Is God "Outside" Metaphysical Categories

[utunumsint]

Heidegger might agree with you about Plato (although he seems to have thrown Aristotle into the mix as well). This mix is “productionist” metaphjysics. As Heidegger sees it, “making” becomes the model for metaphysics (“eidos” and demiurge in Plato, form/matter and causality in Aristotle) that continued down through modern philosophy (Kant is a perfect example with his transcendental machinery) to 20th century phenomenology (e.g., Husserl’s notion of “constitution”). Heidegger in fact seems to reduce all “science” or “theoria” to “making” (and this is apart from any specific technological applications) - you can see this in Being and Time where he derives “present-at-hand” being from “ready-to=hand” being.

I disagree with Heidegger that the seeds for our technological mania began with Plato and Aristotle as they fell away from the primordial experience of Being in the pre-Socratics. But it’s great seque for further conversation. I would bring in Leo Strauss to counter Heidegger.

I can’t say I follow since I don’t know Heidegger. I’m wondering what primordial pre-socratic experience he is referring to? Heraclitus -all is change? Parmenidies - change is an illusion?

Anyway - I don’t know how this conversation can proceed much without you helping me understand Heidegger, so I’ll bow out. Thank you for the exchange. It is interesting.

God bless,
Ut

 

[orang]

You can try a clock. The minute belongs to the clock but the clock does not belong to the minute, its just plugged in catching a ride in the motion for the minute. But the clock does not say what time it is and accommodates all time. The clock is just plugged in and would be all time. If things are noticed riding along on the minute it can only be relative to the properties which allow for the minute itself, a sliver in the whole -relative to the ultimate truth…the all time source or origin in the master process in the nature of a God . Or try a vase of plants flowers I guess…when they are viewed the whole can be takin in, but there is also a way to look individually at each. So where time and creation all that is concerned, God would have something similar to compound eyes in nature, a compound relative ability unlike man who is simply the creature riding along on the minute. Anyway I thought of this a few months ago.

 

[levinas12]

I can’t say I follow since I don’t know Heidegger. I’m wondering what primordial pre-socratic experience he is referring to? Heraclitus -all is change? Parmenidies - change is an illusion?

Anyway - I don’t know how this conversation can proceed much without you helping me understand Heidegger, so I’ll bow out. Thank you for the exchange. It is interesting.

God bless,
Ut

I enjoyed the conversation.

According to Heidegger, the Pre-Socratics experienced the ontological difference between Being and beings in a pristine way. Being (Sein) was not confused with beings (seiendes). On the one hand, the mystery of Being was preserved (e.g., Heraclitus - nature loves to hide), on the one hand, they recognized man as the dative of manifestation for Being (Parmenides’ “equation” between thinking and Being). Dative of manifestation is another way of referring to Dasein - Being reveals itself to us.

 

[levinas12]

God can be present to the world without being spatially present to it. Since levinas qualified his original statement with “in a way,” he should be understood to have been restricting his statement to certain senses of presence and absence. God’s (in a sense) not being present to the world is consistent with God’s (in another sense) not being absent to the world.

Aquinas is clear that the God of natural theology is always inferred (as a cause) but is never “present” to our perception. So we have no direct natural awareness of God. We can only validate the truth of certain metaphysical propositions about God.

So, naturally speaking, there is no “presencing” of God - only material entities can be "present’ to us. But we can know there is a Cause. We just can’t perceive it.

 

[levinas12]

Postscript to “utunumsint”:

In Aquinas, “esse” (except for God “esse”) is limited by “essence”. But all creaturely “esse” is univocal; it’s the same “esse” which “fills” the essence up to its capacity for receiving “esse”. Only when speaking of God does analogy comes in. God’s “esse” is radically different from creaturely “esse” because It doesn’t have an essence distinct from “esse”. We can almost say that God doesn’t have an essence (no species and genus).

