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CHIMENTO DEBATES AQUINAS - AND WINS !!!!
ROUND SEVENTEEN
The following excerpt is from The Light of Faith by Thomas Aquinas (ISBN 0-965-057895), page 38 and following:
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The Son is equal to the Father in existence and essence
Since natural existence and the action of understanding are distinct in us, we should note that a word conceived in our intellect, having only intellectual existence, differs in nature from our intellect, which has natural existence. In God, however, to be and to understand are identical. Therefore, the divine Word that is in God, whose Word He is according to intellectual existence, has the same existence as God, whose Word He is. Consequently, the Word must be of the same essence and nature as God Himself, and all attributes whatsoever that are predicated of God, must pertain also to the Word of God.
This teaching in the Catholic Faith
Hence we are instructed in the rule of the Catholic Faith to profess that the Son is "consubstantial with the Father", a phrase that excludes two errors. First, the Father and the Son may not be thought of according to carnal generation, which is effected by a certain separation of the son's substance from the father (sic). If this were so in God, the Son could not be consubstantial with the Father. Secondly, we are taught not to think of the Father and the Son according to intellectual generation in the way that a word is conceived in our mind. For such a word comes to our intellect by a sort of accidental accretion, and does not exist with the existence proper to the essence of the intellect.
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CARMEN:
The web that Aquinas is weaving is this: he must be careful to attribute to "the Word" attributes that are identical to those of God. Why is this? Because he is stuck with what was given to him from the start, that there are three persons in God, "God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit", and that "they are one God". What is his main problem. He must assure that they are distinct, else why the three different names and the three different persons? But how can he make three different persons be also one person? Such is the web he is spinning wherein he traps himself, for if three persons are one and the same thing, the only thing that is different is calling that same thing by three different names. A football can also be called a pigskin, but it is still a football, or if you prefer it is still a pigskin. But Aquinas is not saying that. He is saying that the pigskin is distinct from a football and therefore, the second you say that one thing is distinct from another, you lose the identicalness of the two things and they cannot be considered one. They are two separate things or entities. There cannot be two or more distinct entities in God or two or more distinct persons in God because that would defy the nature of God's essence, that He is indivisible because of His unity.
So when Aquinas states that to be and to understand are identical in God, he is attempting to prove that in God there is this concept or understanding of Himself called "the Word". Never mind that this is Aquinas' concept and has no bearing on the facts. The facts are that because God IS, because God enjoys goodness infinitely, because in God there are no ad extras, there is only His essence, God has no necessity to conceptualize the way His creatures need to conceptualize in order to understand intelligible objects. Aquinas generously admits this, but then proceeds anyway to show that there is in God a thing called a concept or "the Word", which there is not because God IS. If there were conceptualizing in God, God would not be God because then one could say that God is in the state of to be or in the state of to understand. But for God to be or to understand is theologically absurd. Look at it this way. In order to understand something, you must see it, or hear it, or experience it with the senses just to make it simple in the sensorial understanding of things. That mere proposition shows there is a linearity of thought taking place. God is eternal, there is no linearity of thoughts because in eternity, time does not exist and time is linear, for one thing. For God to go through a process of understanding, even understanding Himself, implies linear thought and that is fundamentally absurd. What Aquinas is attempting to do is to justify a concept in God, that may sound logical in his own mind, so that he can then apply it to John 1:1, and from there to Jesus. As I have mentioned already, Aquinas has the theological principles that he must twist, hammer and bend as a blacksmith must do to hot rolled steel in order to fit the shoe properly to the horse. God is not a horse shoe where He can be twisted, hammered, and bent to fit the Athanasian Creed.
So again, Aquinas must be careful not to have this intellectual concept of God be an accretion of sorts, because then the substance of God would be changed, defying His attribute of immutability. So he has "the Word" defined as being "consubstantial with the Father", else he must throw out his entire Summa Theologica, at least the part wherein he defines the trinity doctrine. By saying that "the Word is consubstantial with the Father", not realizing it, he is also saying that there is no distinction between the "Father" and "the Son", if they are truly consubstantial. He cannot have it both ways, either they are distinct or consubstantial, but they cannot be both, and if "they" are consubstantial, you must get rid of the plural pronoun, and you must get rid of the word "consubstantial". To say it correct theologically, therefore, one must say "God is of one substance" because of His indivisibility, and God is one Person for the same reason. Therefore, there is no such thing as a trinity in Almighty God.
In the one true God Who is not "co" with anything or anyone, not con-substantial, not co-equal, not co-innascent, because He is one and indivisible.
Carmen