Article I. The apparent antinomies

Having determined (nn. 42-44) what finally constitutes the divine nature, and having deduced the divine attributes, we must solve the antinomies which Agnosticism brings against us, when it declares that the divine attributes cannot be reconciled with one another.

It does not seem possible that the absolute perfections can be predicated formally of God, so the Agnostics say, without at once causing contradictions to arise: first of all the contradiction of the general antinomy of the one and the multiple. The multiplicity of the absolute perfections predicated of God not only virtually, inasmuch as He can produce them, but formally, inasmuch as He possesses them, seems to destroy the divine simplicity, or stated inversely, seems to be destroyed by this multiplicity.

In other words, if God is absolutely simple, it cannot be said of Him that He is formally intelligent, formally free, for there would be in Him a plurality of formalities. We must be content to say that He is virtually intelligent, virtually free, that is, He is able to produce intelligence and freedom in us. But, as He can produce bodies, He is for the same reason corporeal, Thus the 187 divine simplicity seems to lead to Agnosticism. We can no longer affirm anything formally of God; or, if we wish to avoid Agnosticism, we must deny, so it seems, the absolute simplicity of the Deity.

To this basic antinomy others are added, especially those refering to freedom. How can we reconcile: (1) freedom in God according to His good pleasure, which seems to be something quite arbitrary, with His infinite wisdom? (2) Does not God's free act conflict with His immutability, and how is it this act does not posit in God something contingent and subject to defect, which could not belong to Him? (3) How are we to reconcile human free will with God’s universal causality? (4) This same causality and the presence of moral evil; the permission of evil in view of God’s supreme goodness and omnipotence; His avenging justice and infinite mercy; how are these to be reconciled?

Finally, there are other antinomies not so apparent, such as that of the divine simplicity and the duality of subject and object which are essential for knowledge. Then there is the antinomy of God’s absolute immutability and the divine life, which seems to imply a becoming.

We shall return only by way of brief comment to the solution of these last two antinomies, since we dealt fully with them when we were discussing the divine wisdom and life (nn. 49a, 53).

The special antinomies which concern liberty, we will treat at length in chapter four. But first it is expedient for us to examine the fundamental antinomy advanced against us. In the recent writings on this subject the doctrine of St. Thomas has been more or less misrepresented and made beyond measure to agree with that of Maimonides. We will show that the absolute perfections, instead of being mutually destructive in becoming identified in the eminence of the Deity, necessarily tend toward this identification; and it is the only way by which they can exist in their pure state. Thus infinite mercy and justice, far from destroying each other in becoming united in the Passion of our Lord, have found in this very union the realization of their supreme needs and the highest degree of their manifestation. Thus the most ardent charity and the most uncompromising doctrine, do not destroy each other by being united in the life of the Catholic Church; in fact, they can subsist only by means of this union. Separated from each other, they die and are no more than two corpses in a state of decomposition. On the one hand, we have humanitarian liberalism with its false serenity, and, on the other hand, fanaticism with its false zeal. The questions of life which cause the greatest divisions between persons would be clarified by a very pure and prominent light, if we gave more consideration to the fact that in God the absolute perfections, those between which there seems to be the most opposition, far from destroying each other by becoming identified in the Deity, cannot exist in their pure state except by means of this identification, It is their formal distinction that would destroy them, leaving nothing else in their place but false absolutes, false divine attributes, false divine virtues which would become so many false gods. A cumulus of perfections cannot constitute perfection itself.

An eminent master of the spiritual life says: “Concerning God’s moral attributes, it is easy to be mistaken, especially concerning those which are, as it were, at the opposite poles of human morality: holiness and justice, on the one hand; goodness, love, and mercy, on the other. An error in this matter may have the most disastrous consequences as far as conduct and salvation are concerned.”¹

The solution of the general antinomy brought against us will cast a new light on the relations between the divine attributes, especially on the relations between intelligence and will, immutability and liberty, and between justice and mercy.