Another type of radical difference in “esse” shows up, mutatis mutandis, in Heidegger’s separation of “Dasein” from everything else in the world. “Dasein” has a radically different type of “being” than that of other entities. Husserl’s transcendental ego is a precursor of this separation.

So it’s not simply that the rocks are different from cats, and cats from dogs, and human beings from dogs, cats and rocks. This difference is explained by essence, not “esse”, in traditional scholastic thought (remember that genus and species belong to essence, not to “esse”).

In Heidegger, it’s not that “Dasein” has a different essence - no, “Dasein” has a different “esse” from everything else.

 

[Fr_of_Jazz]

We have had any number of discussions on other threads that point out some of the “paradoxes” and “antinomies” that crop up when we apply metaphysical categories (e.g., substance, efficient causality) to God.

The reason for this is that God is “outside” the world yet metaphysical categories seem to be “world-dependent”. What I mean is that “time” is involved in their meaning. For instance, “substance” in Aristotle is governed by “presence” which is inescapably temporal (“presence” implies “past” and “future”). Likewise “efficient causality” is temporal, I.e., involves a “before” and “after” (and a “change” in the agent).

What brings all this to a head is the assertion (by Thomas Aquinas himself) that God does not have a “real” relation to the world although the world has a “real” relation to God. This move is necessary to safeguard God’s radical transcendence (that God does not need the world to be God).

But it also leads to “difficulties”.

For example, how can God be a substance without turning God into one entity alongside others?

I wonder whether you are sufficiently taking into account what Aquinas himself says about the knowledge of God we can have in this life.

(1) About what we cannot know:

Some quotes from his writings . . .

“The most we can know of God during our present life is that He transcends everything that we can conceive of Him.” (De Veritate, 2, 1 ad 9)

“For, by its immensity, the divine substance surpasses every form that our intellect reaches. Thus we are unable to apprehend it by knowing what it is. Yet we are able to have some kind of knowledge of it by knowing what it is not.” (Summa Contra Gentiles, I, 14, 2) =SCG

“We cannot grasp what God is, but only what He is not and how other things are related to Him.” (SCG, I, 30, 4)

“Because we are not capable of knowing what God is but only what He is not, we cannot contemplate how God is but only how He is not” (Summa Theologica, I, 3, Prologue) = ST

“The reason why God has no name, or is said to be above being named, is because His essence is above all we understand about God and signify in word.” (ST, I, 13, 1 ad 1)

“This is the ultimate in human knowledge of God: to know that we do not know Him.” (Questiones Disputatiae de Potentia Dei, 7, 5, ad 14)

“In the end, we know God as unknown.” (In Boetium de Trinitate, 1, 2, ad 1)

(2) Regarding what we can know and say:

What we predicate of God’s substance we do by attributive analogy. I.e., we employ images and concepts derived from our experience of this world to help us know something about God’s nature. These are based on the meaning or content of the concept or image derived from our experience of creatures knowing God is their cause. God exists, is a person, is wise, good, love, truth, life, beautiful, just, merciful, etc. These tells us things about God that are real attributes.

B U T, these words, names, or concepts are predicated differently of God (as creator) versus things (as creatures). This is because our mode of signification is based on experience of finite creatures (in time) and is therefore limited. So God is truly wise, but not as we know wisdom. I.e., God is wise in a way that is beyond what we can possibly imagine or conceive His wisdom to be.

We are UNABLE to attain: comprehensive knowledge of God (to know God as fully as He is knowable) ever; or essential (quidditative) knowledge of God (knowledge that would enable us define God or grasp His essential intelligibility as we would with the concept of “man” or “house”) in this life.

I would argue that if we consider what Aquinas himself taught, many of the problems you bring up are already dealt with or have their solutions intimated in his writings.

 

[levinas12]

I wonder whether you are sufficiently taking into account what Aquinas himself says about the knowledge of God we can have in this life …

These quotes are very illuminating.

