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wittgenstein
Guest
I have heard that Anselm, Aquinas ,Augustine and Tillich all said that “God is Being itself”. I cannot find that quote in any of them. Can anyone show me where that is quoted from?
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Michael_Mayo
Guest
Bonaventure certainly does.
See Chapter V
See Chapter V
- Recapitulating, let us say: Because, then, Being is most pure and
absolute, that which is Being simply is first and last and, therefore, the
origin and the final cause of all. Because eternal and most present,
therefore it encompasses and penetrates all duration, existing at once as
their center and circumference. Because most simple and greatest, therefore
it is entirely within and entirely without all things and, therefore, is an
intelligible sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference
nowhere. Because most actual and most immutable, then “remaining stable it
causes the universe to move” [Boethius, Cons. III, met. 9]. Because most
perfect and immense, therefore within all, though not included in them;
beyond all, but not excluded from them; above all, but not transported
beyond them; below all, and yet not cast down beneath them. Because most
highly one and all-inclusive, therefore all in all, although all things are
many and it is only one. And this is so since through most simple unity,
clearest truth, and most sincere goodness there is in it all power, all
exemplary causality, and all communicability. And therefore from it and by
it and in it are all things. And this is so since it is omnipotent,
omniscient, and all-good. And to see this perfectly is to be blessed. As
was said to Moses, “I will show thee all good” [Exod. 33, 19].
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TerryOfromCA
Guest
Yep. That’s what God was trying to tell Moses when he said, “I AM. You will tell them I AM has sent you.”
He just “is”. He is pure being, the reason all things exist and stay in existence.
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Dendral
Guest
I AM is His name. He is existence, being himself. The Father is the Rock. The pure object. He is the good mentioned in the Plato’s Republic VI Socrates / Glaucon dialogue. We do not exist, we take His existence to be ours.
But anybody without prejudices has to admit that we cannot understand, know God himself, he is invisible to the mind’s eye (or rather the mind’s ears) because no object is intelligible except through its concept, its essence. Essences are intelligible. God’s concept or Son (for, what does concept mean after all?), His essence, the Logos is intelligible. Nobody comes to the Father save by the Son.
But why should there be a Son? Because God, being all wise, before doing His works, reflected, better, He introspected. This begot His self-knowledge, the Logos.
This is why everything is through (not by) the Son: if you haven’t the concept of something then you’ll not see, hear etc. that thing. Jesus is the light. God is the sun.
But anybody without prejudices has to admit that we cannot understand, know God himself, he is invisible to the mind’s eye (or rather the mind’s ears) because no object is intelligible except through its concept, its essence. Essences are intelligible. God’s concept or Son (for, what does concept mean after all?), His essence, the Logos is intelligible. Nobody comes to the Father save by the Son.
But why should there be a Son? Because God, being all wise, before doing His works, reflected, better, He introspected. This begot His self-knowledge, the Logos.
This is why everything is through (not by) the Son: if you haven’t the concept of something then you’ll not see, hear etc. that thing. Jesus is the light. God is the sun.
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Linusthe2nd
Guest
newadvent.org/summa/1003.htm#article4
Article 4 I answer that, God is not only His own essence, as shown in the preceding article, but also His own existence. This may be shown in several ways.
First, whatever a thing has besides its essence must be caused either by the constituent principles of that essence (like a property that necessarily accompanies the species–as the faculty of laughing is proper to a man–and is caused by the constituent principles of the species), or by some exterior agent–as heat is caused in water by fire. Therefore, if the existence of a thing differs from its essence, this existence must be caused either by some exterior agent or by its essential principles. Now it is impossible for a thing’s existence to be caused by its essential constituent principles, for nothing can be the sufficient cause of its own existence, if its existence is caused. Therefore that thing, whose existence differs from its essence, must have its existence caused by another. But this cannot be true of God; because we call God the first efficient cause. Therefore it is impossible that in God His existence should differ from His essence.