That we may proceed in an orderly manner in this first article, we will give our attention: (1) to the general antinomy which is one of the principal objections of the Agnostics; (2) to the indirect solution of this antinomy and to the direct cause of the mystery. In the second article we will give the explanation concerning the philosophical mystery that underlies the identification of the absolute perfections in God. Finally, in the next chapter we will take up the solution of the special antinomies concerning liberty.

54. The General Antinomy

This so-called antinomy which is brought up so much against us by modern Agnostics has been presented by St. Thomas in various ways under the form of objections. They are the objections of Maimonides and the Nominalists of the Middle Ages. For instance, in the Theological Summa (la, q. 13, a. 4), the first objection is as follows: “It seems that the divine names are synonymous and that there is only a nominal distinction between them, since they express absolutely the same reality.” Similarly the second objection reads: “If it be said these names signify one and the same thing in reality, but differ in idea, it can be objected that an idea to which no reality corresponds is a vain notion. Therefore, if these ideas attributed to God are many, and the divine reality is one absolutely, it seems also that all these ideas are vain notions,” or at least they do not signify a perfection which is formally in God. The third objection is still more insistent: “God is supremely one. Now a thing which is one in reality and in idea (re et ratione), is more one than what is one in reality and many in idea (re et non ratione). Therefore the names applied to God do not signify different ideas.”

To give greater prominence to this fundamental difficulty, let us examine the two solutions in opposition to the Thomist solution, one of them being that given by Maimonides and the Nominalists, the other being the solution by Scotus and the extreme realists. We shall thus bring out better the exact meaning and scope of the Thomistic solution which we wish to explain and defend.

Maimonides sacrificed the formal attribution of the absolute perfections in order to safeguard the absolute simplicity of God. Goodness and wisdom, he said, are only virtually (causally) in God, inasmuch as He can produce them. They are not contained formally in God. This is tantamount to saying, replies St. Thomas, that nothing applies analogically to God and to creatures, but merely in a purely equivocal way: “Some have said that nothing is predicated analogically of God and the creature, but purely in an equivocal sense. And this is the opinion of Rabbi Moyses, as is evident from his statements” (De potentia, q. 7, a. 7). This being so, adds St. Thomas, corporeity which is found virtually in God inasmuch as He can be the cause of it, is there on the same grounds as spirituality. Hence it ought to be equally right for us to say that God is absolutely unknowable (Ia, q. 13, a. 2). Is not this Agnosticism? ? The Nominalists have followed along the same lines and declared that all the divine names are synonymous. They maintain that, between divine justice and mercy, there is only a verbal distinction, as between Tullius and Cicero, or a distinctio rationis ratiocinantis, that is, a purely mental distinction, purely subjective, without any real foundation, as between Cicero the subject and Cicero the predicate in the sentence, “Cicero is²

Cicero.” Why not say then: God pardons by means of His justice and punishes by means of His mercy? In Him contradictories are verified. This explains why the Nominalists were expelled, for this doctrine, from the University of Paris and from various other universities, as Billuart relates.

Duns Scotus thought it necessary, in order to avoid the Agnosticism of the Nominalists, to posit in God an actually formal multiplicity, by admitting between the divine attributes an actually formal distinction previous to any consideration of the mind (distinctio formalis ex natura rei, a formal distinction on the part of the thing).* This, according to the Thomists, is irreconcilable with God’s absolute simplicity, and seems to be the beginning of anthropomorphism, reminding one of the exaggerated realism of Gilbert de la Porrée, which was condemned at the Council of Reims® (1148). Whereas Maimonides reduces analogy to equivocation, Scotus, on the contrary, brings it so close to univocation as to say that “being,” predicated commonly of God and creatures, is univocal.®

2 Billuart, Cursus theologiae juxta mentem D. Thomae, de Deo, dissert. II, a. 3, scc. II.

• Scotus, Oxon., 1, d. 2, q. 7, sec. sed hic restat; dist. 8, q. 4; “Whether there is in God a distinction of the essential perfections in some way previous to any act of the intellect.” Scotus replies in the affirmative against St. Thomas. Cf. Cajetan, on Ia, q. 13, a. 5, 12; q. 39, 2. 1. See also art. “Duns Scotus” in the Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, col. 1876.