But I’m not sure if they “exonerate” metaphysics when applied to God.

You may remember some of the aporia discussed in other threads on this forum. For example, how can God be an efficient cause and still maintain immutability? Or how can the world have a “real relation” to God without God having a “real relation” to the world?

And then there’s the onto-theological aporia: how can God be a “substance” without being reduced to one being among other beings?

It doesn’t seem that Aristotle (even if tweaked with “analogy” and “ipsum esse”) can be salvaged here.

 

[opusAquinas]

Hmm… angels are pure spirits. Are they in space - time?
Guardian angels at least of children are facing God.
The devil and his demons were thrown out of heaven and are in space - time but they are pure spirits.
The universe was created and everything it which includes space and time.
So can we trace the time God created the universe to when the universe began?
So there was no time before the universe???
But when BEFORE the universe did God create the universe if there was no time - you can’t tell because there was no time.



May be the universe is sort like a dvd movie that was suddenly created and suddenly the play button was pressed and we just happen to be at point x in the movie. Cool dudes.

 

[Fr_of_Jazz]

These quotes are very illuminating.

But I’m not sure if they “exonerate” metaphysics when applied to God.

Permit me start with some basic truths that I think do contain the answers. Then you can draw out the difficulty more precisely if one remains.

You may remember some of the aporia discussed in other threads on this forum. For example, how can God be an efficient cause and still maintain immutability?

Efficient causality works by way of act in the cause, not potency. God is pure act. I’m not sure I see the problem then.

Or how can the world have a “real relation” to God without God having a “real relation” to the world?

There is an ontological relationship between creation as the effect produced by God and God as its cause. The effect produced (freely by God) is the very existence of the creature. But I don’t see the problem with this relationship.

And then there’s the onto-theological aporia: how can God be a “substance” without being reduced to one being among other beings?

I would think, off hand, that analogy and the prior two go a long way in answering this. Further, in referring to the divine substance Thomas is referring to God’s being. Now for Aquinas there is no limit to esse in itself: esse is the act of all acts and the perfection of all perfections. Esse is only limited in beings composed of essence (limiting factor) and existence. But in God understood by Aquinas as ipsum esse subsistens this composition is not needed because God is existence (esse) itself. There is no real distinction between esse and essence in God.

Esse is not predicated univocally of God and creatures since He is His esse. Creatures’ existence is dependent and limited. God, consequently, stands uniquely apart from every created being.

It doesn’t seem that Aristotle (even if tweaked with “analogy” and “ipsum esse”) can be salvaged here.

I’m not seeing the problems at this point after this, admittedly, elementary review of Thomistic basics.

 

[levinas12]

I’m not seeing the problems …

I’m afraid I have to disagree.

When God exercises efficient causality, it would seem that there is a change in God.

To say that God does not have a real relation to the world (because relation is an accident and God doesn’t have accidents) seems a bit daunting (e.g., see Norris Clarke).

And to say that God is a primary substance, albeit an unusual one (since God’s essence is His esse) is to say that He is “a being”. And once this move is made, it’s hard to understand how such a primary substance cannot be considered one being among other beings (i.e, cannot be “delimited”).

Again, I’m just pointing out difficulties that posters on this forum have had with some aspects of Thomism. I’m not saying that there may not be philosophical solutions to these difficulties.

But don’t forget that philosophy has a rhetorical as well as a dialectical dimension.

Take, for example, the issue of “delimiting”. Usually, essences play off each other. For example, rational animal versus non-rational animal. Now with God, we would be tempted to play off His essence against creaturely essence – so that God is “delimited” by creatures. But God’s “difference” is not “delimiting” because God doesn’t really have an essence (at least in the Aristotelian sense) - so He’s not involved in the metaphysical interplay of presence and absence ( with an entity being a “this” and not “that”).

God, although He is a primary substance, is not a “this” so we can’t say God is “not that” - ergo, God is not “delimited” by creatures.