An odd note. St Thomas and St Bonaventure were contemporaries and received their Doctorates the same day, Oct,23rd, 1227 at the University of Paris and both died relatively young within a couple of years from each other.
Linus2nd
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Dendral
Guest
If existence = essence of existence then all that is should be existence itself i.e., you, me are existence himself, i.e., God. existence != essence of existence,
Your excerpt supposes that no existence is prior, logically, to its essence. This is true of all save the Father. He is the father of all concepts, even of the Logos, the realm of the conceptual. This is why those doing mathematics or logic find so much perfection therein, as if it was begotten of some supramundane being.
Plus, the Father is in the Son because existence is in the essence of existence, God being the necessary being. The Son is in the Father because the Son is in God’s mind, or rather Wisdom, being His self-knowledge, His introspection.
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Ad_Orientem
Guest
It should be clarified, however, that St. Thomas et al do not mean it in a Monistic sense. God is his own existence, distinct from his Creation.
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Michael_Mayo
Guest
But his creation has no existence of its own apart from God.
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Linusthe2nd
Guest
You are reading too much into the article. Its purpose was merely to show that God is Pure Existence, it was not meant to discuss or demonstrate anything else. However, the fact that God is Pure Existence does not imply that creatures are simply existence. In other places of his Corpus, Thomas explains that while God is Pure Existence, creatures are beings which have existence. Thus, creatures are composits of essence and existence, while God is simply Existence.
Again, you are reading too much in the article. It has only one point to establish, that God is Pure Existence. But as a matter of fact Thomas demonstrates in other places that, for creatures, essence and existence come into existence all at once through God’s creative act.
The argument has nothing to with the Father or the Trinity per se, since we are dealing with a different topic, not with Theology or Doctrine.
But in fact, all knowledge comes from each of the members of the Trinity, for they are all equal in that each possesses the nature or essence of God.
Your pharse the " essence of existence " is inaccurate and misleading. Existence per se has no essence except when referring to God, whose essence is existence. In creatures there is no essence which simply exists. Rather each creature has an act of existence, which causes a creature to be an existing being or substance.
Linus2nd
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Regency
Guest
It is provable that God is existence himself. It is provable that the essence of existence is not = to existence. It is provable that the essence of existence is the Logos.
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Linusthe2nd
Guest
Where are you getting the phrase " the essence of existence? " Existence has no essence. And " existence " alone is not real except in the case of God who is Existence.
Linus2nd
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Linux
Guest
Some one you don’t like is crashing the party!
Its me with one-esse-theism!
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Linux
Guest
Aquinas does state that God’s essence is identical with his esse; which means he is the act of existing itself, and is not simply participating in existence.
If this is true, then it would mean that the act of existence is God’s nature, which explains his necessity.
Also God is the fullness of existence, which means God by himself is the very antithesis of nothing, he is the very meaning of existence itself.
He lacks no existence, which means he is not in potentiality to more existence, and therefore everything that is necessarily true of the act of existence is identical to God.
Thus if God creates something, it cannot mean that he creating another “act of existence”, since that would mean he is not the fullness of reality given that there is an act of existence that is not his own; as a result he would be in potentiality to more existence which is a contradiction.
Also that which is synonymous to the act of existence would exists necessarily and so it is incoherent for God to create an act of existence. Therefore creatures, in-order to be real, have to participate in Gods existence, because they cannot by logical necessity have their own act of existence.
If creatures have an act of existence, their nature is either identical to the act of existence and therefore its their nature to exist (making them God, which is impossible), or the act by which they are real is not identical to their nature and therefore the act by which they are real is a distinct nature of its own. Since such a nature is the act of existence it would exist necessarily and would be God.
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Perplexity
Guest
I’ve always struggled make sense of the concept. When I think of being qua being, the last thing I think of is something that has personal qualities like knowledge or love.
After all, it’s not being that knows or loves, it’s things that have being.
After all, it’s not being that knows or loves, it’s things that have being.
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tonyrey
Guest
Don’t persons *have *being? Or are they illusions?
