Does it make sense to talk about the First Cause as "Personal"?

[RealisticCatholic]

In traditional Catholic philosophy, God is absolutely simple, and therefore also absolutely immutable.

To talk about God having a “mind” and “will” is so VERY different than from talking about what it means for you and I to have a mind and will.

Even granting the Catholic idea that is personal, we have to admit that God never learns anything, nor does he ever change his mind.

But that aside, how can a changeless, “frozen” First Cause be said to be personal in any meaningful way? How can “absolute simplicity” love us?

 

[Wesrock]

Even though God is immutable, terms like “frozen” or “stagnant” carry the wrong connotation. It makes me imagine something not changing over time, something which God is not subject to.

W. Norris Clarke’s textbook The One amd the Many does a wonderful job of understanding God as understood in classical theism in a way that moves beyond a cold, analytical approach.

God wills from all eternity the good. To will the good of another is to love another. It’s an intellectual approach to love, not a sensitive one (though in the Incarnation God can be said to have sensitive emotions, too).

God, being outside of time, is still responsive to prayers and events, but not as one changed, but as someone who has known those prayers and events from all eternity and so is accounting for them from all eternity in his act of creation.

 

[Wesrock]

Also, all things that exist also, insofar as they exist, are similitudes of God and participate in God.

When I first disabused myself of incorrect, anthropomorphic notions of God, which I think is an important step to make for those looking to go deeper, I was left with this cold, analytical image of God. But that’s not the end of the journey. Once I began to grasp the relationship of the First Cause to the world in greater depth, even in my limited human understanding, I began to have this far greater appreciation of God’s love and our participation in him. It’s not in a human way like the anthropomorphic conceptions I had before, but it’s not therefore worse than human love, as it appeared at first, but something immeasurably greater. A permeation of God’s love in and through all reality.

 

[RealisticCatholic]

@Wesrock

(1) Regarding when you say “all things… are similitudes of God and participate in God” …
How do we distinguish this from pantheism, then? Or rather, how can classical theism be proved as opposed to pantheism?

(2) As for your first reply: But willing the good still conjures up the idea of consciousness, like when you or I will something. How do we know we aren’t anthropomorphizing the First Cause?

Or rather, how can we know that the First Cause is conscious?

 

[Wesrock]

@Wesrock

(1) Regarding when you say “all things… are similitudes of God and participate in God” …
How do we distinguish this from pantheism, then? Or rather, how can classical theism be proved as opposed to pantheism?

We’re similitudes of God, not parts of God.

(2) As for your first reply: But willing the good still conjures up the idea of consciousness, like when you or I will something. How do we know we aren’t anthropomorphizing the First Cause?

The effects are in the cause, if not formally/physically, then possibly virtually. Since they cannot be in God physically, then they and all relationships between them are in him virtually. But that is just what it is to have knowledge or truth. As this knowledge, God causes, and we call it will because it proceeds from knowledge without any external factors causing it towards those ends. It’s simply intrinsic to God, without himself being caused like an inanimate thing. And furthermore all these things are directed towards the good.

This is a very hasty treatment. All this can proceed from demonstration, similar to (and continuing from) the basics of the cosmological arguments.

Or rather, how can we know that the First Cause is conscious?

Conscious is perhaps an anthropomorphic word, but I gave the hastiest of sketches for knowledge above. I’d have to suggest further reading for a longer treatment.

Also, I edited one of my previous posts.

But I have to run now and will be away. Part of why I rushed through this…

 

[RealisticCatholic]

Conscious is perhaps an anthropomorphic word, but I gave the hastiest of sketches for knowledge above. I’d have to suggest further reading for a longer treatment.

Well I appreciate your contribution so far! I will look into that book.

Any other recommendations? FYI I do have books by Ed Feser. But I’d like to widen my bookshelf on others who follow Thomism. Maybe it could help fill in the gaps.

 

[Shakuhachi]

God even transcends our small understanding of personhood.

 

[RealisticCatholic]

If God is indeed personal, then yes. Just as the First Cause exists more — as the fullness of being itself, and everything else is just a participation.

But the issue is that some would say we’re just anthropomorphizing the First Cause when we say it’s personal.