My quotation is from the Summa contra Gentes, Book III, chapter 118. The title of this chapter is ‘That by the divine law, men are obliged to have the correct faith’. I want to look at just one argument made in the chapter (by the way, the chapter presupposes that we are obliged to love God, which is discussed in c. 116). The Latin text is as follows:-
Quicumque errat circa aliquid quod est de essentia rei, non cognoscit illam rem: sicut si aliquis apprehenderet animal irrationale aestimans hoc esse hominem, non cognosceret hominem. Secus autem esset si erraret circa aliquod accidentium eius. Sed in compositis, qui errat circa aliquod principiorum essentialium, etsi non cognoscat rem simpliciter, tamen cognoscit eam secundum quid: sicut qui existimat hominem esse animal irrationale, cognoscit eum secundum genus suum.
In simplicibus autem hoc non potest accidere, sed quilibet error totaliter excludit cognitionem rei. Deus autem est maxime simplex. Ergo quicumque errat circa Deum, non cognoscit Deum: sicut qui credit Deum esse corpus, nullo modo cognoscit Deum, sed apprehendit aliquid aliud loco Dei. Secundum autem quod aliquid cognoscitur, secundum hoc amatur et desideratur. Qui ergo errat circa Deum, nec amare potest Deum, nec desiderare ipsum ut finem. Cum igitur lex divina ad hoc tendat ut homines ament et desiderent Deum, oportet quod ex lege divina homines obligentur ad rectam fidem habendam de Deo…
…Per hoc autem excluditur error quorundam dicentium quod nihil refert ad salutem hominis cum quacumque fide serviat Deo.
Here is my translation:-
Whoever makes a mistake about something which is essential to a thing, does not know that thing. For example, if someone saw an irrational animal and thought ‘this is man’, he would not know what man is. It would be different if he made a mistake about something accidental to it. Now, when it is a question of a complex thing, someone who makes a mistake about one of its essential principles does not know that thing simply speaking; yet he knows it in a certain respect. For example, if someone thinks that man is an irrational animal, he knows man’s genus.
But this cannot happen with knowledge of simple things; for here, any kind of mistake completely prevents knowledge of the thing. Now, God is supremely simple. Therefore, whoever makes a mistake about God, does not know God. For example, if someone thinks that God is a body, he does not know God at all, but he has in mind something else, in place of God. But it is insofar as something is known that it is loved and desired. Therefore, whoever makes a mistake about God cannot love God, nor desire him as an end. Since, then, the divine law aims that men should love and desire God, the divine law must bind men to have a correct faith concerning God…
…In this way is excluded the error of some who said that it does not matter for man’s salvation in what faith he serves God.
We can note
If a thing belongs to a certain group within a wider category – in the technical phrase, if it is put into a certain species by genus and differentia -, we can at least know what general category it belongs to, even if we are wrong about the species. That is not a very thorough knowledge, but at least our mind is in some sense in contact with the thing. But if the essence is something utterly simple, we either ‘hit it’, mentally, or we miss it. If you are shooting at a target, you can get more or less close to the centre. But if we are shooting at a mathematical point, we can only hit or miss.
For example, if you tell me to think of white and I think of two, or to think of length and I think of thought, then I am not even partly right or right secundum quid. That is analogous to the difference between thinking of God and thinking of ‘a bodily creator of the universe’ or ‘an entirely necessary, but mutable being’, or anything else which combines divine attributes with errors. One would not then be thinking about God, while being wrong about him in some respect; one would be thinking about something else; a purely mythical being. For every divine attribute is God; so if I deny a divine attribute, I deny God.
This of course raises an interesting question about the other religions (ut aiunt), particularly perhaps Islam. For Islam is not simply unaware of the Trinity, or of the divine love – lack of explicit awareness of a divine attribute is compatible with knowing God – it denies these of set purpose. It puts before its adherents ‘a creator who is not love’ and ‘a creator whose nature is not such that it can be possessed by more than one Person’. As such, it is not that its doctrine of God is deficient, or partly true and partly false; it puts a purely mythical being before its adherents.
This is not to say that no Muslim can ever think of God, only that he cannot think of him qua Muslim. It may be that he has 2 concepts, both of which he signifies by the same term, ‘God’, one which enables him to know God in some respect, the other which refers to a purely mythical being.
4 comments:
I don't think I can argue with the metaphysics/epistemology of your post. Do Muslims positively deny that God is love? What do they understand by the phrase? (I seem to remember a Muslim mystic being crucified for saying this, is that right?) Do they even understand the phrase ‘a creator whose nature is not such that it can be possessed by more than one Person’? Doesn't the Koran allege that the Trinity is composed of God, Jesus and Mary? In this context doesn't that render it impossible for them to give a coherent response to the metaphysics presupposed by the actual doctrine of the Trinity? I don't know the answers to any of these questions.
Fr Thomas - you have shown me another knotty problem that I am going to have to solve to write my seminar paper - I am pondering furiously, and will write as soon as I can put it into a coherent question...
" Knowing a thing means there is a real contact between the mind of the knower and the thing known." Does this apply to our knowledge of God because we can come to knowledge of a thing (of its nature) through knowing its effects, as we can come to knowledge of a thing through knowing its sensible accidents? As it were. Help.
The Muslim denial of the love of God seems to me to be a denial that God can enter into a relation of friendship with his creatures; that he can give to some of his creatures (angels and men) a certain 'equality' to himself, equality secundum quid of course, by grace. As such it seems closely related to the denial of the Trinity. What is denied in both cases is the communicability of the divine nature: its perfect communicability among the three Persons, and its relative communicability to rational creatures. Of course I don't suppose that many Muslims think in such terms: but I think that this is in fact what is going on in their thinking, and what explains their resistance to the Christian notions of Trinity and divine love even when we explain that we don't mean what the Koran says we do by the Trinity, and that love in God is not an emotion or a sign of deficiency. The constant repeating of 'God is God' is precisely intended, I think, by the spiritual powers behind Islam to give to Muslims a sort of reflex in favour of the incommunicability of the divine nature.
There was a Muslim mystic crucified for talking of divine love: Maritain mentions him (al-Hallaj?).
By saying that there is a real contact between our mind and God - even with natural knowledge - I wanted to say that knowing God is not primarily a matter of forming correct propositions about him (any more than knowing anything means being able to do this). So we can't assume that because someone assents to the same proposition about God as a Christian that he has a knowledge of him. We start with God's effects; but I would say that by means of them we can formulate a 'concept of God', even though St Thomas, I think, never uses this phrase, and prefers, probably out of reverence, to speak of our 'conceptiones de Deo', or something of that kind. Of course it is not a knowledge of God that manifests what is proper to God, the deity as such; but by combining analogical notions such as intelligence, being, causality, along with the denial of limitations intrinsic to creatures, our minds are enriched by a concept, or conceptions, of God that enable us to know Him, and to distinguish him from all else.
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