5 Denzinger, 389. Gilbert de la Porrée admitted between God and the Deity, and perhaps between the attributes, a certain real distinction. Petavius, Vasquez, and some others maintain that the distinction admitted by Gilbert and condemned by the Council, was not a real and absolute distinction, but merely an actually formal distinction which differs scarcely or not at all from that of Scotus. On the contrary, the Scotists and some other theologians maintain that it was a real and absolute distinction which was condemned. See Billuart, loc. cit, ê Scotus, Oxon., I, d. 3, q. 2, n. 5, says: “Not asserting the latter, because contrary to the commonly accepted opinion, we may say that, not only do we conceive of God by means of a concept which is analogous to that of the creature, which, of course, denotes something entirely different from that which is said of the creature, but we conceive of God by means of a concept which is in some way

The advocates of either of these extreme solutions do not admit the possibility of a third solution. The Agnostics say with Maimonides that, if in God there is only a virtual distinction between the absolute perfections, as the Thomists and we affirm, then these perfections are not contained formally in Him; there is only one eminent formality in Him, the Deity, which is unknowable. The Scotists concede this and in their turn say that, if the absolute perfections are contained formally in God and not merely virtually, as in the case of the mixed perfections, then univocal as regards Him and the creature. And that there may be no dispute concerning the term ‘univocation,’ I speak of a univocal concept which is one in such a way that its unity suffices for contradiction, by affirming and denying it of the same thing. It also suffices as the middle term in the syllogism, so that we may conclude that the extremes, united in the middle term which is thus one, without fallacy of equivocation, are themselves one. And I give three proofs of univocation understood in this sense.” St. Thomas and his school (see Cajetan, on Ia, q. 13, a. 5; De analogia nominum, ch. x) having always claimed, following Aristotle (II Post. Anal., chs. xiii, xiv), that unity of proportion in the analogous concept suffices for the employment of this concept as a middle term. It is this which Scotus here denies. It is clear that the Subtle Doctor on this main point takes a stand different from that of St. Thomas. See also Oxon., I, d. 3, q. 3, n. 6; d. 8, q. 3, n. 16. It is useless for one to strive to reduce this opposition to a question of terminology. The Scotist, H. de Montefortino, who compiled from the teaching and text of Scotus a theological Summa in which the division into questions and articles corresponds to that made by St. Thomas, always takes the opposite view to that of the Thomists when it is a question of analogy. It is thus that he concludes in his Ia, q. 4, a. 3, when he says: “I reply by saying that every creature is like to God in all those predications which apply univocally to both, But these are the concept of being as well as all those pure perfections found in creatures.” Cf, Oxon., I, d. 3, q. 2, n. 10. The conclusion is the same in Ia, q. 13, a. 5: “The names of pure perfections which are predicated of God and creatures, are predicated univocally of them, and they denote the same real concept.” In this last mentioned article, Montefortino presents the Thomist doctrine on analogy in the form of objections which are solved by the teaching of Scotus in the passages just quoted. The Scotist arguments against analogy and in favor of univocation are refuted by Cajetan in his commentary on la, q. 13, a. 5, and more at length in his commentary on the De ente et essentia of St. Thomas, and in his treatise De analogia nominum, ch. iv. Capreolus, in his commentary on III Sent., dist. 5, q. 3, sec. 1 ad rrum, after declaring the falsity of this proposition of Scotus, namely, that being is predicated univocally of God and creatures, points out that a Pantheistic conclusion can be drawn from it. We shall speak of this again further on.

we must say, of course, that there is an actually formal distinction between them previous to the mind’s consideration of them. In other words, we must acknowledge the presence of an actually formal multiplicity in God.

The Thomists have replied that there is a third solution, superior to the other two.” They have not always been understood, and their doctrine has sometimes been distorted.

