Pax CAF members!!
In my modern philosophy class we’ve been covering Spinoza. In some of Spinoza’s arguments for substance, he claims that there is only ONE substance which he calls “God.”
He says that by definition of God, this singular substance is infinite/omnipotent and is equally in all things. This, obviously comes across as a sort of pantheistic view.
He argues against the transcendence of God (like a “dwelling-place” of God/heaven) because he says that infinity cannot be both transcendent whilst remaining infinite.
This did get me to think a bit about forming a refutation, but I’m really struggling.
Any insight would really help.
Thanks!
Sincerely in Christ through Mary,
iProfess
Sounds Pantheistic as I said above. Perhaps one needs to see what Thomas Aquinas says on the mode of God’s presence to his creatures. The following is from my thread " God cause(s) existence in creatures…:
Solution: I answer that it should be said that God is essentially in all things, not nonetheless so that he is mixed together with things as if he were a part of any thing. To make this evident, it is necessary to note three points. First, it is necessary that a mover and a thing moved and an operating agent and a thing made exist simultaneously, as is proven in Book 7 of the Physics. But this occurs in a different way in corporeal things and spiritual things. For, because a body by its essence, which is circumscribed by the boundaries of quantity, is determined to some position, it cannot be that a moving body and a moved body are in the same position. Hence, it is necessary that they exist simultaneously by contact, and in this way, a body causes change by its own power, because by all means it can, up to some point, change another thing which is unchanged that is immediately united to it. However, a spiritual substance—the essence of which is wholly independent of quantity or position and, consequently, a place—is not separated from that which it moves by place or position. But where the thing that is moved is, there is the mover itself. The soul, for instance, is in the body, and the power that moves the heavens is said to be on the right side of the sphere that it moves—motion begins from this point, as is established in Book 8 of the Physics.
The second point is that the being of any thing and of any part of it comes immediately from God, because, according to faith, we maintain that only God creates. To create, however, is to give being. The third point is that that which is the cause of being cannot desist from the operation by which being is given without the thing itself also ceasing to be. For, as Avicenna says in Book 1, Chapter 11 of the Physics, the difference between the divine agent and a natural agent is that a natural agent is only a cause of motion, and the divine agent is the cause of being. Hence, according to him, when any efficient cause is withdrawn, its effect is removed, and therefore, when a builder is withdrawn, a house’s being is not destroyed—the being whose cause is the weight of the stones that remains—but the house’s becoming is destroyed—the becoming whose cause was the builder. And similarly, when the cause of being is withdrawn, being is destroyed. For this reason, Gregory says in Book 16, Chapter 37 of Morals that all things would fall into nothingness if the hand of the omnipotent one were not preserving them. Hence, it is necessary that his operation by which he gives being be not intermittent but continuous, and for this reason, it is said in John 5:17, My father is at work until now, and I am at work. From all these points, it is plainly inferred that God is most intimate to every thing just as the being that is proper to a thing is most intimate to the thing itself, which can neither begin nor last except by God’s operation through which he is united to his work so that he is in it.
www4.desales.edu/~philtheo/lo…ntd37q1a1.html
And:
Similarly, we find the following in S.T. Q8, art 1
I answer that, God is in all things; not, indeed, as part of their essence, nor as an accident, but as an agent is present to that upon which it works. For an agent must be joined to that wherein it acts immediately and touch it by its power; hence it is proved in Phys. vii that the thing moved and the mover must be joined together. Now since God is very being by His own essence, created being must be His proper effect; as to ignite is the proper effect of fire. Now God causes this effect in things not only when they first begin to be, but as long as they are preserved in being; as light is caused in the air by the sun as long as the air remains illuminated. Therefore as long as a thing has being, God must be present to it, according to its mode of being. But being is innermost in each thing and most fundamentally inherent in all things since it is formal in respect of everything found in a thing, as was shown above (Question 7, Article 1). Hence it must be that God is in all things, and innermostly.
So if Spinoza says anything other than this, you should be skeptical. Linus2nd