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Linusthe2nd
Guest
Hate to crash your party Linux but I think most people would take Thomas’ opinion over yours any day. Thomas says,
" I answer that, It sufficiently appears at the first glance, according to what precedes (1), that to create can be the action of God alone. For the more universal effects must be reduced to the more universal and prior causes. Now among all effects the most universal is being itself: and hence it must be the proper effect of the first and most universal cause, and that is God. Hence also it is said (De Causis prop., iii) that “neither intelligence nor the soul gives us being, except inasmuch as it works by divine operation.” Now to produce being absolutely, not as this or that being, belongs to creation. Hence it is manifest that creation is the proper act of God alone.
It happens, however, that something participates the proper action of another, not by its own power, but instrumentally, inasmuch as it acts by the power of another; as air can heat and ignite by the power of fire. And so some have supposed that although creation is the proper act of the universal cause, still some inferior cause acting by the power of the first cause, can create. And thus Avicenna asserted that the first separate substance created by God created another after itself, and the substance of the world and its soul; and that the substance of the world creates the matter of inferior bodies. And in the same manner the Master says (Sent. iv, D, 5) that God can communicate to a creature the power of creating, so that the latter can create ministerially, not by its own power.
But such a thing cannot be, because the secondary instrumental cause does not participate the action of the superior cause, except inasmuch as by something proper to itself it acts dispositively to the effect of the principal agent. If therefore it effects nothing, according to what is proper to itself, it is used to no purpose; nor would there be any need of certain instruments for certain actions. Thus we see that a saw, in cutting wood, which it does by the property of its own form, produces the form of a bench, which is the proper effect of the principal agent. Now the proper effect of God creating is what is presupposed to all other effects, and that is absolute being. Hence nothing else can act dispositively and instrumentally to this effect, since creation is not from anything presupposed, which can be disposed by the action of the instrumental agent. So therefore it is impossible for any creature to create, either by its own power or instrumentally–that is, ministerially.
And above all it is absurd to suppose that a body can create, for no body acts except by touching or moving; and thus it requires in its action some pre-existing thing, which can be touched or moved, which is contrary to the very idea of creation. "
Linus2nd
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Regency
Guest
If “existence has no essence” then absence of essence is a property of existence. But whence the properties of a thing? Is it not from its essence?
Existence’s introspection begot His self-knowledge. This self-knowledge of existence is the essence of existence. This self-knowledge is a concept, literally the son of God for, after all, what does concept mean? Existence is an object.
Existence precedes, logically, His essence, being the father of it. It follows that existence is in the essence of existence. God is the necessary being. But the essence of existence is in the existence itself because existence begot it in His wisdom.
Existence is the Father, the essence of existence is His Son. Existence is an object i.e., the Rock while the essence of existence is a concept. Therefore the Father is not = to the Son for a concept is not an object.
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Perplexity
Guest
That’s what I meanDon’t persons *have *being? Or are they illusions?
persons know and love, but persons aren’t “being” they have being.
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Qoeleth
Guest
God is the unknown, unseen goal of every human heart.
“Being” is a word designating a metaphysical concept (or quasi-concept, since, we cannot real agree on precisely what it is). Parmenides imagined it as a great ‘sphere’, which was taken up by Empedocles, Boethius and others. But that is only an image.
In fact, personally I wouldn’t give 2c for “Being Itself”. How can you love “Being”? How can “Being” love you? How can you have a conversation with “Being”?
“Being” is a word designating a metaphysical concept (or quasi-concept, since, we cannot real agree on precisely what it is). Parmenides imagined it as a great ‘sphere’, which was taken up by Empedocles, Boethius and others. But that is only an image.
In fact, personally I wouldn’t give 2c for “Being Itself”. How can you love “Being”? How can “Being” love you? How can you have a conversation with “Being”?
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Linusthe2nd
Guest
There is no such thing as " essence of existence. " Where are you getting this. If it is something you made up, you should try to find another way of expressing what you are trying to say. Because what you have said makes not sense.
Linus2nd
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