T They discuss this problem either in their commentaries on the Summa (la, q. 13, a. 5), as Cajetan had done, or in the commentaries on the Contra Gentes (chs. xxii, xxiii, xxiv), as Ferrariensis has done, or they discuss it at the end of their treatises on God, after giving the proofs for His existence, as John of St, Thomas does in his Cursus theologicus, de Deo, dissert. Il, a. 3. For the exact definition of real distinctions, virtual and actually formal, consult especially this latter work,

Among the texts of St. Thomas which positively state the thesis maintained by the Thomists, it suffices to quote three. (1) Against Agnosticism, St. Thomas affirms that absolute perfections are contained formally in God: “As to the name applied to God, there are two things to be considered, namely, the perfections which they signify, such as goodness, life, and the like, and their mode of signification. As regards what is signified by these names, they belong properly to God, and more properly than to creatures, and are applied primarily to Him. But as regards their mode of signification, they do not properly and strictly apply to God.” Ia, q. 13, a. 3. (2) St. Thomas maintains the absolute simplicity of the divine essence, in which there is not, according to him, any ground for distinction previous to the consideration of the mind. “The perfect unity of God requires that what are manifold and divided in others should exist in Him simply and unitedly. Thus it comes about that He is one in reality, yet multiple in idea, because our intellect apprehends Him in a manifold manner, as things represent Him." la, q. 13, a. 4 ad 3um. (3) In Ia, q. 13, a. 12, we read: “God, however, as considered in Himself, is altogether one and simple; yet our intellect knows Him by different conceptions because it cannot see Him as He is in Himself.” He says the same in I Sent., dist. 2, q. 1, a. 3, a text which we quoted in n. 42, supra. If we had an immediate knowledge of God, we would see no distinction in His essence previous to the consideration of the mind. It is on this that Cajetan insists in his commentary on the Summa, la, q. 13, a. 12, as follows: “Observe, O Thomist, that from this you have it made plain to you that, according to St. Thomas, there is only one formai, sublime, all-comprehensive concept corresponding to God.” Also in Cajetan’s commentary on la, q. 13, a. 5, n. 7, we read: “Thus the formal concepts of wisdom and justice are raised to a formal concept of a higher order, to the formal concept, namely, of the Deity, and constitute numerically one formal concept which contains eminently cach concept, though not virtually, as the concept of light includes the concept of heat, but formally, as the concept of light includes the concept of the power of calcfaction.” See also Cajetan on la, q. 39, a. I, n. 7, a passage quoted supra, in n, 42.

In our days, certain writers have, at times, drawn so close a comparison between the Thomistic doctrine on analogy and the Agnosticism of Maimonides as to see between the two only a difference in the manner of presentation.’ In these statements of the mind of St. Thomas, the absolute perfections (simpliciter simplices) seem no longer to exist formally in God but only virtually, after the manner of mixed perfections. And, as it cannot be said of God that He is an animal or a body, because animality and coporeity are only virtually contained in Him, it seemed impossible to say truly of God that He is good, wise, etc. because these absolute perfections seemed to destroy one another by becoming identified in the eminence of the Deity. Even to the present day the Thomists have said, presenting again the teaching of their master (Ia, q. 13, a. 2, 3, 5), that “the absolute perfections are in God not merely virtually, but formally and eminently (formaliter eminenter).” These writers seem to have had in mind only the second part of the formula, the word “eminenter,” which Agnosticism accepts without any difficulty.

On the other hand, some adversaries of this interpretation have at times defended the formal existence of the absolute perfections in God without sufficiently insisting upon the absolute and eminent simplicity of the divine essence. These latter, in their explanation of the ordinary formula of the Thomists, insisted by all means upon the word “formaliter” even to the point of seeming to posit a formally real multiplicity in God, as was the case with Duns Scotus. In order to avoid Agnosticism, this meant turning toward an anthropomorphism utterly irreconciliable with the perfect simplicity of the Deity.

