As the first axiom of Thomas’ theo-logic postulates, God is of course pure act, as “he has not admixture of potency” (SCG I, 16, 5). This is because “what is not wholly act, acts not with the whole of itself but with part of itself. But what does not act with the whole of itself is not the first agent, since it does not act through its essence but through participation in something”. It is clear that “motion is the act of that which exists in potency”. But God is absolutely impassible and immutable, and that means that God has no part of passive potency, i.e. he is pure act” (SCG I, 16, 6). While matter is then pure potency (SCG I, 17), the other beings are composite as they consist in act and potency; for the same reason there is no composition in God (SCG I, 18), and of course no accident in him, as there is no potentiality in God (SCG I, 23, 4).
Some other Thomist assertions bring us closer to the subject of this essay. Thomas claims, first, that no addition of substantial difference is possible for God because “this would be a part of the essence, which means that God will be composed of essential parts” (SCG I, 24, 4). Second, he claims that God is not the being of all things, because if he is part of all things he cannot be over them (SCG I, 26, 8). The necessary conclusion then is that of SCG I, 45, 6: “every substance exists for the sake of its operation. If, then, the operation of God is other than the divine substance, the end of God will be something other than God, thus God will not be his goodness, since the good of each thing is its end” – for the same reason even “the primary and essential object of God’s intellect is nothing other than himself” (SCG I, 48). It therefore seems at first sight obvious that it is impossible for this theo-logic to admit any divine act/operation/energy going ad extra, as this would mean composition in God, in the sense that there is a potency in him, acting not through his essence but through participation in something outside him. For strong onto-theo-logical reasons God cannot enter the being of other beings, and “he knows other beings as seen in his essence” (SCG I, 49, 5), while “all things, in their proper forms, are in him, according to his active power, since God is the principle of every being” (SCG I, 50, 8). This active power is totally identical to his essence, as theo-logic demands that any possibility of distinction between essence and will in God is onto-logically unacceptable. The only moment where this postulate seems to have been forgotten, namely in SCG II, 1, where a distinction between an internal and an external operation in God seems possible, is very quickly covered by theo-logical assertions of the aforementioned type. Is Thomas for or against such a distinction?
Thus, “God’s will is his essence”, as “God’s being does not need superadded perfection” (SCG I, 73, 3). Here the perfection of essence cages in the will in a theo-logical way: in different case, divine essence would relate to the will as potency to act, creating composition in God (SCG I, 73, 5). Moreover, “the will is the intellect” (SCG I, 72, 3), says Aquinas following Aristotle, and so, “the principle object of the divine will is the divine essence. If the principal object of the divine will is different from the divine essence, it will follow that there is something higher than the divine will moving it” (SCG I, 74, 3). Now onto-theo-logic swallows existence up and forbids any existential freedom of God to act without its permission. God is not left free to really desire something that is “inferior” to him – a position that also, of course, ignores the fact that what God loves is, in a way that escapes onto-theo-logic, more valuable for him than his essence. Paradoxically, theo-logic here seems also to insert a curious complementarity between being and willing-to-being in God, which smacks of narcissism that entraps God in a sort of psychological vicious circle: is there any real otherness outside God? Thomas claims that God wills beings through the will for his being, that is, by willing and loving himself, or, in other words, that God wills everything through himself and by willing himself. It is exactly because of this onto-theo-logic that Thomas adopts his famous position concerning participation of beings in God through likeness (SCG I, 75, 4) – the only way for beings to participate in God without disturbing his gaze at himself.
It is clear that Thomas does not say that God wills us for himself, as Augustine did; on the contrary, he seems to say that God wills himself through us. Thus, “God’s action is his essence” (SCG I, 87, 4) which now means that it is impossible for God to will some thing for the sake of itself – exactly because everything is ontologically inferior to him. Now narcissism is absolutely logical: “again, joy and delight are a certain resting of the will in its object. But God, who is his own principle object willed, is supremely at rest in himself, as containing all abundance in himself. God therefore, through his will supremely rejoices of himself” (SCG I, 90, 4). Note the complete absence of any reference to Divine Persons here; any such reference would prevent us from thinking that this abyssal self-love is identical to the abyssal self-love of a ‘great celibate’, to employ Olivier du Roy’s ironical expression. How can we avoid thinking that the germ of modern ‘detached’ (according to Charles Taylor’s expression) subjectivism, as a happy coincidence of essence and self-enclosed will to a detached self-fulfilment (which finally becomes will to power), is already present here? I think that it has already become clear that Thomist theo-logic tends to confine God to what metaphysics could admit and support, although he at times gives the impression that he wants to somehow overcome metaphysics. But the problem here does not lie in the fact that for onto-logical reasons we must admit that act, existence, will, operation, essence, love are identical in God; the problem is that we cannot confine God to this theo-logic. If we avoid such a confinement, could then all the above theo-logic perhaps be somehow acceptable? Because one could perhaps somehow endorse this identification for serious theological reasons, as Palamas for example did, without exclusively confining God’s reality to it. It seems that Thomas understood at some point that there is a problem here.