For most of us, the climb here is quite arduous. Again, I’m speaking froma rhetorical perspective.

 

[thomas_yo]

“The word substance signifies not only what exists of itself–for existence cannot of itself be a genus, as shown in the body of the article; but, it also signifies an essence that has the property of existing in this way–namely, of existing of itself; this existence, however, is not its essence. Thus it is clear that God is not in the genus of substance.”

~St. Thomas Aquinas

 

[Fr_of_Jazz]

I’m afraid I have to disagree.

When God exercises efficient causality, it would seem that there is a change in God.

I addressed this. . . philosophically.

To say that God does not have a real relation to the world (because relation is an accident and God doesn’t have accidents) seems a bit daunting (e.g., see Norris Clarke).

I addressed this. . . philosophically.

And to say that God is a primary substance, albeit an unusual one (since God’s essence is His esse) is to say that He is “a being”. And once this move is made, it’s hard to understand how such a primary substance cannot be considered one being among other beings (i.e, cannot be “delimited”).

I addressed this and philosophical reasoning clears this up.

Again, I’m just pointing out difficulties that posters on this forum have had with some aspects of Thomism. I’m not saying that there may not be philosophical solutions to these difficulties.

But don’t forget that philosophy has a rhetorical as well as a dialectical dimension.

OK, but rhetoric, in the tradition of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas, is a tool that can serve either truth or falsehood. This is the fundamental premise of Augustine’s De Doctrina Christiana. Rhetoric in that tradition presupposes prior acts of the intellect uncovering the truth through reasoning. Rhetoric persuades in the process of teaching or defending these formally ascertained truths. Chesterton would be a good example.

It is true that, as Newman does on many occasions, one can use rhetoric in urging profound points that are on a more literary, concrete, or humanistic level. But this is not formal metaphysics and cannot formally critique technical metaphysical arguments. Newman never does that.

His chapter “Literature” in The Idea of a University is brilliant on this:
Critics “speak as if one man could do the thought, and another the style. . . .
But can they really think that Homer, or Pindar, or Shakespeare, or Dryden, or Walter Scott, were accustomed to aim at diction for its own sake, instead of being inspired with their subject, and pouring forth beautiful words because they had beautiful thoughts? . . . Rather, it is the fire within the author’s breast which overflows in the torrent of his burning, irresistible eloquence” (§4)

Take, for example, the issue of “delimiting”. Usually, essences play off each other. For example, rational animal versus non-rational animal. Now with God, we would be tempted to play off His essence against creaturely essence – so that God is “delimited” by creatures. But God’s “difference” is not “delimiting” because God doesn’t really have an essence (at least in the Aristotelian sense) - so He’s not involved in the metaphysical interplay of presence and absence ( with an entity being a “this” and not “that”).

God, although He is a primary substance, is not a “this” so we can’t say God is “not that” - ergo, God is not “delimited” by creatures.

**For most of us, the climb here is quite arduous. ** Again, I’m speaking froma rhetorical perspective.

Perhaps, but this is a philosophy forum which involves (or at least encourages) formal philosophical reflection. I admit that one operating at the level of the rhetorical use of language may have problems with the technical vocabulary and formal thought involved in metaphysical reasoning. However the descent to pure rhetoric (in the quest for truth??) has led us to the abysmal intellectual level of the recent presidential debates, campaign slogans, and advertising. Ascertain the truth first, then use rhetoric to get it across . . . if necessary.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

These quotes are very illuminating.

But I’m not sure if they “exonerate” metaphysics when applied to God.

You may remember some of the aporia discussed in other threads on this forum. For example, how can God be an efficient cause and still maintain immutability? Or how can the world have a “real relation” to God without God having a “real relation” to the world?

And then there’s the onto-theological aporia: how can God be a “substance” without being reduced to one being among other beings?

It doesn’t seem that Aristotle (even if tweaked with “analogy” and “ipsum esse”) can be salvaged here.