We would like to show how the Thomist doctrine on analogy avoids Agnosticism without falling into the error of anthro-

$ See Father Chossat, art. “Agnosticisme” in the Dictionnaire apologétique de la foi catholique, col. 38, 66. This article is a discussion of the principal errors of our times on this point.

pomorphism, and how it constitutes the exact mean between the equivocation of Maimonides and the univocation of Scotus.

This solution, superior to the other two solutions, is the one given by moderate realism, which steers a middle course between Nominalism and extreme realism. It is expressed as follows: Absolute perfections are contained formally and eminently in God, and yet they are only virtually distinguished from each other. They are contained formally, which means according to their formal concept; they are contained eminently, which means according to a mode infinitely above the created mode. It is only in a negative and relative way that this mode can be known by us, and this allows of their being identified without destroying one another, in the formal concept of the Deity. Thus, the absolute perfections are contained formally in God and yet are only virtually ° distinguished from one another, or, in other words, according to a reasoned-out distinction for which there is a foundation, but consequent to the consideration of the mind. The foundation of this distinction is twofold, (1) The eminence of the Deity which can identify in itself perfections that are really distinct in creatures; (2) the imperfection of our mind which cannot attain to the absolute simplicity of God.!®

And again, as we pointed out (n. 42), this virtual distinction is Iess than the distinction in creatures between the genus and the

® The virtual distinction is a logical distinction, and refers to objective concepts which are identical in the object in which the distinction is made, but which are made really different in other objects of a lower order. Thus it is that we distinguish virtually in the substance of the human soul, the sensitive principle which beasts have, from the intellectual principle which beasts do not have.

10 St, Thomas, in I Sent., d. 2, q. 1, a. 3, says: “That God surpasses our intellect is, on the part of God, on account of the plenitude of His perfection and, on the part of our intellect, because it fails to comprehend this. Hence it is evident that the plurality of these concepts arises not only on account of our intellect, but also on account of God, inasmuch as His perfection exceeds any concept whatever of our intellect. And therefore, to the plurality of these concepts there corresponds something in the object, which is God, not indeed a plurality of the object, but a fulness of perfection, from which it comes about that all these concepts are applied to it,”

specific difference, as we find in man, for instance, between animality and rationality. We have sound reasons for conceiving genus as potential and imperfect, and the difference as a perfection extrinsic to it, which is superadded to it and determines it. But in God there is no foundation for such a distinction. We have no right to conceive of a divine perfection as potential, imperfect, determined by another perfection extrinsic to it. God is pure Act, and there is nothing potential in Him. Consequently, according to our imperfect mode of knowing the divine attributes, a mode, however, for which there is a real foundation, these attributes must be conceived not as extrinsic to one another but as actually and implicitly though not explicitly including one another. This would bring us back to the purely verbal distinction of the Nominalists.?4

It is the least conceivable of virtual distinctions: and yet it is true to say, according to the Thomists, that the absolute perfections thus really identified in the eminence of the Deity are contained formally in God, and not merely virtually like the mixed perfections.!*

This identification, they add, is not absurd but mysterious. It constitutes a philosophical mystery, the existence of which we can truly demonstrate independently of revelation, and in this it differs from a supernatural mystery like that of the Trinity; but by reason alone we cannot positively know in what this identification essentially consists. Apart from the beatific vision,

11 See Billuart, De Deo, diss. II, a. 2, sec. 3. It is the common teaching of the Thomists and of the greater number of theologians. See also John of St, Thomas, Gonet, Gotti, and others, at the beginning of their treatises on God.

12 Of late years, among those who sought to explain the mind of St. Thomas, some, on the pretext that he admits only a virtual distinction between the attributes, seem to conclude that, according to him, the absolute perfections are contained only virtually in God. This would reduce the doctrine of St. Thomas to the Agnosticism of Maimonides which St. Thomas declared to be “contrary to the tenets of the saints and the prophets, when speaking of God” (De potentia, q. 7, a. 5, 7).

the essence of this identification of the divine attributes can be known by us only negatively and relatively. This mystery, however, is explained inasmuch as it is shown that the absolute perfections, in proportion as they are purified from all imperfection, tend toward identification. This identification toward which they tend, far from destroying them, must constitute them in their pure state.