But let me return to SCG. Because of this absence of any strong theoretical possibility of distinction between essence and will/power/action, after and along with the onto-theo-logical assertion of their identity, it is clear that for Thomas God’s external relations “have no real being in God” (SCG II, 12, 3). That means that these relations refer to God only “in accordance with our manner of understanding” (SCG II, 13–14). For the same reason “God is everywhere in the fashion of an agent cause” (SCG III, 68, 11). It can be therefore seriously doubted if this sort of presence implies a real presence either of creation in God (without of course this being confused with his essence), or of God in creation. Besides, in the same perspective, and “as the ultimate end of things is to become like God” (SCG III, 19) this can be only achieved by imitation of his goodness (SCG III, 20), in the sense that the creatures “participate somewhat in his likeness” (SCG III, 25, 1). It is clear that here participation seems, at first sight, to have nothing to do with any real participation in God’s being, in the sense proclaimed in the Scripture. This is the theo-logic of participation; but this is not all that Thomas has to say about participation, as we shall see later.
But it is also necessary to investigate the anthropological aspects in SCG. Thomas’ anthropology is characterized by the refutation of the Platonic position that the soul is connected to the body as mover to movable or a man to his clothes (SCG II, 57, 10). That means that man’s intellect is not a separate substance (SCG II, 59), but man, in a more Aristotelian way, consists of an intellective soul, imagination and the body with its senses (SCG II, 58). That means that the intellect is united to the body as its form (SCG II, 70) but also, on the other hand, in a fashion that is not so remote from that of Palamas, “intellectual receptiveness and operation are altogether without a corporeal organ” (SCG II, 69, 11), although, for Palamas, this is true only concerning nous and not dianoia, which needs the brain as its corporeal organ. Therefore, “happiness or felicity, consists substantially and principally in an act of the intellect rather than in an act of the will.” (SCG III, 26, 8) This is exactly because, in an Aristotelian way, will is under intellect’s control, as any existential understanding of the will sometimes escaping intellect (this happens, for example, in Maximus the Confessor) is totally lacking. Thus “happiness essentially consists in understanding rather than in an act of will (i.e. desire, or love, or delight)” (SCG III, 26, 11).
Thus, it is obvious that when Thomas claims that “man’s ultimate felicity consists only in the contemplation of God” (SCG III, 37, 8-9) it is difficult for him to combine his perfectly holistic anthropology with his anthropology of participation. Man now becomes an intellect again62 and the rest of his composite hypostasis is passively precluded from any real participation in God. Here is his terrible corollary: “the mind which sees the divine substance must be completely cut off from the bodily senses, either by death or by ecstasy” (SCG III, 46, 2). Any possibility of a transformation of the bodily senses, so familiar in the Greek Patristic tradition, is completely lacking here, as for Thomas the main reason for the weakness of our intellect’s ability to see God is its connection with the body. Consequently, all who saw God in this life saw him “either in reference to an imaginary vision, or even a corporeal one” (SCG III, 46, 3), as the presence of the body seems to be an insurmountable obstacle for this vision. It is thus clear that the Neoplatonico-Aristotelian presuppositions of Aquinatian anthropology powerfully persist: “every intellect naturally desires the vision of the divine substance, but natural desire cannot be incapable of fulfillment. Therefore, any created intellect whatsoever can attain the vision of the divine substance, and the inferiority of its nature is no impediment” (SCG III, 57, 4). No other presuppositions seem to be required here in order for the intellect to see God, other than its natural kinship with him. Not of course to see him completely, as for the Christian Thomas, this kinship has a certain limit, imposed by the intellect’s createdness. Thus, for Thomas, the intellect can see God only through a light, which is “a likeness of God” and is supernatural (SCG III, 54, 10-11) – without of course accepting that this light is uncreated, as we would then run the danger of pantheism. In this way, this light “in its power, falls far short of the clarity of the divine intellect. So it is impossible for the divine substance to be seen as perfectly by means of this kind of light, as it is seen by the divine intellect itself” (SCG III, 55, 2). Therefore, “it is not possible for a created intellect to comprehend the divine substance”, as “it is not seen as perfectly by the created intellect as its visibility would permit” (SCG III, 55, 5-6), and consequently different degrees of participation in this light imply different degrees of seeing God’s substance (SCG III, 58, 1). In this way, “the created intellect becomes a partaker in the eternal life through this vision” (SCG III, 61), because “the intellect which sees the divine substance contemplates all things at once and not in succession” (SCG III, 60).
