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Aquinas On Being, Goodness, And Divine Simplicity
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
Abstract
Aquinas's virtue-based ethics is grounded in his metaphysics, and in particular in one part of his doctrine of the transcendentals, namely, the relation of being and goodness. This metaphysics supplies for his normative ethics the sort of metaethical foundation that some contemporary virtue-centered ethics have been criticized for lacking, and it grounds an ethical naturalism of considerable philosophical sophistication. In addition, this grounding has a theological implication even more fundamental than its applications to ethics. That is because Aquinas takes God to be essentially and uniquely being itself. Consequently, on Aquinas's view, God is also essentially goodness itself. Aquinas's metaphysical grounding for his ethics is thus meant to be understood in connection with his more fundamental views regarding God's nature, and in particular his views of God's simplicity. This metaphysical grounding confers significant philosophical and theological advantages on his ethics.
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References
1 For an excellent study of Aquinas's work on the transcendentals, see Aertsen, Jan, Medieval Philosophy and the Transcendentals: The Case of Thomas Aquinas (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
2 See, e.g., Louden, Robert B., ‘On Some Vices of Virtue Ethics’, American Philosophical Quarterly 21 (1984), 227—236Google Scholar; Pence, Gregory E., ‘Recent Work on Virtues’, American Philosophical Quarterly 21 (1984), 281—297Google Scholar.
3 I explore Aquinas's ethics in detail in my Aquinas, Arguments of the Philosophers (London: Routledge, 2003)Google Scholar.
4 Thomas Aquinas, ST Ia.5.1. Aquinas's treatment of this thesis about being and goodness is a particularly important development in a long and complicated tradition; cf. MacDonald, Scott, ed., Being and Goodness (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991)Google Scholar.
5 See, e.g., ST Ia.2.3; Ia.3.4, 7; Ia.6.3. Bonaventure, Aquinas's contemporary and colleague at the University of Paris, forthrightly identifies God as the single referent of ‘being’ and ‘goodness’ in his own version of the central thesis, interpreting the Old Testament as emphasizing being, the New Testament as emphasizing goodness (see, e.g., Itinerarium mentis in deum, V 2).
6 ST I q.6 a.3.
7 ST I q.3 a.3.
8 The most sustained and sophisticated attack on Aquinas's position can be found in Hughes, Christopher, A Complex Theory of a Simple God (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989)Google Scholar.
9 ST I q.3 aa.1-2.
10 ST I q.10 a.1.
11 ST I q.9 a.1.
12 ST I q.3 a.6.
13 ST I q.3 a.3.
14 The most familiar problems of this sort are associated with the claim that there can be no real distinction between what God is and its being the case that he is; for God, as for no non-simple entity, essence and existence must be identical. Robert M. Adams has worked at rebutting the familiar philosophical objections to the essence-existence connection and to the concept of necessary existence; see his ‘Has It Been Proved that All Real Existence is Contingent?’, American Philosophical Quarterly 8 (1971), 284-291Google Scholar and ‘Divine Necessity’, Journal of Philosophy 80 (1983), 741-752CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
15 For a discussion of God's eternality and God's relations with time on Aquinas's account, see the chapter on divine eternity in my Aquinas, 2003.
16 SCG I.76.
17 For a discussion of the essential connection between divine goodness and the manifestation of it in things other than God, see Kretzmann, Norman, ‘Goodness, Knowledge, and Indeterminacy in the Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas’, Journal of Philosophy 80 (1983), 631-649CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
18 See SCG I.77.
19 ST I q.13 a.4.
20 The question whether God could do what he does not do, or refrain from doing what he does, is a well-recognized problem in the tradition of rational theology. Aquinas, for instance, discusses it several times – e.g., Scriptum super libros Sententiarum (SENT) I d. 43, q. un., aa. I & 2; SCG II 23, 26-27; QDP q. 1, a. 5; ST I q.25 a.5. I discuss this question further later in this paper.
21 This apparent diversity is clearly expressed by Aquinas in such passages as these: ‘God necessarily wills his own being and his own goodness, and he cannot will the contrary’ (SCG I 80); ‘in respect of himself God has only volition, but in respect of other things he has selection (electio). Selection, however, is always accomplished by means of free choice. Therefore, free choice is suited to God’ (SCG I 88); ‘free choice is spoken of in respect of things one wills not necessarily but of one's own accord’ (ibid.). Notice that even though God's existence and attributes are conceived of here as being willed by God, they are expressly excluded from among the objects of God's free choice. This diversity is discussed further later in this paper.
22 Cf. in this connection, e.g., Pike, Nelson, ‘Omnipotence and God's Ability to Sin’, American Philosophical Quarterly 6 (1969) 208-216Google Scholar; Morris, Thomas V., ‘The Necessity of God's Goodness’ in Anselmian Explorations: Essay in Philosophical Theology (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1987), pp. 42-69Google Scholar; Rowe, William, ‘The Problem of Divine Perfection and Freedom’, in Reasoned Faith, ed. Stump, Eleonore, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), pp. 223-247Google Scholar.
23 The notion of liberum arbitrium is not equivalent to our notion of free will but is rather a narrower concept falling under the broader concept of freedom in the will. For more explanation of Aquinas's understanding of liberum arbitrium, see the chapter on free will in my Aquinas, 2003.
24 See, for example, SCG II.23.
25 ST I q.19 a.10.
26 ST I q.3 a.6: ‘in Deo accidens esse non potest’. See also QDP q.7 a.4: ‘absque omni dubitatione, tenendum est quod in Deo nullum sit accidens’.
27 ST I q.25 a.5.
28 QDP q.1 a.5 ad 9.
29 QDV q.24 a.3 ad 3.
30 Cf., e.g., QDP q.3 a.15.
31 See, for example, Garrigou-Lagrange, Reginald, The One God, (St. Louis and London: Herder, 1943), pp. 190-191Google Scholar and pp. 511-512.
32 For more detailed discussion of Aquinas's account of accidents, see the chapter on Aquinas's metaphysics in my Aquinas, 2003.
33 De ente et essentia c.6. 34-35.
34 QDP q.7 a.4 sed contra.
35 ST I q.19 a.3 obj.4.
36 ST I q.19 a.3 ad 4.
37 Christopher Hughes raised an objection of this sort to an earlier version of this position.
38 Aquinas on Being, Goodness, and Divine Simplicity. In Die Logik des Transzendentalen. Festschrift für Jan A. Aertsen zum 65. Edited by M. Pickavé, 212–25. Miscellanea Mediaevalia 30. Berlin and New York: W. de Gruyter, 2003. At various stages in the lengthy process of thinking about Aquinas's views of divine simplicity, I have received useful comments and questions from William Alston, Bowman Clarke, Leon Galis, Joshua Hoffman, Christopher Hughes, William Mann, Deborah Mayo, Alan McMichael, Philip Quinn, Gary Rosenkrantz, James Ross, Joseph Runzo, Christopher Shields, Richard Sorabji, Robert Stalnaker, James Stone, Theodore Vitali, and John Wippel.