If this Thomistic solution seems inadmissible to our adversaries, the Agnostics and the Scotists, if the reunion of the two terms formaliter eminenter, according to the explanation just given, seems to them a contradiction and not a mystery, it is because the contrary tenets of these two latter schools proceed from an equal misunderstanding of the profound and even infinite difference separating analogy from univocation. In the main, although the Agnostics end in equivocation, they begin as the Scotists do, by considering the absolute perfections as being univocal. For both, the notions of being, goodness, intelligence, are endowed with absolute unity. The Agnostics conclude from this, therefore, that these perfections are not formally in God, for they would be distinct in Him as they are in creatures, and this is contrary to the divine simplicity. And since they fail to understand what causes analogy to differ from univocation, the Agnostics thus fall into equivocation, this being the charge made by St. Thomas against Maimonides (De potentia, q. 7, a. 7), and the result is that God is for them unknowable. On the other hand, the Scotists conclude that for these perfections to be contained formally in God, they must be distinguished in Him even in an actually formal manner, and this previous to any consideration of the mind.

That we may show that the problem admits of a better solution and that it is not absurd for the absolute perfections to be identified in the formal concept of the Deity without destroying one another, we must above all set forth clearly how infinite is the difference separating the analogous perfection from one that is univocal, since it is this which our adversaries fail to grasp. This will be the relative and inadequate explanation of the philosophical mystery of the identification of the divine attributes. But first we must prove indirectly that there is in this identification a mystery and not a contradiction. This proof is the indirect solution of the general antinomy and the principle for the solution of the others.

55. The Indirect Solution of the Antinomies and the Affirmed Cause of the Mystery

The antinomies which the Agnostics bring up against us must be merely apparent ones. We prove this by the following syllogism, which has the force of an indirect demonstration, or one by the method of reduction to absurdity.

The necessary and strict application of ideas and first principles of reason, as explained by us when we were defending the ontological and transcendent validity of these ideas and principles, cannot result in confronting us with real antinomies, but only with obscurities or incomprehensible mysteries; moreover, it must finally bring us to mysteries.

Now the necessary and strict application of ideas and first principles of reason leads us to admit the existence of a first and absolutely simple cause, one possessing formally the various absolute perfections of being—intelligence, goodness, freedom, ete. —which have been communicated by it to created beings. Therefore, in the reconciliation and identification of these various perfections in God, there cannot be a real antinomy, but only a mystery.

The minor of this argument was established in the chapter on the demonstrability of God’s existence. It was afterwards confirmed by the proofs of His existence and in the deduction of the divine attributes. We have shown that each of these attributes is a perfection without any trace of imperfection. But nothing except an imperfection is repugnant to the supremely perfect Being.

As for the major, the first part of it must be accepted, or else with Hegel we must declare that reality is thoroughly absurd, and that absurdity is at the root of all things. If, indeed, the object of reason and of experience brings us to a real antinomy, that is because the fundamental reality would itself be contradictory. Some Rationalists preferred to admit this on the authority of Hegel, rather than acknowledge, by submitting to the authority both of reason and of God, that it is a question of incomprehensible mysteries. One could not have a better proof of the unreasonableness of Rationalism. It is the crudest illustration of the vice which is opposed to wisdom and which is called spiritual folly, stultitia in the Scriptural and theological sense of the term. Wisdom judges of all things with reference to God; spiritual folly takes what is least in reality, what is becoming and as yet is not a reality, as its standard in judging of all things, even of God. To declare that what is becoming and as yet is not a reality is sufficient for itself and is none other than God, the Being par excellence, is to identify non-being with being, to avow that contradiction is the principle of all things, and it furnishes the most decisive proof by the method of absurdity of the existence of the true God, since His existence cannot be denied without ending in systematic absurdity.