Thus, the anthropological conclusion of SCG’s onto-theo-logic is a natural upshot of its understanding of God: imperfect participation of an imperfect but Godlike intellect, through an imperfect supernatural light, in an imperfect similitude of a splendidly perfect divine transcendent Being. It is clear that Thomas’ primary intention here was precisely to show his God’s magnitude to the audacious pagans, Muslims, etc. Thomas’ God is absolutely onto-theo-logically magnificent, fearless, powerful, invulnerable, unreachable, and everything around him simply has to submit completely to his unsurpassable glory. In other words, Aquinas’ main concern in SCG was to describe God’s supreme unity and coherence, in the metaphysical, ‘logical’ (following Avicenna) language of his time, giving to the rising Papacy the absolute intellectual and doctrinal superiority that it so powerfully claimed at that period of time. But this God was not absolutely sufficient for Thomas’ fellow Christians, as it was obvious that participation here, although encouraged, was not very far-reaching. [...]
It is not of course without surprise that, after the above claims concerning the touching of the creatures by divine will one reads: “therefore there is no real relation in God to the creatures, whereas in creatures there is a real relation to God; because creatures are contained under the divine order, and their very nature entails dependence on God” (ST I, 28, 1, r. to obj. 3). How can there be no real relation in God to the creatures when “he wills both himself to be and other things to be” (ST I, 19, 2)? Onto-theo-logic can sometimes become an obsession, where action and will tend to retire to their high solipsistic castle. This is why finally, for Thomas, the effect does not participate in its cause but in its similitude – otherwise things could be divine by essence! This similitude is multiplied in many things, and no one has it in its wholeness. Thus, analogical causality implies a deficient likeness, while analogy itself is a reduced similarity and creation is a kind of fall.67 To be precise, there are two kinds of likeness, one to God’s essence and a second to his intellect; creation is a fall in regard to God’s essence, while it is ‘very good’ in regard to his intellect. But, apart from the obvious return to theo-logic, what remains is that God seems here to act in absolute unity of action and essence, being absolutely and essentially present in the world. God projects another being outside him by analogical similitude, and wills it and touches it. Onto-theo-logic can thus, theoretically, become an ontological ground for participation, and then its ‘suspension’ simply means the possibility of its expression in an ontology of participation. But it is clear to me that Thomas cannot do this alone.
But let me now switch to Thomas’ understanding of beatitude. There are two kinds of beatitude here: first, the beatitude of God, i.e., “the perfect good of an intellectual nature”, and, second, the beatitude of every intellectual nature, which “consists in understanding. Now in God to be and to understand are one and the same thing, differing only in the manner of our understanding them. Beatitude must therefore be assigned to God in respect of his intellect; as also to be blessed, who are called blessed (beati) by reason of the assimilation to his beatitude” (ST I, 26, 3, ans.). Furthermore, it is clear that beatitude “is a created thing in beatified creatures; but in God […] it is an uncreated thing” (ibid.). It seems again absolutely impossible for the creatures to participate in God’s being as it really is, because every created beatitude “pre-exists wholly in a more eminent degree in the divine beatitude”, analogically (ST I, 26, 4, ans.), thus creating an onto-theo-logical gap between what God is and what of him is participated in. It is curious enough that the Thomists who complain about Palamas preventing us from participating in God’s essence by his doctrine of the energies, do not see that, for Thomas, any such participation is much more strictly forbidden. What is the reason for the beatitude of the creatures to be created and not, by grace and not of course by nature, uncreated? Anna Williams’s answer is that if beatitude were uncreated, “what was once created can somehow become uncreated”.68 But in Greek Patristic thought we find the concept of the ‘mode of existence’ (a Cappadocian Trinitarian concept that Maximus transferred, through Christology, to the ontology of creation, thus influencing Palamas), which permits us to understand that created nature can be acted upon ‘beyond its terms’, changing its rank of existence into uncreated, by grace, without losing its createdness.
Thus, “as the ultimate beatitude of man consists in the use of highest function, which is the operation of his intellect; if we suppose that the created intellect could never see God, it would neither never attain to beatitude, or its beatitude would consists in something else beside God; which is opposed to faith” (ST I, 12, 1). Furthermore, “there is in every man a natural desire to know the cause of any effect which he sees […]. But if the intellect of the rational creature could not reach so far as to the first cause of things, the natural desire would remain void. Hence it must be absolutely granted that the blessed see the essence of God” (ibid.). Therefore, man’s natural desire is to attain the beatitude of the intellectual vision of the cause of all things in its essence.
