of God’s transforming grace through the Gospel.

Wright again“The Scholar” – I loved Paul before I read N.T. Wright, but I don’t think I knew Paul until I read Wright; the same goes for Jesus. While I don’t follow him everywhere he goes, more than anyone else Wright has introduced me to the vibrant, dynamic, pulsating historical reality of the Gospel in the New Testament. Whether it is Jesus facing off with the Pharisees, or Paul shepherding his flocks in the shadow of the Roman Empire, Wright simply will not allow us to imagine we are dealing with anything less than a full-orbed social-historical-political-theological-cosmological Jesus whose kingship has implications for everything.

john-calvin“The Reformer” – I’ve written a good amount on John Calvin over the last few months, and given a number of reasons to dig into his commentaries. Like most of these men, Calvin wore a number of hats, including scholar, theologian, and preacher. For me, he has been The Reformer. While I do love me some Luther, standing in the Reformed tradition as I am, it has been Calvin’s programmatic vision for the reformation of preaching, theology, and the Church that captured my imagination more than any of the other Magisterial Reformers. Indeed, a number of my other influences have openly paid tribute to Calvin’s influence on their own thought.

If you find yourself having never read someone on this list, I’d encourage you to do a quick Google on one, pick a work that seems interesting and go for it.

Soli Deo Gloria

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November 24, 2012

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Quick-Blog #10: Don’t Get Analogy, Don’t Get God (Michael Horton on the Doctrine of Analogy)

If you’re going to study the doctrine of God, you need to understand the doctrine of analogy. It’s that simple.

Honestly, I’ve become convinced of this over the last few years as I moved from my early days as a Jurgen Moltmann fan to my current Reformedish semi-classicalism. (I have no good term for it. Whatever Kevin Vanhoozer is.) If you haven’t stopped reading already, you might be wondering what the doctrine of analogy is.

The doctrine of analogy is a very old one shared by the post-Reformation scholastics with their medieval forebears like St. Thomas Aquinas. In that sense it’s a very “catholic” teaching, shared across the tradition by Catholics and Protestants of various stripes. (I’m not too sure they’d put it this way, but I think the Eastern Orthodox would be fine with it as well.) Michael Horton laid out one of the cleanest summaries of the doctrine I’ve found in an article on the subject of the Reformed theological method. I’ve already quoted it here, but it’s worth high-lighting again:

“All of this leads us, finally, to the doctrine of analogy. When we assert certain predicates of God, based on God’s own self-revelation, we use them in one of three senses: univocally, analogically or equivocally. If we say that the predicate “gracious” means exactly the same thing, whether in God or in a creature, we are using “gracious” univocally. At the other end of the spectrum, if we say that by using that predicate we are ascribing something to God whose appropriateness is unknown to us, we are using it equivocally. If, however, God is said to be “gracious” in a way that is both similar and dissimilar to creatures, we say it is analogical. For instance, when we acknowledge that God is a “person,” do we really mean to say that he is a person in exactly the same sense as we are? When we follow Scripture in using male pronouns to refer to God, do we really believe that he is male? Unless we are willing to ascribe to God (in an univocal sense) all attributes of human personhood, predications must be analogical. Human language cannot transcend its finitude, so when God reveals himself in human language, he draws on human analogies to lead us by the hand to himself. It is correct description, but not univocal description.”

Basically, when you’re saying something about God or reading it in the Bible, whether about his being or his emotions, or something else, you have to insert a little qualifier because you’re comparing the transcendent, uncreated one to something created. Kinda like, “God is good (but not exactly the way you think of good)”, or “God is strong (and that is an understatement so serious you don’t have a category for it)”, or “God is angry (but you can’t think of it like sinful human anger)”, or “God repented (but not in the way that implies he didn’t know what he was doing)”. It’s like, but unlike.

Does this mean we can’t know anything about God? No. As Horton points out, God picks out these human analogies, especially in the Scriptures, to tell us something about himself. We just have to be careful when we pick up these analogies to use them and think of them in the way God intends us to, with the reading clues he gives us. For instance, when God is said to be our Father, we have to stop ourselves from immediately filling that word with everything we learned about fatherhood from our own fathers, but rather we must look to the way he is our Father in Christ, or better, the Father of the Son. That’s the kind of Fatherly love we look for, not the imperfect, possibly too lenient (ie. neglectful), or harsh, or whatever loves we find on earth. Again, it’s like, but unlike.

As always, there’s more to it than that, but this is supposed to be a quick-blog.

Soli Deo Gloria