Aristotle certainly uses the analogy of proper proportionality, but not that of attribution as it would apply to God. He discusses analogy in Metaphysics. Thomistic Metaphysics
by Charles A. Hart has a great discussion on analogy, though he fails in his notion that an efficient cause must be in contact with its effect, here and now. That is a misconception that has plagued Thomistic philosophy texts for hundreds of years.

Linus2nd

 

[Linusthe2nd]

Hmm… angels are pure spirits. Are they in space - time?

There proper mode of existence is their presence in heaven with God and heaven is not a part of the created universe.

Guardian angels at least of children are facing God.

They are God’s messangers so they can operate in the created world - at God’s will. But they are not subject to the created essence of the created universe - matter and time.

The devil and his demons were thrown out of heaven and are in space - time but they are pure spirits.

But again, this is by Divine permission, their proper place is in hell. But you must remember they are subject to the created essence of the created universe - martter and time. They can operate in it but are not a part of it.

The universe was created and everything it which includes space and time.
So can we trace the time God created the universe to when the universe began?
So there was no time before the universe???
But when BEFORE the universe did God create the universe if there was no time - you can’t tell because there was no time.

It would be better to say that for an eternity there was the Blessed Trinity only. But now there is the Blessed Trinity and the created universe which God created from nothing, in time. There was no " before " in regard to either God or the universe. Time began with creation. There was no " time " before the time of the universe. Yes these are difficult concepts.

May be the universe is sort like a dvd movie that was suddenly created and suddenly the play button was pressed and we just happen to be at point x in the movie. Cool dudes.

I think a better analogy would be that God was carrying around a DVD movie in his mind containing an infinite number of scenarios for each being and player in the DVD. This would represent the ideas God has in his mind. Then he pressed a button and the universe sprang into life. Of course there is no " then " with God and there is no DVD. There is only the Divine Intellect and what it knows and wills, all at once. We cannot understand this and shouldn’t try. Just accept it and praise God for his infinite Wisdom, Wonder, and Goodness.

Linus2nd

 

[Linusthe2nd]

Aquinas is clear that the God of natural theology is always inferred (as a cause) but is never “present” to our perception. So we have no direct natural awareness of God. We can only validate the truth of certain metaphysical propositions about God.

So, naturally speaking, there is no “presencing” of God - only material entities can be "present’ to us. But we can know there is a Cause. We just can’t perceive it.

Thomas teaches that God is present by his essence wherever his power operates. His power operates most intimately in all beings, maintaining their existence, among his other numerous acts. So he is present, most intimately, by his essence, in all created creatures.

And we can also say that we have an inherited experience of God’s presence through Tradition, by which we know God, Himself, walked the earth physically in Christ.

We also have the direct experience of the presence of God in the Eucharist, when received, and when adored in exposition.

And I think we can say without doubt that the Holy Spirit makes His presence known to us by a certain " filling " of the heart and mind at certain times. And it is thins which most resembles the kind of experience we will have of the Essence of God in heaven. For we shall " see " him as he is in his essence, except when we behold the physical presence of Christ.

Linus2nd

 

[opusAquinas]

What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.

 

[ynotzap]

I think it is more appropriate to define God as Pure Love.

Aristotle’s metaphysics knows nothing about this Pure Love.

God’s nature is said to be Pure Being. Jesus describes Himself as "I am, who Am.
I define this to mean that God is Existence,

You say it is most appropriate to define God and Pure Love

The thought struck me that in man’s soul there are two spiritual faculties, intelligence, and will

The object of appetency for intelligence is truth, the object of appetency of the will is Good

To love one has to come to know the object loved, Once knowledge is attained, then follows the possession of the good by the will.

There is no problem of appropriation between our definitions, to know, a good-truth-God is to love that good-truth-God In humans it is a sequential act, Perhaps metaphysically, it can be stated “to know is to possess” just a thought.