Thomas knows that the Greek Fathers preclude any such vision of divine essence, but he claims that when they do so, what they deny in fact is the comprehension of God’s essence (ibid., r. to obj. 1). But the most important problem for him here is that, of course, the intellective power of the creatures cannot be identified with God’s essence; so “there is required some similitude in the visual faculty, namely, the light of glory strengthening the intellect to see God” (ST I, 12, 2). Consequently, this light of glory, which is a similitude of divine essence, is another name for grace that needs to illuminate created intellect: or, else, “it is some supernatural disposition that should be added to the intellect in order that it may be raised up to such a great and sublime height” (ST I, 12, 5, ans.). What does Thomas mean by “supernatural” here? As he explains in the same passage, by supernatural we mean a created light, which is offered to the intellect in order for it “to understand God”. The question here is: how can man see even the slightest part of divine essence, if it is obviously impossible to overcome his created limits through a light that is merely created like him?
Thomas has a provisional answer: “since therefore the created light of glory received into any created intellect cannot be infinite, it is clearly impossible for any created intellect to know God in an infinite degree. Hence it is impossible that it should comprehend God” (ST I, 12, 7). On the other hand, “those who see the divine essence see what they see in God not by any likeness, but by the divine essence itself united to their intellect” (ST I, 12, 9). There is another contradiction here. How we can avoid pantheism in this case remains totally obscure. But this direct vision belongs to the next life, as Thomas writes: “God cannot be seen in his essence by a mere human being, except he be separated from this mortal life” (ST I, 12, 11).This is because, as he explains: “our soul, as long as we live in this life, has its being in corporeal matter; hence naturally it knows only what has a form in matter, or what can be known by such a form”.
But that means that the aforementioned created light/grace is obviously insufficient to liberate the human soul ontologically from the burden of the body in this life, in order for it to unite directly and intellectually unite with the divine essence; but if this is true, then the vision of God after death is not the result of any sort of grace, but is simply a natural result of the liberation of the soul from body. Thus any visit of the created/supernatural grace/light in this life has as its main goal our deliverance from the body. How can we conceive of Chalcedonian Christology in these terms? Is the communication of idioms possible if the human body cannot be transformed, starting in this life? What is the role of the Holy Spirit in Thomas’ vision of God? Is his role confined to helping us to get off our bodily nature, along with the passive part of our soul? And do we need the Spirit at all for something like this?
Despite these shortcomings, always due to the excessive role of onto-theo-logic in Thomas’ mind, which often risks suffocating his ontology of participation, there is a series of challenging claims in his thought that can be read positively. The fact that God’s action is absolutely one and the same with God’s essence, and thus it is God himself who acts outside himself, along with the fact that beings acquire both their essence and their beatitude by participation in God, and that, despite the failure of the created light, this has finally somehow to do with participation in divine essence. These are only some of Thomas’ positive points. What is undoubtedly absent in his theological consideration is, first, the question of the human body, as we have seen, and, second, divino-human synergy.
Thomas deals with synergy in his work Contra Errores Graecorum. In chapter 23 of this work, he deals with the question “how the assertion: the creature cannot cooperate with the Creator, is to be understood”. Thomas distinguishes two kinds of synergy. First, we have synergy “as it effects conjointly with another the same operation, as when two men carry a single burden or drag a boat”. Only the Persons of the Trinity have such a synergy. Second, there exists synergy when we have “work toward the same effect but by a different power, as a servant cooperates with his lord”. Obviously, this is the type of synergy between man and God. Aquinas clarifies that synergy has nothing to do “in respect to those effects which are immediately from God, such as creation and sanctification”. It is clear that here we have a non-dialogical synergy/cooperation between man and God, a synergy that is rather a submission to the will of the Aquinatian onto-theo-logical giant. It is really difficult for Thomas to admit any real dialogue between man and God, concerning for example deification, not because he theologically identifies essence and will in God, (since he also distinguishes them as we have just seen), but because he knows only of this sort of communication between them that is described and confined by the term similitude. Similitude, in this way, is God’s protective wall, it is the analogical locus of divino-human encounter, where God can be touched while left untouchable – while the creatures passively reflect his glory. Although there seems to exist an expression of divine will ad extra, its theo-logical presuppositions do not easily permit a real encounter with a free will outside it. [...] By inexorably binding logic and ontology together in his more or less Aristotelian onto-theo-logic, Thomas has difficulties in convincingly articulating the distinction-in-identity between the active will and the essence. The Greek Patristic distinction between will and essence in God is, in a way, a consequence of this distinction between logic and ontology, which Thomas is afraid of. This is because of their relational construing of essence, both in God and creation, as an event of dialogical circulation, unlike the Thomist philosophical understanding of essence as an event of self-enclosed onto-logical necessity.
From: Striving for Participation: Palamite Analogy as Dialogical Syn-energy and Thomist Analogy as Emanational Similitude by Nikolaos Loudovikos