If reality is not fundamentally contradictory, the necessary application of ideas and first principles cannot result in real antinomies, but must of necessity make us acknowledge that there are obscurities or mysteries. Thus reason must of necessity come to recognize that, in the compossibility and identification !° of the various attributes, there is involved a philosophical mystery.

18 Compossibility or reconciliation has the same meaning here as real identification; for, among all the attributes which must be reconciled, there is the absolute simplicity or identity of God, with which the other attributes cannot be recontiled except by being really identified with it.

Reason is forced to conclude the fact of this identification, the essence (or mode) of which is mysterious, and is not naturally knowable except in a negative and relative way, contrasted with what we see in creatures. For a definite and clear knowledge of this mode of identification, we should have to know God precisely in what properly constitutes Him (Deus sub ratione Deitatis), and not merely in what He has analogically in common with creatures; we should have to see the divine essence such as it is in itself. To have intrinsic evidence of the intimate reconciliation of the divine attributes, we should have to see them identified in the essence which we conceive as their principle. It is precisely because we wish to see all the obscurities cleared up which have been left by natural theology with regard to the compossibility of the various divine attributes, that we naturally desire, though conditionally and inefficaciously, to see the essence of God which is the principle of these attributes.’ We cannot desire naturally to see the divine essence according as it is the principle of the processions in the Trinity and of the order of grace, for a natural desire cannot have a formally supernatural object. But we can have a natural velleity of seeing the divine essence as the principle of the naturally knowable attributes, the reconciliation between which we would like to perceive clearly. The divine essence, since it is thus not considered in a formally supernatural manner, can be the object of an inefficacious natural desire, but not of an intuitive natural vision. We can know in a natural way that it is (quia est) and desire it, but we cannot positively know what it is, what properly constitutes it (quid est). Evidently it exceeds the natural means of knowing at the disposal of a created intelligence. That these means may be proportionate to this intelligence, they cannot themselves be other than created

14 Cf, St. Thomas, Contra Gentes, Bk. III, ch. li; Ferrariensis Comment. and Ia, q. 12, a. 1.

So long as we have not the supernatural intuitive vision of God, we cannot have intrinsic evidence of the philosophical mystery underlying the intimate reconciliation and identification of the divine attributes, but we can have extrinsic evidence of it, since we are necessarily led to admit the existence of this mystery by the legitimate and rigorous application of the first principles of reason. This indirect demonstration does not enable us to see how the divine simplicity and the formal existence of the diverse absolute perfections are reconciled in God, but it establishes the fact of this reconciliation without which reality itself would be absurd. On the one hand, it is certain that God is absolutely simple; on the other hand, that He possesses a plurality of attributes (being, goodness, intelligence). We arrived at these conclusions by legitimate and rigorous logical processes. They cannot, therefore, be in contradiction to one another. Let us hold the two ends of the chain.

The same holds good for the reconciliation of divine immutability with divine freedom, of justice with mercy, etc., or again for the reconciliation of the divine premotion, necessary that every created agent may act, with the fact of the freedom of our will.

But human reason is not reduced to this simple indirect demonstration and to this extrinsic evidence concerning the identification of the divine attributes which the Agnostics reproach us with. It can achieve still more. Without arriving at intrinsic evidence it can, to a certain extent, explain the mystery, the existence of which we have just acknowledged.

Footnotes

1. Gay, De la vie et des vertues chrétiennes, chapter on “faith.” ↩

2. We have shown (n. 28) that St. Thomas declares the opinion of Maimonides to be contrary to the faith (De potentia, q. 7, a. 5; and Ia, q. 13, a. 2, 5). He says further that it would also destroy all knowledge of God acquired by reasoning. “Our knowledge of God would consist of empty words, and every demonstration concerning Him would be sophistical on account of the fallacy of equivocation™ (De potentia, q. 7, a. 7; and la, q. 13, a. 3, 5). ↩